/oss/taxonomy/term/2258/all en /oss/article/critical-thinking-general-science/when-numbers-get-politicized <p>Do political beliefs affect our ability to crunch numbers?</p> <p>Our brain is not straightforward. The past few years have served as a wake-up call for people who had not realized that believing weird things is quite common. From the rise of QAnon to the politicized debates over mask-wearing and the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines, it has become abundantly transparent that our thinking easily zigs and zags according to our preconceptions. But what about math?</p> Wed, 21 Apr 2021 16:56:17 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 8709 at /oss /oss/article/did-you-know-infographics/there-are-more-ways-arrange-deck-cards-there-are-atoms-earth <p>Think of your last card game – euchre, poker, Go Fish, whatever it was. Would you believe every time you gave the whole deck a proper shuffle, you were holding a sequence of cards which had never before existed in all of history? Consider how many card games must have taken place across the world since the beginning of humankind. No one has or likely ever will hold the exact same arrangement of 52 cards as you did during that game.</p> Thu, 28 Jun 2018 18:00:00 +0000 Cassandra Lee, OSS Contributor 7151 at /oss /oss/article/general-science/math-behind-movies <p>I remember back in high school math class, wondering aloud (to the teacher, no less- I was not shy) why I needed to take math. I was absolutely certain that I would never be entering a profession that required any sort of mathematical manipulation and thus it was clearly a waste of my time and brain power. To me, math was something that only statisticians used, or people who worked in the lab. Professions that involved any type of calculation did not appeal to me.</p> Thu, 06 Apr 2017 15:30:35 +0000 Emily Shore, B.A, Dipl. PR Management 2390 at /oss