Comment Re:Prison population (Score 1) 407
See also the Donahue-Levitt hypotheses that legalized abortion reduces the number of ne'er-do-wells and hence the amount of violent crime.
http://pricetheory.uchicago.ed...
It's a short story about the "Monte Carlo project" to randomly generate viruses. A pertinent quote:
The theory also included the best containment facilites in the world, and five hundred and twenty people all sticking scrupulously to official procedure, day after day, month after month, without a moment of carelessness, laziness or forgetfulness. Apparently, nobody bothered to compute the probability of that.
Especially his "Cabinet of mathematical curiosities".
"The music of the primes", by Marcus de Sautoy, is also worth reading.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein