statistics news stories on Newser

You're Probably Sub-Average

Matt Cantor — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:21:17 CDT

We tend to think of human performance as fitting a bell curve: Most people's output is about average, while there are a few outliers who are either extremely talented or very much the opposite. But people might not work that way, a new study suggests. Researchers analyzed the performance of...

Math Proves It: Usain Bolt Could Be Even Faster

Kevin Spak — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:39:06 CDT

Sure, Usain Bolt is probably the fastest man to ever live, but one Cambridge math professor doesn't think he's achieved his full potential. In a new study, John Barrow shows that Bolt could shave 0.13 seconds off his world record 9.58-second 100-meter time without doing a lick of...

Do Super Bowls Really Predict Elections, Stocks?

Kevin Spak — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:10:37 CST

Do Super Bowls really predict presidential elections? Or the stock market? Do they make you hit your wife? People have claimed all of these things over the years, so the Guardian decided to take a look at what it calls "Super Bowl-ology," the "science" of making weird claims about the...

City Ranking Lists Are Utter Nonsense

Matt Cantor — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:56:20 CST

Captivated by a list of America’s most romantic cities ? How about its dirtiest , or smartest ? Such lists may be "click-bait," but there’s not much truth to them, writes Will Doig in Salon . How, for example, can Memphis be both the sixth-happiest place to work in ... and third-saddest city...

Why Marriage at 23 Worked for Me

Matt Cantor — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 15:56:05 CDT

You can’t trust statistics. They’ll warn you of the high risk of divorce that comes with marrying young—but that didn’t stop Katie Arnold-Ratliff. At 29, she’s been married 6 years to a man she met at 15, and they couldn’t be a better match, she writes in Slate . Arnold-Ratliff...

Why Physicists Clean Up at Poker

Emily Rauhala — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 19:30:00 CDT

What's the not-so-simple secret of playing poker? Quantum physics, finds NPR . It turns out that several top players are physicists—and that's no fluke. Physicists understand probability, statistics, and modeling. "I mean—when you think about it—they build models of the world," says Jennifer Ouellette, author of a Discover...

Family's 3 Kids Born on 8/8/08, 9/9/09, and 10/10/10

Evann Gastaldo — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:08:36 CDT

Barbara Soper managed a feat that seems like it should be impossible: She had her three children on 8/8/08, 9/9/09, and 10/10/10. No, she isn’t a mathematician who planned out her pregnancies to happen that way: Her first child was born full-term, but the next two were both born early—...

Women Spend 3 Years of Life Shopping

Harry Kimball — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:09:13 CDT

It’s official: women shop a lot. A survey by a marketing firm finds that over a 63-year lifespan, the average female will spend about 2 years and 10 months—or 25,184 hours and 53 minutes—shopping for food, clothes, and the like. A spokesman says the results aren’t at...

New Jobs Bring Out New Job Seekers— and Boost Unemployment

Harry Kimball — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 09:16:15 CDT

As the economy generates more jobs, giving hope to previously “discouraged” workers, the jobless rate could actually spike instead of declining, the Washington Post reports. Still, what's happening in the economy is good, the White House says, laying the groundwork for the likelihood that job creation will lag behind a...