Maths

4 breaks

Patterns, chance and the numbers hiding in everyday things.

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Why a treatment can win in every group and still lose overall: Simpson's paradox Treatment B beats Treatment A overall, yet A wins for small stones and for large stones. That is Simpson's paradox, and it is real data from a kidney-stone… Maths4 min read Why random bounces pile up into a bell curve: the Galton board Every ball in a Galton board makes the same blind choice at each peg: left or right, a coin flip. Yet drop enough of them and the pile always grows into the… Maths4 min read Why 1 leads far more often than 9: Benford's law of first digits Look only at the first digit of any long list of real-world numbers, such as river areas, populations or the figures in a company's accounts. You'd expect each… Maths3 min read Why 23 people are enough for two to share a birthday Put 23 people in a room and there's a better-than-even chance that two of them share a birthday. That sounds wrong, because 23 is tiny next to 365. The catch… Maths4 min read