Drunkard's Walk - Leonard Mlodinow [118]
2. I was told a variant of this problem by Mark Hillery of the Physics Department at Hunter College, City University of New York, who heard it while on a trip to Bratislava, Slovakia.
3. Quoted in Stigler, The History of Statistics, p. 123.
4. Ibid., pp. 121–31.
5. U.S. Social Security Administration, “Popular Baby Names: Popular Names by Birth Year; Popularity in 1935,” http://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/popularnames.cgi.
6. Division of HIV/AIDS, Center for Infectious Diseases, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report (Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control, January 1990). I calculated the statistic quoted from the data given but also had to use some estimates. In particular, the data quoted refers to AIDS cases, not HIV infection, but that suffices for the purpose of illustrating the concept.
7. To be precise, the probability that A will occur if B occurs is equal to the probability that B will occur if A occurs multiplied by a correction factor that equals the ratio of the probability of A to the probability of B.
8. Gerd Gigerenzer, Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), pp. 40–44.
9. Donald A. Barry and LeeAnn Chastain, “Inferences About Testosterone Abuse Among Athletes,” Chance 17, no. 2 (2004): 5–8.
10. John Batt, Stolen Innocence (London: Ebury Press, 2005).
11. Stephen J. Watkins, “Conviction by Mathematical Error? Doctors and Lawyers Should Get Probability Theory Right,” BMJ 320 (January 1, 2000): 2–3.
12. “Royal Statistical Society Concerned by Issues Raised in Sally Clark Case,” Royal Statistical Society, London, news release, October 23, 2001; www.rss.org.uk/PDF/RSS%20Statement%20regarding%20statistical%20issues%20in%20the%20Sally%20Clark%20case,%20October%2023rd%202001.pdf.
13. Ray Hill, “Multiple Sudden Infant Deaths—Coincidence or beyond Coincidence?” Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology 18, no. 5 (September 2004): 320–26.
14. Quoted in Alan Dershowitz, Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O. J. Simpson Case (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 101.
15. Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Uniform Crime Reports,” http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm.
16. Alan Dershowitz, The Best Defense (New York: Vintage, 1983), p. xix.
17. Pierre-Simon de Laplace, quoted in James Newman, ed., The World of Mathematics (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1956): 2:1323.
Chapter 7: Measurement and the Law of Errors
1. Sarah Kershaw and Eli Sanders, “Recounts and Partisan Bickering Bring Election Fatigue to Washington Voters,” New York Times, December 26, 2004; and Timothy Egan, “Trial for Governor’s Seat Set to Start in Washington,” New York Times, May 23, 2005.
2. Jed Z. Buchwald, “Discrepant Measurements and Experimental Knowledge in the Early Modern Era,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 60, no. 6 (November 2006): 565–649.
3. Eugene Frankel, “J. B. Biot and the Mathematization of Experimental Physics in Napoleonic France,” in Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, ed. Russell McCormmach (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977).
4. Charles Coulston Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1981), p. 85.
5. For a discussion of the errors made by radar guns, see Nicole Weisensee Egan, “Takin’ Aim at Radar Guns,” Philadelphia Daily News, March 9, 2004.
6. Charles T. Clotfelter and Jacob L. Vigdor, “Retaking the SAT” (working paper SAN01-20, Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, N.C., July 2001).
7. Eduardo Porter, “Jobs and Wages Increased Modestly Last Month,” New York Times, September 2, 2006.
8. Gene Epstein on “Mathemagicians,” On the Media, WNYC radio, broadcast August 25, 2006.
9. Legene Quesenberry et al., “Assessment of the Writing Component within a University General Education Program,” November 1, 2000; http://wac.colostate.edu/aw/articles/quesenberry2000/quesenberry2000.pdf.
10. Kevin Saunders, “Report to the Iowa State University Steering