by david allan van nostrand | Apr 29, 2019 | Items in the News, Using Information
Mental Floss’ Leigh Raper has very strong feelings about the Sherman Oaks Galleria (mall) food court, featured in the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She says it represented ”the teen ideal of community, freedom, and independence.” It is good to remember this was...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 22, 2019 | Items in the News, Voodoo Statistics
University of Washington professors Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom say the world is awash in bullshit and they’re tired of it. This is why they designed a class called Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World. Their aim is to teach people how to think critically...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 15, 2019 | How to tell good research from bad, Items in the News, Voodoo Statistics
Movie buffs know that army paratroopers shout Geronimo! as they jump out of airplanes. As the story goes, they do it because it’s what the famous Apache chief yelled when he bravely leaped his horse from a high cliff into the river below to evade the hot pursuit of...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 8, 2019 | Human Behavior, Psychology
In one famous study, judges approved parole in about one third of the cases they heard. But as with most averages, the proportion did not hold steady hour after hour throughout the day. As a matter of fact, prisoners who appeared before judges early in the day were...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 1, 2019 | Items in the News
No one knows how April Fools’ started. One story says it began during the First Century, when court jesters and fools told Roman emperor Constantine they could do a better job of running the empire. Amused, the emperor allowed a jester to be king for one day. Another...
