probability

1. 19 September 2019

   The Rugby World Cup, the All Blacks, and Luck

   A feature of knockout tournaments like the Rugby World Cup is that the "best" team often doesn't win. If one side is genuinely good enough to beat another 55% of the time, the weaker team still takes…

2. 3 September 2018

   The median is not the message

   A friend's cancer diagnosis sent me back to Stephen Jay Gould's essay on being told his own disease had a median survival of eight months. Most people would read that as "I'll be dead in eight months"…

3. 4 December 2014

   “‘Show me the numbers.’ Big hearts and hard heads can come wrapped in the same skin.”

   David Myers' Intuition: Its Powers and Perils shaped how I think about probability. Big hearts and hard heads can come wrapped in the same skin — being wise means asking to see the numbers, even when…