Over Easter I have been reading a short fun book on statistics by Uri Bram, called Thinking Statistically. This trots through some of the obvious pitfalls in reasoning that statistical reasoning can help you avoid, including the absolute classic: selection bias. I have also been listening to news and phone-in radio programs about the benefit […]
Read more
I am teaching part of an electromag course this semester but I am doing the maths bit of the course, so I’m not doing much electromag, apart from doing stuff like getting the students to calculate the electrostatic potential inside a spherical cavity. This is a bit of a shame as this means I don’t […]
Read more
On 16th January 1943 in Portland, Oregon, USA, the air was split by a crack so loud that it could be heard over a mile away. It was the sound of the tanker SS Schenectady breaking in two. The Wikipedia page with a rather impressive picture of the snapped-in-two tanker is here. It is believed […]
Read more
There are two more weeks of semester before the Easter break. I have mixed emotions. On the one hand I am a bit knackered – teaching on two courses, co-writing 4 scientific papers, working on 2 grant proposals, etc, etc, moan, moan, grumble, grumble – but on the other hand it is fun to be […]
Read more
You almost certainly have not heard of Prof Cornelia Bargmann, of Rockefelller University in New York. But there was an interesting feature about her in Nature a couple of weeks ago. First of all it was very timely, it came out in the week in which Prof Bargmann won a $3 million Breakthroughs in Life Sciences prize. […]
Read more
Comment