Scrambling it is much easier than solving it. But it still involves some fascinating questions, such as the number of random moves needed to consider the cube truly messed up.
Wages, starlight and polls can all be interpreted using statistics. While probabilities, medians and noise can be challenging, a simple dice can provide insights into statistics.
Clinical trials are used to establish that medicines work. But these don’t take into account the genetic differences between us that can mean very different outcomes for different patients.
It’s cheaper to prevent biological invasions than to react after they happen. But it’s hard to detect invaders while there are still just a few of them. Knowing when and where to look can help.
The study of innovation in large companies and start-ups would benefit from being inspired by physics, which mobilizes different sets of laws for large masses and particles.
McDonald’s Canada has brought back its popular Monopoly game. A statistician explains the odds of winning the top prizes and how that compares to the odds we confront in everyday life.
Rand Wilcox, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Any field that collects and analyzes data relies on statistical techniques to make sense of it all. Modern, more accurate methods should supplant the old ways… but in many cases, they haven’t yet.
We naturally overestimate the risk of rare events, like shark attacks or terrorism. But there are things you can do to think more rationally about the real risk.
For 30 years, sports fans have been told to forget about streaks because the ‘hot hand’ is a fallacy. But a reanalysis says not so fast: Statistics show players really are in the zone sometimes.
People around the world were shocked when Hillary Clinton, ahead in many polls, didn’t end up the U.S.‘ president-elect. But that doesn’t mean the polls themselves were wrong.
How does your brain deal with the ambiguous and variable visual information your eyes collect? Neuroscientists think it bets on what’s the most likely version of reality.