The river level near Estacada crested at 26.25 feet early Friday morning, surpassing the previous third-highest record set in 1972. Driver hits and kills man in Woodburn Officers were called to Tierra ...

Rank is the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our ...

Did Blue Prince get too esoteric with its puzzles? Was its randomness too punitive and player-unfriendly? Two A.V. Club ...

The backlash against DEI initiatives is motivated by the belief that these programs undercut American meritocracy, writes Mark R. Rank. There is one glaring weakness with this meritocratic view of ...

Mark Robert Rank does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

The NHL playoffs are almost like a second season – two months of bruising, relentless play, as the top teams compete for the chance to hoist Lord Stanley’s Cup. The 16 hockey teams that have made it ...

Here again, the explanation is likely to be the random factor. Given the large numbers of professional investors, by simple chance some of them will have a lucky streak of doing well. For instance, if ...

Sometimes sports comes down to luck, as any fan can attest to. Especially in the playoffs, a lucky or unlucky bounce may be the difference between advancing or going home. With March Madness upon us, ...

A century ago, French writer and poet André Breton penned his “Manifesto of Surrealism,” which launched an art movement known for creating bizarre hybrids of words and images. These juxtapositions, ...

*Refers to the latest 2 years of stltoday.com stories. Cancel anytime. Phyllis Schlafly in 2010. Sometimes history is shaped by monumental forces. Sometimes history is shaped by chance and luck. In ...