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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Can Twitter be monetized?
Enough people seem to think so, if Twitter’s rising share price is any indication. But is the market “wrong” on this one? After all, if given a choice, who really wants to waste time following “sponsored” (i.e. paid) tweets? The … Continue reading
Prior probability 101
Here are the opening lines of Wikipedia’s excellent entry for the Bayesian concept of prior probability: … a prior probability distribution, often called simply the prior, of an uncertain quantity p (for example, suppose p is the proportion of voters who will vote for the politician named … Continue reading
Are player unions good for sports?
And for other professions? Would the quality of teaching, for example, go up or down if professors were unionized? In a recent interview with Daniel Benson of The Pacific Standard, the disgraced cycling legend Lance Armstrong talked about the … Continue reading
Why is there no “Unlike” or “thumbs-down” button on Facebook?
The geeks at Facebook have just introduced new “Like” and “Share” buttons on their popular social media site, but there is still no “Unlike” or “Dislike” buttons on Facebook. Why not? Similarly, why is there is no -1 option (as … Continue reading
What is the optimal number of time zones?
Allison Schrager, a New York-based economist and writer, explains here how the US could coordinate on just two time zones: This year, Americans on Eastern Standard Time should set their clocks back one hour (like normal), Americans on Central and … Continue reading
Pop Quiz
From the math/science section of the G.E.D. high-school equivalency exam: Assume the probability of rain on each of the next three days is as follows: Tuesday: 30% Wednesday: 45% Thursday: 50% Based on the above probabilities, what is the probability … Continue reading
Aliens or robots as parents?
That is the fun title of this report by Richard Perez-Pena in the Sunday Times about a small but growing number of top colleges that have added off-kilter or oddball questions to their admission applications to measure the creativity of their … Continue reading
“Yo la tengo …”
Yesterday morning, Professor John Nowak shared the following short story at the opening plenary session of the Fourth Annual Constitutional Law Colloquium in Chicago: During the 1962 major league baseball season, New York Mets center fielder Richie Ashburn and Venezuelan shortstop Elio Chacón often … Continue reading
“Redskins” forever?
(Note: this post was revised and updated on 5 November 2013) Some (many?) people find the Washington “Redskins” team name and logo to be highly offensive. (What about the Chicago “Blackhawks” (see below) hockey team, by the way?) What, if … Continue reading
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Tagged Chicago Blackhawks, Coase Theorem, Coercion, Redskins, Washington Redskins
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How likely is it that your boyfriend/girlfriend and you will break up?
Jon Kleinberg, a researcher at Cornell University, and Lars Backstrom, an engineer at Facebook, recently posted this fascinating paper, “Romantic Partnerships and the Dispersion of Social Ties: A Network Analysis of Relationship Status on Facebook,” on the open-access science website arxiv.org. The researchers analyzed a large … Continue reading
