Credit Ratings

Didn’t you feel proud when your teacher gave you an A+ at school? Or were you a C student, must try harder? Don’t tell us you were an F! My, you’ve done well…considering. Just as teachers grade

Numbers Versus Symbols

Are you a numbers person or a symbols person? Look, if you don’t know what I mean then it’s simple, you are a numbers person. It’s a question I often ask of my audience. It helps me

Experts? Phooey!

Experts, who needs ’em? Until recently we’d all have said everyone. But that pendulum has swung all the other way. Experts? They don’t know what they are talking about. We understand this sentiment. We’ve criticized experts in

Am I Being Random, Still?

What if we tossed a coin ten times and got HHHHHHHHHH and then we asked you to bet on the next toss? Ten Hs in a row has a probability ½^10= 0.0009765625. Pretty unlikely. But any mathematician

Am I Being Random?

We’re going to be talking about patterns. Look at the following three sequences of playing cards. Sequence 1 Sequence 2 Sequence 3 7 ♣ J♠ 8♠ 10♡ K♣ A♡ K♠ 5♣ A♢ 3♢ 2♡ 7♡ 6♣ 9♠

Dumbing Down

In the once great Britain politicians are now pretty dumb. Royal Statistical Society did a survey of UK Members of Parliament, asking them if a coin is tossed twice what is the probability of getting two heads.

Fooling Churchill

The magician Paul Curry created the following trick known as either “Out of This World” or “The Trick that Fooled Churchill” since it was supposedly performed for him during the war. The Effect The Magician holds a

Penney’s Game

Here is a trick you can do with pennies. It is called Penney’s game. It is named after Walter Penney. Or was he named after the game? No one knows. You choose a sequence of heads and

One In 52 Continued

Before we explain the significance of this question you’ll need some background. I am giving one of my training courses to a group of investment bankers, hedge fund managers, risk managers, regulators, anyone with an interest in

One In 52

PAUL Pick a card, as they say, any card. INT. A MEDIUM-SIZED LECTURE THEATRE – DAY PAUL, the lecturer, is standing at the front of an almost-full lecture room. The audience is almost entirely male. But PAUL