March 6, 2016

The Discovery of Gravitational Waves

The February 2016 announcement that gravitational waves were detected caused great excitement among scientists, but most people wonder, “Why is it a big deal?” The answer has to do with the extreme difficulty of detecting tiny waves from ...

April 1, 2015

Spurious correlations

Almost every day, we learn of some discovery that a disease is “linked with” some behavior or some chemical; or that some national trend is “linked with” another phenomenon.  We might ask, “What does ‘linked w...

June 27, 2013

Anatomy of a Controversy

The subject of climate change has returned to news headlines lately because of the president's speech at Georgetown U. However, the response by the broader population was not enthusiastic endorsement, but rather, intensification of the controver...

January 14, 2013

The Real Redistribution of Wealth

We have heard the phrase "redistribution of wealth" often in recent times, and Obama's phrase is generally taken to mean taking money from the wealthy and giving it to lower-income people. Various observers have commented that increasing taxes on the...