Articles

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.

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Interesting Chess Problems

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In Search of Mathematical Miracles
Bible Codes
The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
Biographies of mathematicians and lots of other stuff

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