The Bootes Void

In the course of a redshift survey of galaxies brighter than R approximately equal to 16.3, 133 redshifts were measured in three fields, each separated by roughly 35 deg from the other two. If the galaxies in these fields were distributed uniformly, the combination of a galaxian luminosity function and the magnitude limits predicts that the distribution of redshifts should peak near 15,000 km/s. In fact, only one galaxy of the 133 was observed with a redshift in the 6000 km/s interval centere...

 The Importance of Large Samples

Any experiment may be regarded as forming an individual of a 'population' of experiments which might be performed under the same conditions. A series of experiments is a sample drawn from this population. Now any series of experiments is only of value in so far as it enables us to form a judgment as to the statistical constants of the population to which the experiments belong. In a great number of cases the question finally turns on the value of a mean, either directly, or as the mean diffe...

 Neil deGrasse Tyson on NASA Funding

First of all, let's clarify what the NASA budget is. Do you realize that the $850 billion dollar bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50-year running budget of NASA? And so when someone says, "We don't have enough money for this space probe," I'm asking, no, it's not that you don't have enough money, it's that the distribution of money that you're spending is warped in some way that you are removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow. You rem...