Jeff Danner

The Birthday Problem

You may have heard that if you are in a room with 23 people, there is a greater than 50% chance that two people in the room have the same birthday. This is commonly known as the “Birthday Problem.” Most people presented with this information are, at least initially, quite skeptical. Typically what throws people off is that they approach the problem with an incorrect perspective.

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Checking In On Peak Oil

In last week’s column, The Case of the Missing Propane, I explained how the widespread use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of shale oil deposits since 2008 has led to a 30% increase in the production of crude petroleum in the...

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The Case of the Missing Propane

Over the past few weeks, I have seen many stories about propane shortages in the United States. As a result of these shortages, prices for propane have nearly doubled from around $2.20 per gallon at the end of last year to over...

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A Tale of Two Spills

On February 2, 2014, a storm water drain at a retired coal-fired power plant near the North Carolina-Virginia border ruptured, which allowed more than 80,000 tons of coal ash to spill into the Dan River. The Dan River is the...

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Keystone Pipeline Update

With the recent release of the State Department’s report on the Keystone XL pipeline, I thought would review some of the key issues for this topic. The Keystone XL pipeline is intended to transport diluted bitumen, a low-grade,...

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My First PC Weighed 25 Pounds

My children like to make comparisons between the technology I had growing up and what they have today. In the course of a recent conversation on this topic, it occurred to me that, having been born in 1966, I have lived through...

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West Virginia Chemical Spill

On January the 9th, 2014, 7,500 gallons of a chemical called 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM) leaked from a Freedom Industries storage tank into the Elk River near Charleston, West Virginia, polluting the drinking water...

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