Somebody at work recently discovered the Monty Hall problem and got into an argument with a colleague about it, which led to him writing a VB program to demonstrate the solution. I suggested that you could probably knock up a decent simulation of the solution in Excel, using only in-cell formulas and not resorting to […]
Entries Tagged as 'Maths'
The Monty Hall spreadheet
August 12th, 2016 · Comments Off on The Monty Hall spreadheet · Life
Tags: Maths·Statistics
Risky business
September 27th, 2009 · 8 Comments · Life, Work
The other day we were doing some risk analysis at work, the usual stuff that many companies and departments do – even more so it they are an IT department or rely heavily on IT.  It was the traditional brainstorming session, collecting threats and vulnerabilities and then assigning probabilities and impacts to them., but I […]
That’s nearly 90!
July 28th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Technology
Personally I don’t (currently) have a problem with my broadband at home and I’m quite happy with it so I don’t have an axe to grind here… but… I did find this interview quite amusing. I don’t know what job Mr. Ahmad does for Virgin Media but I suspect and hope it is on the […]
Tags: Broadband·Maths·Virgin Media
Feeling old
June 17th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Life
There are all sorts of things that are supposed to make you feel old, but which I take in my stride. What finally did the trick was a bit of maths revealing something which has been true all my life but which I never appreciated until now.
Tags: Maths
The Black Swan
March 18th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Life
I have just finished reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, which has left me reeling a little bit. It is sort of about maths and economics but also about philosophy and science generally. I think that somebody recommended it to me in a comment on this site, but I can’t remember who that […]
Addicted To Chaos
October 15th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Life
There was a programme about chaos theory on BBC Four tonight – High Anxieties: The Mathematics Of Chaos – which was a great disappointment. I found it interesting, but really it did not say anything new to anybody who has read a couple of books on the subject, and I don’t think it would have […]
Tell me about the rabbits George!
July 6th, 2007 · 4 Comments · Life
One of my little pleasures in life, and a favourite part of my daily routine, is seeing the rabbits on the roundabout near my workplace every morning. The roundabout is on a busy road with buildings all around it and I reckon therefore that its very likely the rabbits live on that roundabout and stay […]
Maths quiz
November 3rd, 2006 · 3 Comments · Life
Spot the fallacious maths in this story from the BBC website. Hint: it is in this paragraph: So what’s causing such a change in behaviour – with hit and runs doubling in less than a decade? In London in the 1990s, hit and runs were 8% of accidents, now they’re 16% – with 25% in […]
Tags: Doh!·Maths·Statistics
Random?
October 12th, 2006 · 4 Comments · Music, Technology
On the way home today I was reminded, and very strongly, of an article in the weekend's paper about the randomness of an iPod's shuffle. Combining, as it does, discussion on high-tech gadgets, music and mathematics, I was particularly drawn towards that article which was about how some iPod owners get suspicious of the random […]
Child poverty in Crawley
August 17th, 2006 · 1 Comment · Politics
The other day Antonia wrote about some statistics released by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, with particular emphasis (obviously) on how they apply to Oxford. Just as obviously I could not resist looking them up to see how the JRF think we are doing in Crawley. It is worth mentioning something first about how the figures […]
Tags: Bewbush·Broadfield·Crawley·Family·Furnace Green·Ifield·Langley Green·Maidenbower·Maths·Pound Hill·Scandals·Southgate·Statistics·Sure Start·Three Bridges·Tilgate
