My Articles
- What was the
recent Nobel Prize in Physics really about?
- Guest post on the Computational Complexity blog, October 30, 2022.
- An
investment puzzle and speculation as to why some think its hard
- Guest post on the Computational Complexity blog, April 18, 2021.
- Separates
the quantum mechanics sense from the nonsense while being as non-technical as possible
- Review of Quantum Sense and Nonsense.
- Obit for Richard
Dudley
- Obituary for Richard M. (Dick) Dudley, (1938–2020).
- Mathematical Folk Knowledge
- Things that (almost) all mathematicians know, but few non-mathematicians know.
- Little-Known Resolutions of Well-Known Paradoxes
- Discussion
of several well-known paradoxes whose correct resolutions are not well known. Gives the correct resolutions. The
paradoxes discussed are the Liar Paradox, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Newcomb’s Paradox, Is It Rational to Vote?, and the
Unexpected Hanging.
- Ratings Central: Accurate, Automated,
Bayesian Table Tennis Ratings for Clubs, Leagues, Tournaments, and Organizations
- NESSIS (New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports), September 24, 2011.
Video of My Presentation,
Program and Abstracts,
Presentations and Videos,
Photos.
- Ratings Central: Accurate, Automated,
Bayesian Table Tennis Ratings for Clubs, Leagues, Tournaments, and Organizations
- Joint Statistical Meetings, July 30–August 4, 2011.
Session,
Abstract.
- New Table-Tennis Rating System
- Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series D (The Statistician), 2001, vol. 50, part 2, pp. 191-208.
- NÖTTV
Interview with David Marcus
- June 17, 2010.
- Behind the Scenes at the TOC
- What happened at the Tournaments of Champions (TOC), June 8, 1990–June 17, 1990. The TOC consisted of the Fifth
World Veterans Championships, the 1990 U.S. Open, and the International Junior Championships. Article written August
21, 1990, and published in the USATT magazine that year.
- Does it Matter Who Serves First?
- Is there an actual (not psychological) advantage to serving first in table tennis as there is in some sports?
- Comparison of 11-Point and 21-Point Match Formats
- Which 11-point-game match formats correspond to which 21-point-game match formats?
- Giving Byes to Top Seeds Is Unfair
- The ITTF rule on how to place byes in a single-elimination event can favor a lower-seeded player over a
higher-seeded player.
- Fundamental Table Tennis Geometry
- A discussion of basic footwork.
- eLetter to the Editor (scroll to
the bottom of the page to see the eLetter) on the news article Quantum weirdness confirmed by Adrian
Cho
- News article: Science Magazine, vol. 350, issue 6267, Dec. 18, 2015, p. 1463; requires subscription to access on
website. eLetter published Feb. 19, 2016; can be accessed without subscription on Science Magazine website.
- Letter to the Editor on Bell’s Theorem and the Demise of Local
Reality by Stephen McAdam
- The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 111, no. 5, May 2004, pp. 456–457.
- Dispensing with the Philosophical Baggage of Traditional Quantum
Mechanics
- Letter to the Editor, SIAM News, vol. 36, no. 4, May 2003, p. 6.
- Prisoner’s Dilemma
- Letter to the Editor, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 51, no. 7, August 2004, p. 735.
Books and Articles by Other People
- Retire Statistical Significance by
Valentin Amrhein, Sander Greenland, Blake McShane
- A Comment in the journal Nature
co-signed by
854 scientists from 52 countries, including me.
- Making Sense of Quantum Mechanics by Jean
Bricmont
- An antidote to the nonsense of the usual explanations of quantum mechanics. Cats cannot be both alive and dead
(which was Schrödinger’s point).
- Quantum Sense and Nonsense by Jean
Bricmont
- Another antidote to the nonsense of the usual explanations of quantum mechanics. Less technical than the author’s
Making Sense of Quantum Mechanics. Read them both.
- Professional Pascal:
Essays on the Practice of Programming by Henry F. Ledgard
- A must-read book on programming (regardless of whether you use Pascal).
- Coding Guidelines: Finding the Art in the Science; What
separates good code from great code? by Robert Green and Henry Ledgard, ACM Queue, vol. 9, No. 11,
2011-11-02
- An article on how to write great code. Check out the Acknowledgments at the end.
- Understanding Numbers in Elementary School Mathematics, Teaching School Mathematics: Pre-Algebra,
- Teaching School Mathematics: Algebra, Rational Numbers to Linear
Equations, Algebra and
Geometry, Pre-calculus, Calculus, and
Beyond (Errata) by Hung-Hsi Wu
- Read these books if you have a child learning math in school or wish to understand school-level math yourself.
- Devil to Play
- Denver Tennis Club’s 4.5 men’s team.
- What Is the Correct Way to Seed a Knockout
Tournament?
- The American Mathematical Monthly, February 2000.
- The Nurturing Parent
- 6 Ways to Make Your Child Happy (and why they work).
- When Failure is Not an
Option
- Some organizations seem to have purged “human error”, operating highly complex and hazardous technological systems
essentially without mistakes. How do they do it? Technology Review, July 1997.
- Collision Course
- When the USS John S. McCain crashed in the Pacific, the Navy blamed the destroyer’s crew for the loss of 10
sailors. The truth is the Navy’s flawed technology set the McCain up for disaster. Pro Publica, December 20,
2019.
Proverbs
- Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that
which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
- Sturgeon’s Law: Ninety percent of everything is
crap.
Interesting Chess Problems
Blogs Worth Reading
Links
- In Search of Mathematical Miracles
- Bible Codes
- The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
- Biographies of mathematicians and lots of other stuff
More Links
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