David K. Pickard Memorial Lecture Series

Jeffrey Rosenthal University of Toronto With the success of his book "Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities", the speaker conducted numerous interviews with television, radio, and print media concerning probability and statistics. In this talk, he will reflect on some of the challenges and difficulties he faced, as he attempted to convince the media (and, through them, the viewers) that dice have no memory, willpower can't change poker cards, rain doesn't seek out weekends, crime isn't increasing, lottery jackpots aren't very likely, coincidences aren't causal, airplanes aren't dangerous, polls aren't perfect, and other "obvious" truths that aren't always obvious to everyone. November 13, 2010