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Statistical Analysis
Find your wallet or keys — or a nuclear submarine.
Virtually all the statistical methods researchers commonly use assume potential mating partners decide who they will have children with based on a roll of the dice.
Years of shoddy research have overstated the risk.
With a record-setting $1.9 billion jackpot, you'd think it's a no-brainer to buy a Powerball ticket. But the math truly shows otherwise.
The idea that we're happier at the beginning and end of our lives is really just a comforting myth.
Meaningful pictures are assembled from meaningless noise.
An interactive “globe of notability” shows the curious correspondences and the strange landscape of global fame.
Using data collected from ancient civilizations across the world, researchers identified the most significant factors in human development. War came out on top.
4mins
“If 90% of children had ADHD and only 10% of children could sit still at a desk, how would we design school?”
John Templeton Foundation
Searching for truth in unorthodox ways can be a valuable exercise. But Anatoly Fomenko's alternate world history is just plain weird.
Any dataset that can be quantified over time can be turned into a contest that is both exciting and (a little bit) enlightening.
The Poisson distribution has everyday applications in science, finance, and insurance. To compare the results of some biomedical studies, more people ought to be familiar with it.
We can do so much more, so much faster, with the same data. When you think about how astronomy works, you probably think about observers pointing telescopes at objects, collecting data […]
The mismatch between theory and experiment is anything but certain. The most exciting moments in a scientist’s life occur when you get a result that defies your expectations. Whether you’re a […]
We need more and better data to know, but that’s exactly what’s coming. Over the past few decades, a number of important advances have helped revolutionize our picture of the Universe. […]
We still don’t know what dark matter is, but at least we now know what it’s not. When it comes to science, we often say that it only takes a single […]
Just because something’s unlikely doesn’t mean that anything’s wrong. In our quest to understand the Universe, theoretical physics is perhaps the most powerful tool we have as far as making […]
One look at the uncertainties and the assumptions changes the story tremendously. Is there intelligent life out there in the Milky Way beyond our own Solar System? If so, how […]
Only one dark matter detection experiment ever gave a positive result, in conflict with all the others. This could be why. For multiple generations now, it’s been apparent to astronomers that […]
If it holds up, it would revolutionize physics and be a slam-dunk Nobel Prize. Here’s why that’s unlikely to be the case. Every so often, an experiment comes along in physics […]
Just because you can design an experiment to test for something doesn’t mean you should trust the results. Is there another Universe out there? The Universe we know and inhabit, the […]
An Oxford physicist tries to cast doubt on dark energy, but the data says otherwise. It was a mere 20 years ago that our picture of the Universe got a […]
There are only two perfect numbers that fit on the calendar: 6 and 28, making June 28th Perfect Number Day. Find out what makes a number perfect, and why they matter. […]
It isn’t just for merging neutron stars, anymore. Over the past three years, there’s arguably been no greater scientific discovery than the direct detection of gravitational waves. The two LIGO […]
A new planet, bigger than Earth, could be lurking in the outer solar system. But new evidence says ‘probably not.’ “Although we were initially quite skeptical that this planet could […]
The smart money is still on LIGO, but there sure looks like something funny is happening if the new group is correct. This article was contributed by Sabine Hossenfelder. Sabine […]
Constant? Not-a-constant? Or is there a fundamental flaw in the way we’re doing business? This article was written by Sabine Hossenfelder. Sabine is a theoretical physicist specialized in quantum gravity […]
Wanting there to be something beyond the standard model may be influencing what we actually investigate. “In recent years several new particles have been discovered which are currently assumed to […]
And when you demand ‘perfectly identical,’ just how high of a bar are you setting? “Lives are snowflakes — unique in detail, forming patterns we have seen before, but as like one another […]
Could the Nobel Prize of 2011 have been awarded without cause? “Even if I stumble on to the absolute truth of any aspect of the universe, I will not realise my […]