A statistical look at the world.
Chess and Mathematics: The Knight's Tour Problem
Chess and mathematics share deep connections, particularly in logic, strategy, and problem-solving. Many chess players have studied mathematical problems arising from the game. One famous example is the Knight’s Tour Problem—a pathfinding puzzle that dates back to 840 AD.
How Statistics Empower Players (but the house still wins)
Casinos have long tempted gamblers with the promise of making a quick fortune while playing stirring games. However, behind the spinning wheels and flashing lights is a whole world governed by statistics and probability. Every casino game is designed to ensure that, in the long run, the house wins. Still, throughout history, individuals have been attempting to use mathematics and probability to beat casinos. While some of these techniques can manipulate short-term probabilities in the favor of the player, the nature of statistics involved in gambling, ensures the casino holds its advantage.
Why We Keep Eating Chips
Unhealthy, ultra-processed food: most of us keep eating and buying it, despite knowing that it is not good for us. For some products, the urge to eat is so strong that once the bag is open, it will be empty in a short time. For me, this is the case with chips. Once the bag is open, the sad realization that I’ve eaten everything follows quickly. But what makes this ultra-processed food so irresistible?
Meet the 36th VESTING Board!
On Monday the 6th of January, the 36th board of VESTING was announced. Below, each of them has written a short introduction about themselves.
Does True Randomness Exist?
Have you ever wondered what randomness is? According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, randomness is the fact of being done, chosen, etc. without somebody deciding in advance what is going to happen, or without any regular pattern. Hence, it is a nondeterministic event (an event that can not be directly determined by another event). In [...]
ORTEC: We are a family of smart explorative minds
We are everywhere around you, probably without you even realizing it. Among other things, we help our logistics customers to efficiently plan their routes and therefore reduce their CO₂ footprint; we help academic hospitals to efficiently plan their workforce and their schedule; we help our services customers to plan their visits to their [...]
Möbius Strip: The Strangest Shape
A Möbius Strip is a one-sided surface that can be constructed by taking a rectangular strip of paper, twisting it once and joining the ends of the strip. The result is a wonky shaped ring. This ring, discovered by Johann Benedict Listing and August Ferdinand Möbius in 1858, has a number of interesting properties. Most notably, a Möbius Strip [...]
The Story of Moneyball: A Baseball Movie About Statistics
A movie about statistics, return on investments, and market inefficiencies does not sound like a hit movie to most. However, a movie with a box office of over a hundred million dollars, multiple Oscar nominations and numerous awards won does. This is Moneyball, a movie that tells the story of how the Oakland Athletics, led by general manager [...]
The Mathematical Mysteries Behind the Great Pyramid
Being the oldest site among the original Seven Wonders, it is not surprising that the Great Pyramid of Giza attracts more than 14 million tourists a year. Seeing these huge structures in the vast, sandy desert, many of these 14 million tourists do not realize the mathematical precision used to build the pyramids. The pyramids reveal the [...]
The Key Role of Statistics in WW2
Many of the most important statistical theorems have been discovered around the 40s, which is the same time in which World War 2 occurred (1939/1945). This is of course not a coincidence, one of the paradoxes of war is that if on the one hand it takes and impacts millions and millions of lives, on the other hand it leads to new scientific and [...]