Plus.Maths.org
mathematics in the media
This Friday, 11/11/11, will see the launch of numberphile, a brand new YouTube channel dedicated
entirely to numbers. And it's a very special channel too: rather than relying on users to produce and share their videos, YouTube is for the first time paying people to produce original content.
Helen Joyce is a former editor of Plus magazine who now works as a journalist for The Economist. In August she's off to Brazil to be the paper's Brazil Bureau Chief. In between packing and learning Portuguese she has found time to tell Plus all about her varied career and the role maths has played in it.
Would you prefer a game with a 90% chance of winning, or one with a 10% chance of losing? You might scratch your head and say it's the same thing, and you'd be right, but research has shown that people's perception of risk is surprisingly vulnerable to the way it's presented. In this article David Spiegelhalter and Mike Pearson explore how risk can be spun and there's an interactive animation for you to have a go yourself.
