Harry Shannon
If you believe the latest projections, the Liberals will get the most seats in the next Canadian Parliament. The excellent website 338Canada.com has the Conservatives slightly ahead in the popular vote, but getting only 123 seats compared with 137 for the Liberals. Still not the 170 needed for a majority, though. It seems th…
Category: numbers
How fast is fastest?
Harry Shannon
I was listening to CBC radio last week, and heard someone
claim that cricket is the fastest-growing sport in Ontario. Maybe it was in Canada, but that’s not
relevant to my point here.
My point is that the term fastest-growing is really meaningless, or at best misleading. There are about a million registered soccer pla…
My latest letter to the Toronto Star
It wasn't published, but you can read it here!
Background to the letter. The Ontario Premier Doug Ford shuffled the provincial cabinet after barely a year in power. Actually, not just a shuffle, but also an increase in the number of ministers.
For more on the class sizes, click here
Re Radical Reboot, June 21I assume it’s just a coi…
Conversions, approximations, and an innumerate historian
Harry Shannon
There’s a story about
a museum guide, who was showing visitors around the exhibits. Coming to an ancient artifact, the guide
stated: “This one is five million and three years old.” One curious visitor asked: “How can you be so
accurate with the dating?” The guide
answered: “Well, when I became a guide…
How to be a Philanthropist – Part 2: A Look at Some Numbers
Harry Shannon
This post follows up Part 1 - An 11 Step Guide.
Recently, MacKenzie Bezos, newly divorced from Amazon's Jeff Bezos, promised to give at least half her $36.6 billion fortune to charity. In what must be the understatement of the year, she noted "I have a disproportionate amount of money to share."
Bezos had just si…