Tag Archive
Lies, Damned Lies, Rape, and Statistics
The vicious gang rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern in Delhi last month is tragically just one of many attacks on women that occur every day in India. In 2011 alone, there were more than 24,000 reported rapes in the country, with likely many times that number going unreported. This horrific incident has... »
Ode to Power Laws
Anyone who knows me knows that I love power laws. What other distribution even comes close? The normal? Boring. Poisson? Too fishy. Hypergeometric? Ok, that one’s pretty cool, too. But still, power laws reign supreme in my mind. Evidence of the mystical power of power laws is found by simply looking at references to “power laws”... »
Out With the New, In With the Old
When the avant-garde jazz group The Bad Plus first covered Nirvana’s "Smells Like Teen Spirit” almost ten years ago, they inspired heated controversy for their supposedly non-traditional approach to jazz. But when John Coltrane first recorded his now classic 1960 performance of the show tune “My... »
