It’s not entirely accurate to say that you’re more likely to die in a car accident than in a plane crash. Chances are, you’re not the average person.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on Probability
Displaying 1 - 20 of 49 articles
An epigenetic model of cancer that incorporates the concept of stochasticity could also explain why cancer risk increases with age and how biological development can be reversible.
The oldest person in the world, Kane Tanaka of Japan, died in April 2022 at 119 years. The record of Jeanne Calment of France, who died at 122, has stood for almost 25 years. Will it be beaten?
A lottery jackpot being won by 433 people in the Phillipines has raised accusations of foul play. Then again – such outcomes usually do.
Buying and selling stocks – with real or play money – is a way to harness the wisdom of the crowd about questions like who is going to win a competition.
People want a simple answer. Is this action safe? But despite Anthony Fauci bouncing responsibility for COVID-19 risk assessment to individuals, your risk can’t be boiled down to one probability.
People tend to dislike uncertainty and risk – two things that are hard to avoid completely during a pandemic. That’s part of why it can feel especially draining to make even small decisions these days.
Rapid Antigen Tests are being rolled out by the millions for Australians to check their COVID status. But a result should be interpreted in context.
Why haven’t people gotten upset about how our social distancing signs are fostering innumeracy?
Flood plain statistics can be confusing. There are better ways to think about the risk of severe weather than 100-year storm or flood.
We used probability to find out what collecting all 678 stickers might cost you.
With the Australian Open about to start this year’s grand slam series, a crunch of the data from past performances gives a hint at who is the current best male player, possibly.
Philosopher Nick Bostrom’s theory suggests there’s a one-in-three probability we live in a simulation.
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.
Top contributors
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Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Director of the UNSW Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney
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PhD Candidate, Australian National University
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Emeritus Professor, University of Nottingham, CEO and Senior Vice President of the PETRA Group, University of Nottingham
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Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney
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Associate 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, Philosophy of Science, Australian Catholic University
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Professor of Statistics, Queensland University of Technology
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Senior Lecturer, 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 Sydney
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Senior NCAS Research Fellow, University of Oxford
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Royal Society Research Professor, University of Oxford
