The second of two blog posts looking at how the S&P 500 performance one year impacts what happens in the following year. The first post just looked at how many years saw the index decline or increase. In this follow-up post, I look at the actual figures: By how much did it go up or down? Does this more detailed analysis show any patterns that we previously dismissed?
A Bloomberg article at the end of 2022 made the claim that after a negative year for the S&P 500, the following year is relatively unlikely to follow suit. This post looks at the statistics to see whether such a claim holds true. We also look at other claims they made about what happens when you do get two bad years in a row: is the second year worse than the first, and will a third bad one follow?
The past couple of weeks, this image has been circulating on Facebook, entitled the Cousin Explainer.
Given the huge number of likes (256, at time of writing this) and shares (3,400, at time of writing this), it seems I wasn't the only one who needed this mapping out clearly.
As a mathematician, it always bothered me that I could not explain, or even better 'define', what an mth cousin n-times removed is. Well, now I can. And I share it here so that you can too.
Having travelled between France and Italy through the tunnel de Fréjus, I thought I'd post a few tips and facts to help others
A few days back, I set a maths challenge:
Prove that, for arbitrarily large N, the total number of gifts given up to and including day N is
( N (N+1) (N+2) ) / 6
I hope you enjoyed it. It's time for a solution:
First, we need a lemma. (In mathematics, a lemma is a something we prove as a stepping stone towards our main result).
While we're in the Christmas season, here's a Christmas-themed maths problem.
The Christmas season is the 12 days from Christmas Day (25th December) until the day before Epiphany (which is 6th January, so the day before is 5th). From that 12 day period comes the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas. Many of you will know it, but for those who don't:
My friend, Steve Jeffery, has posted an excellent article on logical fallacies.
Of his own admission, little of it is original to him, although it draws things together helpfully.
This is the time of year when many British people head over to the continent for their summer holidays.
One of the most visited pages on this site is my blog post giving information on how to obtain an electronic device allowing you to sail through the motorway toll booths in France, and pay later on account (by credit card).
(Last updated 16th July 2016)
Back in September 2010, I posted on my experience (as an Englishman) procuring and using a Télépéage gadget for use on the French motorways. I wrote that post just in case it happened to help someone. Since then, it has become more than 3 times as popular as any other page on this website and the last time I checked it was #3 on google.com (searching for "telepeage" from the UK). It would seem that it has been helpful.
Since then, two things have happened. First, there are now 80 comments on that post. Lots of those comments are people asking questions, and lots of the same questions come up again and again. Second, a new UK-based player has entered the market as a "midddle-man" for obtaining these Télépéage gadgets.
So I thought it was time to repost my original post, bringing it up to date, and including an FAQ section at the end. That way, I can close the original post to new comments, and people can read answers to the most common questions without having to trawl through 80 comments to get there.
Don't worry, I won't really return it.
But I don't think she lives here, do you?
