Suppose you throw an equal number of white and black balls into a rectangular box which is, say, 30 balls long, 10 balls wide and is now 5 layers deep in balls. What it the probability that you have a run of touching white balls from one end of the box to the other?
Stanislav Smirnov
"It's a match!" cries the CSI. At first glance it might seem that if the police have matched a suspect's DNA to evidence from the crime scene, then the case is closed. But some statistical thinking is required to understand exactly what a match is, and importantly, how juries should assess this as part of the evidence in a trial.
A new mathematical analysis of team tactics predicts a Spanish win in Sunday's FIFA World Cup final and also sheds some light on why England were trashed by Germany.
