Review: Everything is Predictable - Tom Chivers ***** I can't remember when I last enjoyed a maths book as much as this celebration of Bayesian statistics, and how scientific studies would benefit from using them. Great! popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2024/05/everyt… #bookreview #popularscience #bayes

An experimental demonstration of why toast really does tend to fall butter side down: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2024/04/toasty… #funscience #toast #experiment

It's the smart meter of the beast...

Review: A Death in the Parish - Richard Coles ***** - The murder mystery is incidental to an excellent exploration of 80s village life and real insight into the real (as opposed to stereotype literary presentation of the) Church of England. brianclegg.blogspot.com/2024/04/a-deat… #bookreview

Spooky!... or not...

Review: The Science of Weird Shit: Chris French **** - Despite a title that trips junk filters, gives a good picture of the state of anomalistic psychology, from sleep paralysis and spoon bending to belief in UFOs. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-sc… #paranormal #psychology #bookreview

Review (fiction): The Night in Question - Susan Fletcher ***(*) - although it has a mystery element (which is why I was given it), is primarily a non-linear exploration of the remarkable life of an elderly woman. Not really for me, but I did quite enjoy it brianclegg.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-ni…

In my final look at Monte Carlo methods, I move away from the original application and look at a couple of other, simple possibilities: calculating pi and finding the best queuing structure for an airport terminal: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2024/04/monte-… #operationalresearch #maths #simulation

Interesting new fantasy TV (and a golden oldie)...

Some lovely voice-synthesised fun from Andrew May in his all-new song 'I am the very model of a modern UFOlogist (though I don't know what the UAP equivalent of the word is): youtube.com/watch?v=vBgMbW…

'One way of looking at the book is that it is clever, original and verging on the mind-blowing. Another is that it's clever-clever, pretentious and often distinctly hard going. In practice, I suspect it's both.'

Having been unwisely left in sole charge of the TV remote for a week, I dive into recent real-world fantasy shows Passenger and Renegade Nell - and revisit a couple of classic Buffy episodes: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2024/04/a-week… #TVreviews #fantasy #urbanfantasy

Why, when you use a RAND function in Excel, the result isn't truly random...

Review: Deep Utopia: Nick Bostrom *** - A daring experiment, exploring what life would be like if technology had fixed everything with AI doing everything, but the style is so confusing that ultimately it's a noble failure. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2024/04/deep-u… #bookreview #philosophy #AI

In my penultimate post on the Monte Carlo method I look at difficulty of obtaining a random value: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2024/04/expect… #probability #randomness

It’s easy to take it for granted that we know what constitutes cosmic rays… but there was a time when it was ferociously disputed:

Some thoughts on the impact of generative AI on the jobs of computer programmers: curoservices.com/ai-and-coding/ #GenerativeAI #Programming #JobLosses

Here I tell Brian Clegg about my new Hawking book, for the Science Museum and DK Books UK why I got into science and what's next for me popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2024/04/roger-…

From casinos to hydrogen bombs...

In a fascinating interview, Science Director of the Science Museum Group Roger Highfield tells us about the inspirational power of the Moon landings, being caught at the location of a suspected nuclear leak and Stephen Hawking's legacy popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2024/04/roger-… #interview #science