A broken valve In the early hours of the morning on March 28th 1979, a valve broke on a water pipe. That pipe was at the nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. The failure resulted in the most serious nuclear incident that the USA has ever seen. Chain reaction The broken valve led to […]
The Tiger That Isn’t by Blastland and Dilnot — Book Review
What is it about? According to its authors: “Mathematics scares and depresses most of us, but politicians, journalists and everyone in power use numbers all the time to bamboozle us. It is liberating to understand when numbers are telling the truth or being used to lie.” According to Steven Poole at the Guardian: “This very elegant book… […]
I Feel the Need, the Need for Speed
How to win a war Historically there have been two ways to win a battle: Recruit a bigger army Build more powerful weapons They were the only variables that mattered. Size and Power. The number of soldiers you had and the calibre of their guns pretty much determined if you would win. Conflicts were wars […]
Better to Be Approximately Right Than Precisely Wrong
Spurious accuracy Thirty years ago I sat in a factory office with my head bowed low, looking at the dirty grey lino floor. My boss, a middle-aged, overweight man wearing a white coat smeared with ice-cream was berating me in a broad west country accent. Apparently I was wasting both my time and his. I […]