Tom Lehrer: “I’ve often thought I’d like to write a mathematics textbook someday because I have a title that I know will sell a million copies; I’m gonna call it Tropic of Calculus.” (1965)
Steven Strogatz, The Joy of x (2012)
How Likely Is It That You’ll Die?
Reporting on Matt Bailey’s Analytics According to Captain Kirk, which begins with a quantitative summary of what all Star Trek fans know: “red-shirted crewmembers died more than any other crewmembers on the original Star Trek series.” — 73% of crew deaths.
However, Bailey does not stop there. The rate of red-shirt death varies considerably, and in some shows is much less than in others. Those shows share another well-known feature of the original series, which suggests a risk mitigation strategy:
From Jennifer Ouellette
Note: Quantum Electrodynamics works. The predictions it makes have been experimentally confirmed to many decimal places.
With an important qualification:
Grace Hopper, the brains behind Cobol, a seminal language that arrived in 1959 and is still used today. Apparently, if you’re biologically incapable of growing a beard, the programming gods cut you some slack.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 