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What Are the Chances?
Musings on everyday probability
Random Post
What are the chances of three snow days in one winter?
May 4, 2017
By Alan J. Salzberg
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Any time there is even a ghost of a chance of snow, my three kids get very excited (ok, let's face it, being a southern transplant to NY, so do I). We go to https://www.snowdaycalculator.com in the h...
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Super Bowl Coin Toss
January 14, 2016
By Alan J. Salzberg
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Is there any advantage to calling the coin toss in the Super Bowl? It doesn't appear so, as in the 49 games to date, tails has come up 25 times and heads has come up 24 (
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Bridge splits re-visited
October 21, 2015
By Alan J. Salzberg
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A couple years back, I wrote on the chances of various "splits" in bridge (and explained why this is something bridge players care about) in
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Going to College: what are the chances?
May 28, 2015
By Alan J. Salzberg
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The NY Times answers it
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To Huck or not to Huck?
February 16, 2015
By Alan J. Salzberg
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I play a lot of Ultimate Frisbee, a game akin to football in that there are end zones, but akin to soccer in that there is constant action until someone scores. In Ultimate, you can only advance by t...
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Past posts can be found here...
February 16, 2015
By Alan J. Salzberg
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For the last year or so, I used my other site for blogging. You can find those posts at www.what-are-the-chances.blogspot.com .
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What is a p value and why do you care?
February 16, 2015
By Alan J. Salzberg
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I feel like I've written this too many times, but here we go again. There was a splendid article in the
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Citibike Rides--what are the chances?
January 13, 2014
By Alan J. Salzberg
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I have been working with Joe Jansen on the Citibike data in the R Language. Citibike is New York's bike sharing program, which started in may and currently has...
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What are the chances of different "splits" in bridge?
August 13, 2013
By Alan J. Salzberg
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If you know how to play bridge, skip to the fourth paragraph! In bridge, 13 cards are dealt to each of 4 players (so all 52 cards are dealt). Players sitting across from each other are...
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Simpson's Paradox
April 29, 2013
By Alan J. Salzberg
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A North Slope real estate broker (named North) is trying to convince you that North Slope is a more affluent neighborhood than South Slope. To prove it, he explains that professionals in North Slope...
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The Worst Graph
November 12, 2012
By Alan J. Salzberg
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One reason for quotes like there are "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics" is because of graphs like these:
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Election Polls
September 21, 2012
By Alan J. Salzberg
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With the upcoming election, I have been following my favorite prediction site: electoral-vote.com. That site has a big map showing current predictions state-b...
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Born to Run?
November 11, 2011
By Alan J. Salzberg
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About a year ago, I read a book called "Born to Run," by Christopher McDougall, who last week wrote
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Detecting cheating
March 30, 2011
By Alan J. Salzberg
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In my professional work, I like being the statistical sleuth, trying to figure out whether a person or company cheated, and how much they cheated. Thus it was with a lot of interest that I read a rece...
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Throw away your cold medicine again?
September 28, 2010
By Alan J. Salzberg
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A couple years ago, I wrote about a study that looked at the effect of a seawater nasal spray on the health of children (see
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