Oct 17, 2015
Applying Bayes to KIC 8462852
There's been a lot of talk this week about the the strangeness of KIC 8462852. First, let's explain what's happening here. Astronomers use observations of light patterns coming from nearby stars to…
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Archive page 46 of 73
Oct 16, 2015
Illinois's Junk Bonds
The Illinois Lottery has stopped paying winners. As of this week, winning $600 or more gets you an IOU. Setting aside how bad it looks when the house refuses to pay up,…
Oct 15, 2015
Someone will draw the short straw on climate change
A couple of weeks ago, economist Matthew Kahn wrote about microlevel changes happening in New Jersey post-Sandy and how they anticipate a broader response to climate change. In general, Kahn writes: This…
Oct 14, 2015
Illinois Discovers Land Cover Increases Flooding
It's about a month old, but WUIS has a story about increased urban flooding in Illinois. There's a lot to chew on here, but the key point I see here is how…
Oct 11, 2015
1000-year storms in South Carolina
Homeland Security Watch has an excellent post on the recent claims that South Carolina has faced at 1000-year storm. Focusing on the annual exceedance probability (AEP), the story post throws a bit…
Oct 9, 2015
Scientific computing and uncertainty book review
I have two book reviews in the current issue of the Journal of Statistical Software. In the second, I reviewed Uncertainty Quantification and Stochastic Modeling with MATLAB by Eduardo Souza de Cursi…
Oct 8, 2015
Data science and scientific computing book reviews
I have two book reviews in the current issue of the Journal of Statistical Software. First, I reviewed Data-Driven Modeling & Scientific Computation: Methods for Complex Systems & Big Data by J.…
Oct 7, 2015
You're out of order! The whole operation's out of order!
It's ambiguous. There are two problems here. First, PEMDAS doesn't necessarily include all of the things in this example problem. The implicit multiplication is one. That is, which rule governs 2(? Some…
Oct 4, 2015
"I love space robots!"
Like all good parents, I took the kids to see The Martian this afternoon. It was awesome, but that's not the point. The first 15 minutes or so are legitimately scary, especially…
Oct 4, 2015
Stop being so irrational
I am convinced if you study mathematics long enough, you will eventually discover something unsettling. For me, this moment came in real analysis. This morning, a friend posted on Facebook, that her…
Sep 30, 2015
Like Water for Mars
People of Earth. I propose we propose a mission to bring back a liter or so of that Martian water. We can propose this to NASA. Or maybe just use it to…