Having a strong opinion about an issue can make it hard to take in new information about it, or to consider other options when they’re presented. Thankfully, there’s an old rule that can help us avoid ...

Chris Wiggins, an associate professor of applied mathematics at Columbia University, offers this explanation. A patient goes to see a doctor. The doctor performs a test with 99 percent ...

Nate Silver, baseball statistician turned political analyst, gained a lot of attention during the 2012 United States elections when he successfully predicted the outcome of the presidential vote in ...

Observing, gathering knowledge and making predictions are the foundations of the scientific process. The accuracy of our predictions depends on the quality of our present knowledge and accuracy of our ...

Google has a small fleet of robotic cars that since autumn have driven themselves for thousands of miles on the streets of northern California without once striking a pedestrian, running a stoplight ...

Mike Lee receives relevant research funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australia-Pacific Science Foundation, and Flinders University. Benedict King receives funding from the Australian ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American I’m not sure when I first heard of Bayes’ ...

Over the years, many writers have implied that statistics can provide almost any result that is convenient at the time. Of course, honest practitioners use statistics in an attempt to quantify the ...

The stock market is an ever-changing place. In fact, it’s changing every second of every day as prices go up and down, and new factors impact the trajectory of the market. It’s important for investors ...