{"id":119,"date":"2006-05-28T18:36:52","date_gmt":"2006-05-28T18:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/?p=119"},"modified":"2006-05-28T18:36:52","modified_gmt":"2006-05-28T18:36:52","slug":"the-observers-distribution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/?p=119","title":{"rendered":"The Observer&#8217;s Distribution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The front page of today&#8217;s Observer features the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Poisson_distribution\" target=\"_blank\">Poisson distribution<\/a>. Why? Because some company uses it to predict the result of the World Cup. The paper seems to believe this is a newly discovered formula; in fact it was discovered by <a href=\"http:\/\/www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk\/~history\/Biographies\/Poisson.html\" target=\"_blank\">Sim&eacute;on Denis Poisson<\/a> in 1837. The headline says:<\/p>\n<ul><img src='\/maths\/latexrender\/pictures\/096a3dd79140fa6a6d40ea36027cc413.gif' title='P(n)=\\dfrac{\\lambda^n e^{-\\lambda}}{n!}' alt='P(n)=\\dfrac{\\lambda^n e^{-\\lambda}}{n!}' align=absmiddle> (&#8230;so, that&#8217;s how you find the World Cup winner)<\/ul>\n<p>It then spoils it all by explaining the formula with:<\/p>\n<ul><i>For those with a degree in statistics: in the equation, &#8216;n&#8217; is the number of goals scored, &#8216;lambda&#8217; is the expected number of goals, &#8216;e&#8217; is a natural logarithm and the exclamation mark is &#8216;factorial&#8217;, a function of &#8216;n&#8217;. P is the probability distribution of goals scored. Well, we said you needed a degree.<\/i><\/ul>\n<p> Er, no you don&#8217;t need a degree, as the Poisson distribution is well-known to A level students; the explanation of factorial is useless but as for the definition of <i>e<\/i>, I&#8217;m speechless (for a change!).<\/p>\n<p>You can find the full story <a href=\"http:\/\/football.guardian.co.uk\/News_Story\/0,,1784799,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>, though the headline is a mess &#8211; they should use <img src='\/maths\/latexrender\/pictures\/c51d7e23458ca0e7373a8ed6ab56b2b9.gif' title='\\LaTeX' alt='\\LaTeX' align=absmiddle>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The front page of today&#8217;s Observer features the Poisson distribution. Why? Because some company uses it to predict the result of the World Cup. The paper seems to believe this is a newly discovered formula; in fact it was discovered by Sim&eacute;on Denis Poisson in 1837. The headline says: (&#8230;so, that&#8217;s how you find the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}