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Multiplying two large primes is easy, but recovering them from the product is extremely hard. Public key systems such as RSA rely on that gap to keep messages secret.
Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources
Imaginary numbers solve equations that real numbers cannot and simplify calculations involving waves, so they are central to electrical engineering, signal processing, radar and physics.
Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources
Benford's law says that in many real-world data sets, small leading digits like 1 and 2 appear more often than large ones. Auditors use departures from it as a flag, not proof, of fraud.
Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources
Survivorship bias is reasoning from cases that passed a filter while ignoring those that did not. In WWII, Abraham Wald applied this insight to bomber damage, though the popular retelling embellishes the record.
Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources
The base rate fallacy is ignoring how common a condition is when reading a test result. When a condition is rare, even accurate tests produce many false positives.
Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources
