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Author Archives: F. E. Guerra-Pujol
What’s the best* way to find a missing Boeing 777?
a. Police — call up the FBI, INTERPOL, etc. to pursue all possible leads and conduct a formal police investigation of the passengers, crew, and cargo aboard the missing jet. b. Military — call up the commanding officers of the US Navy, NATO, … Continue reading
Death penalty affirmative action?
In other words, death penalty justice is not blind. Hat tip to Ian Millhiser for compiling the data and preparing the above diagrams.
Who researches the researchers?
John Ioannidis does, that’s who. His 2005 paper “Why most published research findings are false” created quite a stir in academia, and now Dr Ioannidis is at it again with a new large-scale research project, the Meta-Research Innovation Center, at Stanford University. … Continue reading
The most important date in history?
On March 12, 1989, the same year the Berlin Wall fell, Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, wrote up and distributed a revolutionary proposal to improve information flows among computers: “a ‘web’ of notes with links between them.” (See diagram below from Berners-Lee’s proposal.) … Continue reading
Foxes versus hedgehogs
Have you heard the ancient proverb: The hedgehog knows one big thing; the fox, many little things …? Nate Silver sure has. Mr Silver is relaunching his FiveThirtyEight blog this Monday, 17 March 2014, with this old proverb in mind. For … Continue reading
3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679 …
The enigmatic irrational number π … to 100 decimal places. While you contemplate this strange and infinite number, do you detect a pattern, or is all you see pure randomness? Happy National π Day! Go celebrate with your favorite π product. (Hat tip … Continue reading
Argument by analogy
If the executive branch of the US government — starting with President Nixon — has declared a federal “war on drugs” as US national policy, aren’t all lower-level federal officials who carry out this stupid war the equivalent of “war … Continue reading
Snowden speaks
Edward Snowden spoke via satellite to an audience at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas earlier today. Here is the complete transcript of Snowden’s remarks, and here are Snowden’s thoughts on the lack of judicial and political accountability of U.S. public surveillance programs: … Continue reading
Taxonomy Project
We love the music in this song by Beyonce’. But what type of music is it? It’s not really rap; nor is it pure hip-hop. It’s definitely not rock or reggae; neither is it a slow jam or a traditional … Continue reading
prior probability 