Category Archives: Science

CURBING RUNAWAY EXPENDITURE ON COMPUTERS.

CURBING RUNAWAY EXPENDITURE ON COMPUTERS. The caption is of course nonsensical. It is inspired by an equally nonsensical headline on an editorial in yesterday’s New York Times: “Curbing Runaway Health Inflation.” Expenditures on computers in the United States have increased … Continue reading

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FLIPPING COINS WITH A BETTER THAN 50/50 PROBABILITY OF WINNING.

FLIPPING COINS WITH A BETTER THAN 50/50 PROBABILITY OF WINNING. Kids, flipping a fair coin is often used as an example of a random process, with a 50% probability of the coin coming up heads. This article, based on David … Continue reading

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COMPARING EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES.

COMPARING EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES. The David Brown article concludes by identifying an area where more reductions in heart disease deaths can be obtained: “A big focus in cardiology right now is to get more heart attack victims to the hospital. … Continue reading

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SHOULD EVERYONE CARRY ASPIRIN?

SHOULD EVERYONE CARRY ASPIRIN? There is a considerable effort being made to make defribillators more available in public spaces, such as airports, which seems to be a good idea. David Brown’s article suggests another one. The article begins: “Two decades … Continue reading

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HOW DO BRIGHT RED MALE CARDINALS SURVIVE?

HOW DO BRIGHT RED MALE CARDINALS SURVIVE? Jack Sanders, who writes a wonderful column on birds in the Darien Times, asked this question. It’s the kind of question that scientists ask and that never occur to me. As with many … Continue reading

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FIGHTING TREATMENTS FOR LYME DISEASE.

FIGHTING TREATMENTS FOR LYME DISEASE. Lyme disease is a major problem in our area. My knowledge on it is anecdotal, but there are lots of anecdotes. Ten years ago, I counted up from memory the people I knew who had … Continue reading

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LEARNING ABOUT CHEMOTHERAPY REGIMENS.

LEARNING ABOUT CHEMOTHERAPY REGIMENS. When Mary Jane was being treated for breast cancer fifteen years ago, I learned that there were different drugs and different combinations of drugs to choose among and also that for each combination of drugs there … Continue reading

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FINDING OUT BEST PRACTICE.

FINDING OUT BEST PRACTICE. Atul Gutwande tells a story in his article that illustrates what seems to me another gap in medical research. Gutwande tells of how when his son was an infant he suffered a “tiny subdural hematoma—a small … Continue reading

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DIMAGGIO DID IT TWICE.

DIMAGGIO DID IT TWICE. There is an anomaly to Mlodinow’s contention that DiMaggio’s streak could be accounted for as the result of a random process— that there is a better than 42% chance that some major league player or other … Continue reading

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RANDOMNESS AND STREAKS.

RANDOMNESS AND STREAKS. Kids, people underestimate how common streaks are when the events are random. What are the chances that if you toss a coin 100 times that you will get a streak of ten or more heads or tails? … Continue reading

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