2025-10-30 01:51:13
Alina Birjuk collected croissants around the city:
I got a push into starting the project by getting inspired with an exhibition in ZHdK by Tulio Bühler. He made ceramic shapes from croissants he found in Zürich. That made me see how one “simple” thing can be so different. I wanted to take a closer look and give some light to croissants of Zürich. Every bakery has its own way, recipe and it’s own handwriting. So I went to as many bakeries as I could and here is what I found.
Joys in the everyday is my favorite kind of personal data collection.
Tags: Alina Birjuk, collection, croissant, food
2025-10-29 20:36:09
NBA basketball players, most notably Terry Rozier, were arrested for illegal sports betting. Rozier allegedly told associates that he would underperform during a game that he sat out of early. The associates made outlier bets that triggered cheating detection systems. Dian Zhang and Ignacio Calderon, for USA Today, reported on the usage of statistical models:
“When you do the odds compiling, you have a predicted model for how you expect the game to go,” said Chris Rasmussen, who teaches sports integrity at the University of New Haven and has spent years investigating sports betting fraud for the World Lotteries Association.
Based on the data behind the teams and players in the game, the model expects certain points for those players and predicts “expected behaviors.” When real-world betting behavior starts to deviate from the model’s prediction, that’s when “we are starting to look,” Rasmussen explained. “Why does it deviate, and how much does it deviate, and what’s going on?”
The key is to figure out regular betting patterns and deviate within reason. Avoid the outlier stuff, because of course a concentrated set of bets for a few hundred thousand are going to trigger the systems.
These people need a data guy. Or maybe the good cheaters already have a data guy, and that’s why no one hears about them. See? Math is useful.
2025-10-28 23:41:57
Science Friday had mathematician Paulina Rowińska as guest to talk maps.
It’s easy to take maps for granted. After all, most of us have a pretty good map in our pockets at all times, ready to show us how to get anywhere on the globe. But to make a map useful, you have to decide what to keep in and what to leave out—and, most importantly, which mathematical equations to use. Beyond navigating from point A to point B, math and maps come together for a wide variety of things, like working out the most efficient route to deliver packages, calculating the depth of the ocean floor, and more.
2025-10-28 20:34:37
Various shields are designed to block specific forces or mechanisms. For example, armor is good at blocking swords and shark cages are good at protecting divers from sharks. You’ve probably wondered, as most people have, how these shields work against forces they are not designed for. xkcd has a pairwise matrix for you.
2025-10-27 20:46:42
As fashion changes, so do the colors used each season. Sarah Constantin likes to count the color usage every year in Vogue Magazine’s ready-to-wear collections. Pastels (and red) are so hot right now.
Tags: clothes, color, fashion, Sarah Constantin, Vogue
2025-10-27 19:56:32
Emanuel Maiberg for 404 Media:
Miller said that in May 2025 Wikipedia noticed unusually high amounts of apparently human traffic originating mostly from Brazil. He didn’t go into details, but explained this caused the Foundation to update its bot detections systems.
“After making this revision, we are seeing declines in human pageviews on Wikipedia over the past few months, amounting to a decrease of roughly 8% as compared to the same months in 2024,” he said. “We believe that these declines reflect the impact of generative AI and social media on how people seek information, especially with search engines providing answers directly to searchers, often based on Wikipedia content.”
Fewer humans reading via the site means fewer supporters and contributors to the public encyclopedia. Not good.
