
Math and the City - robg
http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/math-and-the-city/
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smanek
If you like that you might also be interested in Benford's Law which points
out some really unexpected Digit distributions in a lot of data sets.

Smeed's law is one my favorites. It accurately predicts the traffic fatality
rate as a function of motor vehicle registrations per capita. It is accurate
almost everywhere it has been tested, for over 50 years.

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mrduncan
Your comment got me curious about Smeed's law, the Wikipedia article is pretty
interesting (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smeeds_law>).

 _Smeed himself took his law as expressing a truth about group psychology:
people would take advantage of improvements in automobiles or infrastructure
to drive ever more recklessly in the interests of speed until deaths rose to a
socially unacceptable level, at which point safety would become more important
and recklessness less tolerated._

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nsrivast
Your link should have an apostrophe - Smeed's, not Smeeds.

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mrduncan
Odd, it seems as though HN eats the apostrophe. This link should work:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smeed%27s_law>

