I’m not a math teacher, but I suffer from the same complaints that every math teacher does, “When are we ever going to use this stuff?”

For Math, at least, I have a partial answer. I discovered a site that’s trying to apply Math to real world baseball problems. They’re working out batting percentages and such based on the previous night’s games. It’s a neat approach because it makes math real. I like the approach. My only problem is that it’d be great to see a similar site done on hockey. That’d be much more useful for us Canadians.

For the science geek who loves Math, this remarkable site analyzes the original Star Trek series and the generally held belief that a disproportionate number of red shirted crew men died in various episode compared to other members of the crew.

Both sites make interesting use of statistics in a real world context, or at least what’s close to real since we’re talking about Star Trek after all.