In statistics, pi is used in the equation to calculate the area under a normal distribution curve; which comes in handy for figuring out distributions of standardized test scores, financial models, or margins of error in scientific results.

在统计学中，π 可代入等式中用来计算正态分布下的面积；在计算标准化考试分数、财务模型或科学结果的误差范围时都会用到。

But paleontologists have used some clever statistics to adjust for those inconsistencies, and the latest diversity curve makes it look like there have been eight major mass extinctions rather than five.

但古生学家使用一些聪明的统计法来校正误差，最新的种看来曾有八次大灭绝，而非五次。

We theoretically predicted and experimentally verified that we could bend these bad power laws down to much better exponentials, where adding a few more data points could reduce your error, rather than ten-xing the amount of data.

我们通过理论预测并实验验证了， 能够将这些不良的幂律至更优的指数，在此情况下， 增加少量数据点即可减少误差，而非成倍增加数据量。

If you want to make it rigorous you have  to be explicit about the error between these approximations and the true thing we care  about, the area under this curve.

如果你想使其严谨，就必须明确这些近似值与我们真正关心的东西——这条下的面积——之间的误差。