prior probability

Hat tip: Noah Smith, via Bloomberg View.

That is the title of this paper (preprint via PsyArXiv) by Alexander Etz, et al. We plan on reading it in the next few days and will report back soon! (Hat tip: Brian D. Earp, via Twitter.)

Image credit: burrsettles

Jeff Desjardins poses the following question in this report: “What has more value: all major publicly traded department stores in the United States, or Amazon?” The answer is Amazon. In the words of Mr Desjardins: “Add together the market caps of Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Kohl’s, JCPenney, Sears, and Macy’s, and they amount to a significant $297.8 billion. However, it’s not enough to beat the Amazon machine. The online retailer alone is worth $356 billion, making it one of the largest companies by market capitalization in the world.”

Also, what a difference ten years make: “Ten years ago, the future of brick and mortar retail sill looked bright. The aforementioned retailers were worth a collective $400 billion, and Amazon was only valued at $17.5 billion.”

Credit: dirkb86

Dirk B. created a scale map of the world out of LEGO bricks. You can read more about his project here and here.