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The mathematician and philosopher Gian-Carlo Rota spent much of his career at MIT, where students adored him for his engaging, passionate lectures. In 1996, Rota gave a talk entitled “Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught,” which contains …
There’s nothing wrong with hoping for the best. But the best-case scenario is rarely the one that comes to pass. Being realistic about what is likely to happen positions you for a range of possible outcomes and gives you peace of mind. We …
Play is an essential way of learning about the world. Doing things we enjoy without a goal in mind leads us to find new information, better understand our own capabilities, and find unexpected beauty around us. Arithmetic is one example of …
If you’re trying to gain a rapid understanding of a new area, one of the most important things you can do is to identify common mistakes people make, then avoid them. Here are some of the most predictable errors we tend to make when …
“We depend on numbers to make sense of the world, and have done so ever since we started to count.” — Alex Bellos *** The earliest symbols used for numbers go back to about 5000 years ago to Sumer (modern-day Iraq). They …
If you’ve ever wondered why underdogs win or how to improve your odds of winning when you’re the underdog, this article on The Colonel Blotto Game is for you. *** There is a rich tradition of celebrating wins by the weak—while …
Ahh, the famous game show problem (also known as The Monty Hall Problem). This is a probability puzzle you’ve heard of: Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, …
In a terrific book by William Poundstone, Fortune’s Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System that Beat the Casinos and Wall Street, is the story of a 1968 dinner meeting between mathematician Edward Thorp and fund …