FiveThirtyEight has an interesting column, Riddler column, which I follow with great interest. In this post we will revisit boring basketball game problem from analytical perspective. Though we will cheat a bit and use Python to do the algebra for us.

FiveThirtyEight has an interesting column, Riddler column, which I follow with great interest. In this post we will take a look at another statistics puzzle published as Riddler Classic puzzle for April 29th.

Imagine a simple game. You are presented two envelopes and asked to choose one of them. Then you are shown that the envelope you have selected contains \( x \) monies. Then you are told that the other envelope contains either \( 10 x \) or \( \frac{x}{10} \) monies (with equal probabilities). Should you open the other envelope and take the monies in it? Or should you keep your original envelope?

The video below has participated in "Summer of Math Exposition" competition in 2021. It explains various ways to define and solve the two envelope problem and provides a valuable lesson on expected values.

FiveThirtyEight has an interesting column, Riddler column, which I follow with great interest. In this post we will take a look at bowling percolation puzzle formulated as Riddler Classic puzzle for August 5th post.

How many birds could potentially fit on a wire? Well it depends on how "jumpy" they are. In [1] it was shown that density of birds is approximately \( \frac{1}{2 r + 1} \) in the steady state regime (here \( r \) is the tolerance distance of the birds). In this post we provide an interactive applet for the two dimensional case (field).