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For some, “The Nightmare before Christmas” means Jack Skellington vs. Mr. Oogie Boogie—for others, it means you vs. other passengers on a crowded airplane, and loser gets the middle seat.
There will likely be fewer people flying over the Thanksgiving holidays compared to last year, but that doesn’t mean there will be plenty of room for everyone who wants to travel.
Every day, 128.3 million Americans drive to and from work in an exhaust-thickened line of bumpers. Over the course of the year, they spend an average of 100 hours in transit—a total amount of time exceeding the average worker’s annual vacation time (80 hours).
When statisticians calculate the likelihood of a random event, they sometimes use something called a “Poisson distribution.” Web-search this term. For the less-than-mathematical, the explanations that come up may read like migraine-inducing gibberish. Which is unfortunate, really, since the PD is so useful that it deserves a simple explanation.
“If one has no vanity in this life of ours,” Leo Tolstoy once wrote, “there is no sufficient reason for living.” The 9.3 million vanity plate owners in the United States likely agree.
He’s driving down the highway when another car pulls up beside him, windows rolled down. The occupants lean his way, to get a look at him. Then they start singing loudly: “Wimoweh, wimoweh, wimoweh, wimoweh.” Just miles down the road, another car pulls alongside and the scene repeats.
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