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 ...

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 ...

Virtually all computations performed by the nervous system are subject to uncertainty and taking this into account is critical for making inferences about the outside world. For instance, imagine ...

Don’t worry, a little Bayesian analysis won’t hurt you. By Siobhan Roberts There is a statistician’s rejoinder — sometimes offered as wry criticism, sometimes as honest advice — that could hardly be a ...

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 ...

In the British spa town of Tunbridge Wells, in the seventeen-forties, a Presbyterian clergyman named Thomas Bayes penned a manuscript that would, in the centuries following its posthumous publication, ...