Chernoff faces are an unusually human way of representing statistical data. Herman Chernoff, who conceived of them, died on July 6, 2026. Read an appreciation of him from the Stanford University department of statistics (where he was for many years on the faculty). We have many times celebrated the wonder and power of Chernoff faces, […]
Statistics can be used to analyze, illuminate, or ridicule any subject, even mullets. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC) provides a moderately high-level example, with hairstyles of players in the Australian Football League (AFL). The report bears the headline: The mullet is alive and well in AFL The ABC investigates the numbers behind football’s most […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Suck it up— Reader Simon Leach responded to Feedback’s call for papers in which The Title Tells You Everything You Need to Know with a cheery “Well, you asked for it!”. The “it” was a copy of […]
Statistics can be used in intensely creative ways, especially in the business world. A CBC news report (on December 19, 2023) tells how this is visible in the automobile industry: New Kia vehicles that have arrived from overseas are sitting on a storage lot in Wolverton, Ont., purposely locked up even though customers have been […]