Test your maths skills and statistical knowledge!

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Ross_Alumni
Ross_Alumni Scope alumni Posts: 7,611 Championing
in Coffee lounge
As part of Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month we thought we would pick your brains for your best number knowledge!

Take this YouTube maths quiz

Press play on the video below and be guided through a series of thought provoking maths questions, some of which may have you stumped :) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5P-f5arPXE

Give us an interesting stat

Once you've proved how much of a mathematical genius you are, we'd love it if you could:
  • Let us know your favourite statistic, or just one that you find really interesting.
  • Share a stat that is true but you find hard to believe.
  • Tell us something you'd like to know the statistics for, but aren't aware of any stat that exists.
If possible, please link to a source for any of your stats, thank you :) 

Comments

  • 66Mustang
    66Mustang Online Community Member Posts: 14,995 Championing
    This will be a really poor recollection, as I can’t remember the details, but I enjoyed the gist of it. I’m not sure what the exact thing was that was being measured, but an astronomer spent a long time working out some distance in space exactly - may have been the distance of a moon or planet or something - and it came back as a round number like 500,000. He was very angry at this because he had worked it out exactly and he thought that if he published 500,000 people would think he had just rounded it so he added a few units to the final score to make it an odd number like 500,037 so it looked like he had done it precisely!

    If someone knows what it was and who I’d be interested to know!
  • Caz_Alumni
    Caz_Alumni Scope alumni Posts: 621 Empowering
    Interesting @66Mustang! I can just imagine the poor chap's frustration at finding out it was a round number!

    Not a statistic exactly, but closely related...  ;)

    Statistics show that people who have the most birthdays tend to live the longest! (Bah-boom!)

    I thank you, and it's goodnight from me  :D
  • leeCal
    leeCal Online Community Member Posts: 7,537 Championing
    edited April 2021
    @Caz_Scope that reminds me that statisticians years ago found a direct correlation between crime and toilets, the greater the number of toilets in an area the greater the chances of burglaries. Go figure!?

    (therefore toilets cause crime)
  • leeCal
    leeCal Online Community Member Posts: 7,537 Championing
    edited April 2021
    I would like to know how much oxygen is created here on earth compared to how much is being used by aircraft, cars, space rockets etc on a daily basis please.

    id hate us to run out of air you see ?
  • Caz_Alumni
    Caz_Alumni Scope alumni Posts: 621 Empowering
    @leeCal I'm still struggling to get my head round that one! Go figure, yes!! :smiley:

    (I'm also trying to work out if there's a punchline in there somewhere??)
  • leeCal
    leeCal Online Community Member Posts: 7,537 Championing
    edited April 2021
    No, @Caz_Scope? It’s not you, it’s me. ha ha. Therefore toilets caused crime! 

    years ago we were doing stats and this was an example of how you can find correlations erroneously, it made us laugh at the time.
  • 66Mustang
    66Mustang Online Community Member Posts: 14,995 Championing
    Correlation is not causation

    As I was taught  :)
  • 66Mustang
    66Mustang Online Community Member Posts: 14,995 Championing
    68.2% of statistics are made up!

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