101. Stochastic w/ Ceri Riley

Emily and Kyle are joined by science communicator, worm-enthusiast, and SciShow Tangents co-host Ceri Riley. Together they look at the science of randomness, as they explore the tricky yet versatile word stochastic.

The trio looks at this word’s older uses in Greek and Latin, particularly by a few well-known mathematicians bearing the name Bernoulli. But they also discover this word’s travel through the German language, and the major impacts Germany had on the math world.

Emily then turns their attention to the study of statistics. Ceri teaches our hosts about how nature is way better at being random than humans are, and about the role of probability in biology. To cap things off they look at some paradoxes of probability, and Kyle learns whether gambling his fortune on a game of chance is a good idea.