Category Archives: Uncategorized

Review of Misak (2020), part 1

Among other things, Frank Ramsey (b. 1903, d. 1930) was one of the first scholars, along with Bruno de Finetti, to formalize the “logic of partial belief” or the subjective view of probability. (For this reason alone, I count Ramsey … Continue reading

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Bayesian history (Ides of March edition)

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Visualization of pi

Happy Pi Day! u/Olivesan created this 100 x 100 visualization of the first 10,000 digits of pi using the HTML5 canvas element and JavaScript. Each digit of pi is represented by the following color: 0: White 1: Red 2: Orange … Continue reading

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Another day, another illustration of the base rate fallacy (a/k/a probability neglect)?

Update (3/14): Elon Musk agrees with our analysis. As you may have heard by now, President Donald J. Trump has restricted travel between the United States and most of Europe for 30 days, while Adam Silver, the Commissioner of the … Continue reading

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Spring break readings

It’s my favorite week of the spring semester. I get to stay home, ignore emails, and spend time with my family. I can also devour as many books and scholarly papers as I want. Among many other things, I am … Continue reading

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Visualization of the base rate fallacy (Coronavirus edition)

To understand the “base rate fallacy” in the Coronavirus context, compare the frequency of “media mentions” of various recent viruses (top image) with the actual number of infections (bottom image) caused by each of these viruses. See also this recent … Continue reading

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Bernie, Fidel, and Socialist Statistics

Why does politics make people so damn stupid? Shout out to Frederick M. Hess and Brendan Bell for their compelling critique of socialist statistics and progressive naiveté. Here is my favorite quote from their excellent piece: “Like data on Chinese … Continue reading

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Lady Justices

In honor of International Women’s Day (8 March 2020), I am posting Nelson Shanks’s oil-on-canvas portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Sonia Sotomayor, the first four women to serve on the Supreme Court of the … Continue reading

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A new shrine for the father of utilitarian ethics

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Alternative visualizations of national flag colors

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