Captain Jack Sparrow sails the high seas again in the fifth outing of the Pirates of the Caribbean series. So did the filmmakers get the science right in the action packed adventure?
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.
Mathematics and art are generally viewed as very different. But a trip through history – from an Islamic palace to Pollock’s paintings – proves the parallels between the two can be uncanny.
The Guardians of the Galaxy team are rocking the universe again in the latest volume of the science fiction blockbuster. But how does the science stand up to some number crunching?
Sea otters had been absent from this Alaskan national park for at least 250 years. By marrying math and statistics, scientists map this animal’s successful comeback.
It’s a golden age for visualization in mathematics. How tools like 3-D printing, animation and even knitting machines are reimagining the way mathematicians study and share their work.
Sometimes statistics and probability can produce unexpected or counter-intuitive results. If we’re hoping to use numbers to make good decisions, we should be wary of the traps.
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.