Yesterday we highlighted how large Australian businesses don’t have a clue about online business, and here’s a not-so-oblique clue why. Research by QUT suggests that Australian company board members can’t even agree on how many members their board has, with only 15 per cent of boards providing a unanimous answer. Remember: these people are being paid to track numbers. [The Conversation]
Today is not just a pretty neat date (20/10/2010), it’s also World Statistics Day. While the day is designed to celebrate the collectors of national statistics, it’s also a timely chance to remind ourselves of traps we often fall into when looking at survey data.
If you’re anything like me, you’re doing a sad number of Google searches for things like “one gallon into pints” — while the garlic is quickly browning. This simple visualisation of gallons, quarts, pints and cups locks in such volume conversions.
Quick: What’s 19²… without your calculator? (361.) Squaring complex, two-digit numbers in your head isn’t that difficult if you know a simple trick, according to the Secrets of Mental Math author Michael Shermer.
Mathematics tends to bisect people into either fascination or annoyance. If you’re in the latter camp, or actually like maths but can’t quite get a hold of it, a Cornell professor is blogging a kind of re-introduction to maths for adults.
Wolfram Alpha may be a data geek’s dream, but if you’re not all that interested in its more obscure uses, here’s one thing we could all use a little help with: step-by-step math calculations.
