Philosopher Nick Bostrom's theory suggests there's a one-in-three probability we live in a simulation.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on Probability
Displaying 1 - 20 of 37 articles
The danger of treating COVID-19 as an astronomically rare and improbable event is that we will treat it as such and fail to prepare for the next pandemic. And there will be another pandemic.
Tim Hortons changed Roll up the Rim to include a digital element. A statistician correctly predicted that playing on the last day of the contest would dramatically increase the odds of winning.
Kea were able to correctly guess the most probable scenarios, by evaluating various physical and social cues. Previously, only great apes and humans were known to be able to understand probability.
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.
Watching the chances of victory change injects life into sports, both real and fantasy.
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.
Whether it's a toss of the coin or a flip of the bat, can any method to decide who plays first in cricket be unbiased?
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.
With some big prizes are on offer in the latest competition from the fast food giant, best to see what the numbers say.
Cheating at dice games is possible – but it does require some skills.
Never mind three more years – some people think just one might be a tall order.
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.
The decisions we make in life often come down to Bayes' Theorem, but most of us don't even realise what it is. So how does it work?
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.
Things tend to revert back to their typical state over time, so we should be careful not to mistake that for some other trend.
Top contributors
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Professor of Cognitive Psychology, UNSW
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PhD Candidate, Australian National University
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Professor of Computer Science and Provost/CEO/PVC, University of Nottingham
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Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Waterloo
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Associate professor in astronomy, Monash University
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Associate professor, Australian Catholic University
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Professor of Statistics, Queensland University of Technology
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ARC DECRA Fellow, School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University
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Associate Professor, School of Mathematics, Monash University
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Professor in Evolutionary Biology (jointly appointed with South Australian Museum), Flinders University
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Associate Professor, Social Innovation, CQUniversity Australia
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ARC DECRA Fellow, UNSW
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Professor of Autonomous Systems, University of Liverpool
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Senior NCAS Research Fellow, University of Oxford
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Royal Society Research Professor, University of Oxford
