Originally posted on mathbabe: Lately you’ve seen a string of articles about how women say sorry too much. We’ve got yesterday’s New York Times opinion piece entitled Why Women Apologize and Should Stop, we’ve got Amy Schumer’s amazing-as-always skit on accomplished women apologizing for everything including existing, and even academics are weighing in. This is not…

Originally posted on God plays dice: Apparently students in the UK have been protesting against the following question on a GCSE math exam (see e. g. coverage at The Guardian): There are n sweets in a bag. Six of the sweets are orange. The rest of the sweets are yellow. Hannah takes a random sweet…

Originally posted on God plays dice: Do you like geometrical constructions? Then you should like the?flag of Nepal, which is the only non-rectangular flag of a nation, is actually defined by?a Euclidean ruler and compass construction?in their constitution. See a?step by step drawing of the construction?or?this video from Numberphile. The flag of the state of…

Here is an email I received from “Ted Wells, Esq.” (It’s not really from Ted Wells, and the only reason I want to make that clear is because I’m scared the all-powerful Roger Goodell will levy and arbitrarily harsh punishment.) Dear Greg, Please help me calculate a probability.  I have been asked to investigate whether…

Originally posted on StatsbyLopez: On February 20, the National Hockey League announced a partnership with software company SAP. The alliance’s primary purpose was to bring a new enhanced stats section to NHL.com, built in the shadows of popular analytics sites like war-on-ice and the now dormant extra-skater. It was, it seemed, a partial admission from…

From this article: “What do gangs fight about?” Waco police spokesman Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton told theMorning News. “Gang stuff. Who’s the baddest gang around. Stupid stuff.

A quote I liked from this article: As with election polls and athletes’ stats, quantitative evaluations can attract enthusiasts who lack statistical literacy, who then build castles from quantitative sand. Cheers.

Originally posted on StatsbyLopez: Noah and I wrote an article about penalty patterns in the NHL. It’s over on FiveThirtyEight – many thanks to the folks over there for efforts in helping us put it together. I wanted to share two plots that I thought were interesting, and related to our study. First, here’s a contrast of penalty…

I received this comment on my recent article: Considering you misspelled Berkeley twice in your article, despite the fact it was spelled correctly (by someone else) in a subsequent quote, and say preposterous things like “the answer to that question is no. It might be yes”, it might behoove you to be a little more…