It couldn’t be simpler: I rule the world and everyone else must obey me. How do I know this? Well, consider the undeniable fact that you are a single individual. The world’s population is therefore divided into two groups: you, numbering one, and those who are not you, numbering more than eight billion. Obviously, I’m […]
Super-Man, Star-Man or Son of God? That’s the trilemma, the three possible ways to explain the greatest Donald in history. So which one was Don? I’m talking about Donald Bradman (1908-2001), the Australian über-batsman who dominated a major sport like no other athlete in history. His statistics are astonishing: in first-class cricket, he had a […]
Whether it’s in physics or math or linguistics, compression is a fascinating thing. In physics, the apparently simple act of compressing air and other fluids has led to huge advances in our understanding of matter. In math, compressing data with and without loss draws on brain-daunting theory for barrier-demolishing practice. And in linguistics, using a […]
“The three most useless things in the world are you and the Pope’s balls.” That’s a typically inventive and obscene Australian insult. But it raises an interesting question: What are the three most useful things in the world? I’d say good candidates would be Sydney Sweeney’s blonde hair and big breasts.[1] Those three things have […]
Soaring success, then abject humiliation and suicide. That was the arc of Jason Arday’s career. It may also be the arc of Noel Clarke’s career. Clarke has already had the soaring success and the abject humiliation. So maybe the suicide will follow. But I don’t think it will. Clarke is a youngish Black man like […]
Euclid envy. It’s a rare phrase and a common phenomenon. Down the centuries, countless thinkers, knowingly and unknowingly, have sought to emulate the Greek mathematician Euclid (~330–~275 BC) and his world-historic book Stoikheia, The Elements. It’s the foundation-stone of geometry, which literally means “earth-measuring.” I find The Elements both astonishing and awe-inspiring. It’s astonishing to […]
Randomness is racist. And sexist too. How do we know this? Because the study of randomness in statistics and probability theory has been utterly dominated by White men. It was White men like the Italian Girolamo Cardano and the Frenchman Blaise Pascal who founded these fields when they studied the mathematics of dice and gambling […]
