Is there a science of division? (i.e. Models of the phenomenon that communities often split into two blocs with some degree of mutual antagonism. And/or empirical data that such models could be compared against.) [more inside]
posted by philipy on Nov 9, 2012 - 7 answers

I'd like to learn about data science. Things like predictive modelling, regression and classification and so on. What would be good books or online courses to start with?
posted by gwynp on Jun 8, 2012 - 9 answers

Was reading about microchips that are designed to allow a few mistakes (known as 'Sloppy Chips'), and pondering equivalent kinds of 'coding' errors and entropy in biological systems. Can a fair comparison be made between the two? [more inside]
posted by 0bvious on Jun 5, 2012 - 4 answers

Can you help me figure out number of papers per year for a few top journals? [more inside]
posted by Buckt on Dec 30, 2011 - 6 answers

Is my head actually that big, relatively? [more inside]
posted by Monday on Dec 13, 2011 - 21 answers

Please point me to quality books, articles, etc which argue both for and against the use of quantitative research techniques in the social sciences, particularly in political science and public policy. [more inside]
posted by l33tpolicywonk on Sep 28, 2010 - 14 answers

What's the best way to safeguard my backups from the effects of a solar storm? Should I worry about that at all? [more inside]
posted by lord_yo on Sep 11, 2010 - 9 answers

Statistics question: is it possible to test sets of cumulative data for significant differences in rate? [more inside]
posted by rollick on Nov 4, 2009 - 9 answers

Please help me convince my in-laws not to take colloidal silver (silver water). [more inside]
posted by arcticwoman on May 7, 2008 - 11 answers

In data graphing and visualization, are there any existing standards for false-color or pseudo-color images?
posted by fake on Jun 21, 2007 - 7 answers

What are the best online resources for scientific data? [more inside]
posted by jonesor on Nov 30, 2006 - 13 answers

A statistics / scientific convention question. I've noticed in scientific journals that often when a set of data is presented with values normalized to one of the sample groups, and the value for that sample group is arbitrarily set to 1, 10, 100 or whatever, to simplify interpretation, the variability/error data for that one sample group is left out. Is there a good statistical reason for that or is it just some random convention with no good reason? [more inside]
posted by shoos on Jan 24, 2006 - 17 answers

I am looking for an index data structure and query algorithm to solve a specific problem. Each row in the table represents a range, with a start/end value; I want to look up all the rows that overlap a certain value. [more inside]
posted by Mars Saxman on Oct 7, 2004 - 13 answers