Mathematics

Scott Greenfield, font of so much that I can riff off of, has a complaint about gang experts who try to paint every action by the defendant as related to his membership in a gang: If a defendant has a tattoo, the expert will testify that tattoos are "brands" typically worn by gang members.  If the tattoo happens to say "Tiffany", then the testimony is changed ever so … [Read more...] about Mathematics In Gangland

Eugene Volokh catches an apparent problem in an article in Oregon State's Daily Barometer: According to a press release issued by the Women's Center, 2,000 rapes occur every five minutes. This amounts to the claim that, on average, every woman in the United States is raped once every 9 months, which is absurd. Eugene tracks down the actual press release, which says: About … [Read more...] about Knowing About Rape

I just heard a radio ad for Harper College that was...surprising. The ad lists off a bunch of pairs of things where one is greater than the other and eventually suggests that I'd be greater with a Harper education than without one. What caught my attention, however, was the very first pair of things listed, which went something like this: "x to the n is greater than x to the … [Read more...] about Yesterday I Couldn’t Spell Mathematishun…

In the spirit of the mathematicians' Erdos Number, I got the idea to introduce an InstaPundit number. I was going to call it a Reynolds Number because that sounds more scientific, but it turns out that designation is already used by fluid dynamics folks. Actually, it also turns out that Erik Jones at The Bind invented the InstaPundit Number a few months ago, but since he's … [Read more...] about InstaPundit Number.