Wes Pegden

In fairness, it's a funny joke, and I think that may be all it is (rather than, say, a serious call to end math education).

15.12.2024 19:27 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Screenshot of an answer by Emil Jeřábek on MathOverflow that contains, among other things, a formula for the factorial of n using addition, subtraction, multiplication, integer division and exponentiation, and a reference to the fact that any Kalmár elementary function can be similarly expressed.

Learned on MathOverflow: it is possible to write a finite formula for n! involving just the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, integer division, and exponentiation. Precise statement is here: mathoverflow.net/a/484115/17064

14.12.2024 12:49 — 👍 37    🔁 8    💬 3    📌 3

With data like this there's a Q of whether what you're seeing is really people being "wrong" about proportions vs not having enough numeracy for the concept to even be meaningful. If you ask enough state residency questions in this survey you're on track to have 1000% of the US pop living somewhere.

25.11.2024 14:36 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

What is your ideal format for a rain forecast?

23.11.2024 20:32 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I'd be really interested in seeing your longer take on meteorology. For everything from hurricane landing probabilities to the probabilities of rain on Tuesday, these are forecasts that I think most people don't have any doubt have utility. Very curious to see the best argument against it!

23.11.2024 17:48 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Few people covered themselves in glory in this timeperiod. The GBD was not great but it was not scientifically nonsensical. E.g. from a science standpoint the John Snow memo was arguably worse and if we impune everyone who signed either of these documents, few are left standing.

17.11.2024 18:55 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Youden's Demon is Sylvester's Problem If four people with Gaussian-distributed heights stand at Gaussian positions on the plane, the probability that there are exactly two people whose height is above the average of the four is...

I think this is my favorite paper title so far:
"Youden's demon is Sylvester's problem"

arxiv.org/abs/2407.02589

17.09.2024 02:30 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0