What do physicists at CERN mean when they talk about "sigma levels"?

If you are a flower then April is allegedly the cruellest month, but if you are a student of any sort then I'm sure you would have picked June.

In the TV game show Two Tribes teams can have unequal sizes. Is that fair?

The company 23andMe made headlines by launching its DNA testing service in the UK. But how are the risks of developing a disease calculated?

Bob Wald tells us why probabilities are important in cosmology.

One thing that makes TV game shows fun to watch is that there's usually an element of luck involved. But how (un)lucky is (un)lucky? We look at the probabilities of two popular examples.

David Sloan calculates how likely it is that our Universe exists. He explains to us how, and why the answer can help shape our theories of physics.

A 1 in 14 million chance to win the lottery, a 5% risk of cancer, a 50:50 chance of heads on a coin — we deal with probabilities all the time, but do they actually mean anything? We explore the philosophy of probability and ask whether the probabilities that come up in physics differ from those in every day life.

Are there objective chances in the world?

Is poker a game of psychology and cunning rather than strategy? We investigate the maths of bluffing.

In the previous article we looked at a psychological study which claims to provide evidence that certain types of extra-sensory perception exist, using a statistical method called significance testing. But do the results of the study really justify this conclusion?

In March 2011 a highly respected psychology journal published a paper claiming to provide evidence for extra-sensory perception (ESP). The claim was based largely on the results of a very common statistical procedure called significance testing. The experiments provide an excellent way into looking at how significance testing works and at what's problematic about it.