Group items tagged

Interesting but a little morbid.

Interesting but a little morbid.

That's creepy.

Some interesting problems from one of my favorite mathematicians.

Interesting...although the solution algorithm seems more suited to prom than marriage...

Mathematical marriage counseling? Sounds interesting.

Mandlebrot argues that markets do not follow a normal distribution. An interesting book from the man behind the Mandlebrot set.

thanks for this. Dr. Mandlebrot seems to be always ahead of his time.

That's a nice set of questions! Have you verified his calculations. It seems there's one bit of data he's assuming.

NY Times article about bridge and probability

Unfortunately, the rest of the column is full of bridge jargon and I don't play. This is like NASCAR for nerds.

Data on the portion of individuals surviving to various ages broken down by sex, race, and other factors.

Unless you're really interested in all the pictures of license plates, scroll down to "County coding" to see the mathematically relevant part. Ask yourself: how many license plates can be generating in the scheme used from 1963 to 2008? How many can be generated in the new scheme?

A gallery of Indiana license plates and description of the various coding schemes used.

A joint probability calculation with some flaws...

This is probably beyond the scope of the course but the article is very well written and will be interesting before and after the course.

I spiffed up and posted the GeoGebra worksheet if you're interested.

Bertrand's Paradox is a question in continuous probability that shows the perils of uniformly distributed variables. The question is simple: given a random chord in a circle, what's the probability that it's longer than the side length of an equilateral triangle inscribed in that circle?

This is for those who wondered what a degree in math can get!

The rising stature of statisticians, who can earn $125,000 at top companies in their first year after getting a doctorate, is a byproduct of the recent explosion of digital data. In field after field, computing and the Web are creating new realms of data to explore - sensor signals, surveillance tapes, social network chatter, public records and more. And the digital data surge only promises to accelerate, rising fivefold by 2012, according to a projection by IDC, a research firm.

Not so much relevant to probability but a nice story and it mentions an NYU professor.

When baseball dubbed shortstop Harold Reese "Pee Wee" and first basemen Fred Merkle "Bonehead," they probably weren't trying to lengthen the players' lives. But according to researchers at Wayne State University, major-league players who have nicknames live 2½ years longer, on average, than those without them. The nickname findings are part of the wide-ranging and often arcane academic research that deals with the national pastime. In another study, we learn that players whose first or last name begins with "K" strike out more than those without "K" initials. And in case you were wondering, research finds Democrats support the designated-hitter rule more than Republicans.

the initial K effect really gets me, probably because the human tendency to try and explain it does not work. The original paper is here and contains an additional study which found that "students whose names began with 'C' or 'D' earned lower GPAs than students whose names began with 'A' or 'B.'" http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=946249 Here is some criticism of the study. http://sabermetricresearch.blogspot.com/2007/11/k-study-for-real_26.html http://skepstat.blogspot.com/2007/12/why-i-am-javascript-master.html