Among the people who agree that more people need to get into computers and engineering is Leah Buechley, an assistant professor at MIT's famous Media Lab. That's why, at ETech in San Jose today, she gave a explaining the secret super powers of electronic fashion. "It's not enough to take existing mo...

Have you ever found yourself wondering what a statistical breakdown of all the songs in Rock Band 2 might look like while in the midst of one of the game's heavy metal power solos? Admittedly, that's not the most hard rockingest thing we've ever heard -- still, you may want to point your mathematica...

The 2008 Brown Center report, authored by Tom Loveless, takes a close look at PISA – the math, reading and science test delivered to 15-year-olds by the OECD – and raises five objections to the test’s methodology and implementation. The 2006 PISA tests more than 400,000 students from 57 countr...

You’d think that the Wall Street Journal would own the biggest story of the past year, the meltdown of capitalism-as-we’ve-known-it. But the paper’s coverage has lagged. It did good work on the collapse of Bear Stearns a year ago, but for the most part it has done a mediocre job of...

There are many reasons why living in a big sports city like this one is better than living in a one-horse town. One of them is mornings like this morning. For instance, if this were just a Stars town, we would be depressed with the absurd effort the Stars rolled out in St Louis. Instead, we will lea...

Paul Brodsky & Lee Quaintance run QB Partners, a private macro-oriented investment fund based in New York. This month we identify the nexus of the current economic problems and propose a solution to fix them. We discuss why we think our proposal would work, why some policy makers probably alread...

Last October, Almond, the unpretentious French bistro that's become a Bridgehampton hotspot, boldly expanded to Manhattan with an outpost in the Flatiron district. But even before the city's economy drifted into its current deep funk, chef/co-owner Jason Weiner faced a daunting task: finding a way t...

note: i have injured my right wrist and its quite painful, particularly using my little finger (hence, the absence of caps and apostrophes). because typing is such a pain — literally — i will use the “just add water and microwave” carnival version (sorry). the last couple of ...

Several years ago, a friend of mine gave me a book for my birthday called Thought Contagion. I had not heard of the book or its subject matter, the science of memetics, but I was fascinated by what I read. Author Aaron Lynch explained, concisely and convincingly, how some of the most significant bel...

by Dave Mindeman Do the math. Whenever anyone says that I guess the insinuation is supposed to be..hey, this is simple. It all adds up. Craig Westover, at the Minnesota Free Market Institute, likes that phrase. Using mathematics is good for discussions. It is straight forward and answers are absolut...