Column

  1. Too smart to fail: Why people think they’re so great

    A lot of the world’s biggest problems are what you might call crises of overconfidence. Big, powerful nations conquer small, unstable ones expecting that invading troops will be greeted as liberators. On Wall Street, people who should know better buy dubious investments under the assumption that they’ll be able to unload them before the bubble […]

    By Matt Crenson

  2. Turning numbers into shapes offers potential medical benefits

    Until recently, topology was seen as being among the most abstract fields of mathematics, one that bore out Henry John Stephen Smith’s 19th century toast: “Pure mathematics — may it never be of use to anyone!” But now the field, which deals with the shape of many-dimensional objects, has unexpectedly proved its usefulness in, of all places, […]

    By Julie Rehmeyer

  3. For what you want to know, Bayes offers superior stats

    It turns out that the old adage about statistics and damned lies wasn’t a joke.