Posts tagged with statistics
An Albatross, Hole is One, and an Eagle
New Zealand golfer Amelia Garvey has pulled off a remarkable feat in a US tournament, becoming the first professional to ever record an albatross, a hole-in-one and an eagle on three separate holes of a round. Competing in the final round of the Royal St. Cloud Women’s Championship on the NXXT Tour, Garvey shot a final-round […]
Air Accidents, Statistically Speaking
Air travel is the safest mode of transport. In 2019, there were just under 70 million flights globally, with only 287 fatalities. According to the US National Safety Council’s analysis of census data, the odds of dying in a plane are about 1 in 205,552, compared with 1 in 102 in a car. Even so, […]
Math on the Trail of Nessie and Bigfoot
In the field of cryptozoology – the study of animals which have not yet been proven to exist – there are no bigger questions than what is Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster. Now, a scientist has used statistics to try and explain the legends of two of the world’s most high profile urban myths. […]
A good education too complex to be reduced to a single number
From CNN: The scandal engulfing Columbia University and U.S. News & World Report rose to a new level last week, when Columbia acknowledged that some of the figures it had submitted last year to U.S. News were inaccurate. U.S. News initially removed Columbia from its ranking entirely, then demoted it from second to 18th place […]
Fear and Greed in a Dynamic Pie Graph
The Fear & Greed Index is a way to gauge stock market movements and whether stocks are fairly priced. The theory is based on the logic that excessive fear tends to drive down share prices, and too much greed tends to have the opposite effect. How is Fear & Greed Calculated? The Fear & Greed […]
We Use Statistics Every Day
It was a crazy idea—to skateboard across Australia. With those snakes, deserts, and wilderness, it could be…very dangerous! Mathematics comes to the rescue in the form of summary statistics. Students often overlook the importance of using statistics for practical activities. Statistics are widely used across all sports. Check out more about Tom Dury’s 4000km trek […]
6 Good Reasons to Like Algebra
1) Algebra is Faster And Better Than “Basic” Math Just as multiplying two by twelve is faster than counting to 24 or adding 2 twelve times, algebra helps us solve problems more quickly and easily than we could otherwise. Algebra also opens up whole new areas of life problems, such as graphing curves that cannot […]
Algorithms are not Al-ways right!
Philip is among 300,000 pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who woke on August 13 to critically important A-level exam results. These exams were cancelled this year due to the pandemic. Student marks were instead determined by an algorithm, which was chosen by the government’s exam regulator. The model drew on a collection of data […]
Another Dubious COVID Graph
What is wrong with this graph – an official one designed to help the UK public understand COVID-19. Here, we see a humped curve that slowly decreases and suggests steps to ease lockdown along the way. Critically, there is no relation between the steps in the graph and the alert level, so we have to […]