The Wenger hypothesis: How many points to win the English Premier League?
Arsène Wenger (pictured) has been manager of Arsenal Football Club since 1996, making him the…
Peter MartinDecember 1, 2016
Ask a statistician: A variation of the birthday problem
Alec Campbell of Bellevue College writes: I’ve read about the birthday problem, and how you…
Is Christmas really coming earlier? Maybe, but not as early as August
A couple of years ago, I wrote an article in which I examined the evidence…
Nathan CunninghamNovember 28, 2016
How wrong were the presidential polls and predictions?
On 14 July 2016 the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was polling seven points ahead…
Timothy Martyn HillNovember 23, 2016
Four possible explanations why most of the polls got the US election wrong
In the US presidential election, the final poll of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics…
Paul WhiteleyNovember 11, 2016
Forecast error: presidential election polls and predictors
On Tuesday, 8 November 2016, the United States will hold its 58th quadrennial presidential election.…
Timothy Martyn HillNovember 2, 2016
The frequency of “America” in America
Official White House Photo by Chuck KennedyOn what was a presumably cold January day in…
Adam B. KashlakOctober 25, 2016
Does Donald Trump “defy all odds”?
When FiveThirtyEight editor Nate Silver predicted in June that Donald Trump had a 20 per…
Bernard Baffour and Joshua BonOctober 19, 2016
HMS Terror wreck found – but what happened to her doomed crew? Here’s the science
HMS Terror. Engraving by George Back. via Wikimedia Commons It remains one of history’s best-known…
Keith MillarSeptember 28, 2016
A smashing return: Team GB’s Olympic host legacy
Team GB had a phenomenal Olympics in Rio and, in topping its London 2012 medal…
Ray StefaniSeptember 21, 2016
Closing the communications gap
Professor Dame Anne Glover has spent her entire career generating scientific knowledge; knowledge that has,…
Brian TarranSeptember 9, 2016
The 2016 Prediction Games – Part II
Now that the sun has set on the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, it’s time to…
Tim PauldenAugust 27, 2016
Ask a statistician: Why can we not predict earthquakes?
Hundreds of people have been killed since the start of the year as a result…
Brian TarranAugust 25, 2016
Statistical dinosaurs and other creatures
Evolution is change in the heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations. Through these…
Marco Geraci and Mario Cortina BorjaAugust 23, 2016
The 2016 Prediction Games – Part I
Prior to the start of the 2016 Olympic Games, over a dozen different groups around…
Tim PauldenAugust 17, 2016
Making maps
In an extract from her book, Big Data: Does Size Matter?, Timandra Harkness meets data-based…
Timandra HarknessAugust 16, 2016
The EU referendum: surname diversity and voting patterns
An interesting by-product of the UK’s referendum on membership of the EU has been the…
Chilcot, part 2: How Tony Blair fumbled Iraq’s child mortality statistics
At a dramatic moment in Tony Blair’s testimony before the Iraq Inquiry back in 2010,…
Michael SpagatJuly 14, 2016
Chilcot on Iraq’s civilian casualties
The chapter on civilian casualties in the Chilcot report is stuffed with interesting material to…
Michael SpagatJuly 12, 2016
Belgium to win Euro 2016? A Q&A on probabilistic predictions
England fans might have been disappointed to see their football team crash out of the…
Brian TarranJune 30, 2016
