prior probability

A colleague recently brought to my attention this impressive list of 39 medieval universities founded before the year 1500 (hat tip: Dr Paul Jarley), though some of these venerable institutions have been closed for brief periods; for example, the University of Siena was closed 1805-1815 during the Napoleonic wars. Among other things, what I want to know is this: Did professors have academic “tenure” back then?

Check out these artworks by IndieTheIntrovert, including the one pictured below, which is titled “Escher’s Other Dogs.” FYI: M. C. Escher, one of the major inspirations of Douglas Hofstadter’s 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach, was a Dutch graphic artist who made mathematically-inspired art. Among other things, his work features mathematical objects and operations including “impossible objects” and explorations of infinity, and his work has appeared on the covers of many books and record albums. According to Wikipedia (see footnote 71 of this Wikipedia entry), Escher’s art became well-known among scientists and mathematicians, and in popular culture, after it was featured by Martin Gardner in his April 1966 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American.

Here it is! (Pictured below are the first two pages of my new syllabus.)

Thinkers as diverse as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Kuhn, and Umberto Eco have used the concept of “family resemblance” to describe similarities among different objects/activities, so why not apply this concept to flags as well, such as those of Cuba 🇨🇺 and Puerto Rico 🇵🇷? The map below contains nine additional groups of national flags sharing close family resemblances.

Class #2 will be devoted to “The Blue Bus Problem” from the law of evidence. Harvard law professor Larry Tribe formulated this famous proof paradox over five decades ago as follows: “Plaintiff is negligently run down by a blue bus. The question is whether the bus belonged to the defendant. Plaintiff is prepared to prove that defendant operates four-fifths [or 80%] of all the blue buses in town. What effect, if any, should such proof be given?” Let’s call Larry Tribe’s hypo “Scenario A.” (This scenario is based on an actual case, Smith v. Rapid Transit, and is so famous in legal circles that it has generated numerous law review articles and taken up countless minutes in law school classrooms. I have previously surveyed this literature here.)

What if, however, the plaintiff is able to produce a witness, and what if the witness is prepared to testify that it was, in fact, the defendant’s blue bus that caused the accident? But what if the plaintiff’s testimony is reliable only 80% of the time? Let’s call this second hypo “Scenario B.” Either way, since the plaintiff in both scenarios is suing the defendant bus company for money damages (as is the case in most business disputes), the plaintiff is required to prove her case under “the preponderance of the evidence” standard. In plain English, in order to meet this standard, the plaintiff alleging a particular fact must prove that it is “more likely than not” that the fact is true.

Given this standard of proof, should the court rule for the plaintiff, or should it dismiss the case? Scenario A consists purely of statistical evidence or “naked probabilistic evidence” (e.g. the fraction of blue buses owned by the defendant), while Scenario B involves qualitative or “individualized evidence” in the form of eyewitness testimony, but the probabilities of accuracy are the same in both scenarios!

This week, I taught two sections of Advanced Business Law Topics, a graduate-level course. One section was via Zoom (60+ students); the other was in person (14 students). Class #1 in both sections consisted of an introduction to the course, so I just went over my three-page syllabus and presented an overview of the various legal and ethical puzzles that we will be studying together during the remainder of the semester. Logistically speaking, each class in this course will be devoted to an open or unresolved question relevant to business law, and each class will also feature a full-length movie or scene from a Hollywood production that brings that question to life. (Why assign movies and film clips? In order to make it easier to generate lively discussions during our class sessions!) In summary, here is the ordering of topics and movies/movie scenes:

Class #2: The Blue Bus Problem: Is Qualitative Evidence Better Than Quantitative Evidence? (recommended movies: Double Indemnity and/or 12 Angry Men)

Class #3: The Commerce Clause Problem: Are There Any Real Limits on Congress’s Powers? (any episode of Tiger King)

Class #4: The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Cooperate or Defect? (the “blonde dilemma” scene in A Beautiful Mind)

Class #5: The Trolley Problem: Do We Kill One Man to Save Five? (the passenger ferry scene in The Dark Knight)

Class #6: The Friedman Doctrine: Is Greed Good? (the “greed is good” speech in Wall Street)

Class #7: Ronda Rousey’s Employment Status: Contractor or Employee? (Fightsville)

Class #8: The Coase Theorem: Sense or Nonsense? (the final director’s cut of Blade Runner)

Class #9: The Law & Ethics of Making, Keeping, and Breaking Promises (the opening scene in The Godfather)

Class #10: Immoral and Illegal Promises (the pilot episode of Breaking Bad)

Class #11: Is Big Tech Evil? (the “facemash” sequence in The Social Network)

Class #12: Pending SCOTUS Case (we will discuss one or more of the cases that are currently pending before the Supreme Court)

Class #13: Exit Interviews (students will split up into pairs and each duo will choose a legal or ethical puzzle to discuss)

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who guards the guardians?) Why hasn’t the name of the policeman who shot Jacob Blake been released yet, and why hasn’t he even been arrested, let alone charged? Is the Kenosha Police Department above the law? Update (8/27): Mr Blake’s attempted-murderer has now been identified as Rusten Sheskey. According to various reports, Mr Sheskey’s defense is that Mr Blake was reaching for a knife on the floorboard of his car right before those seven shots were fired. Assuming the knife was visible to Mr Sheskey and was not planted by the police after the fact, then the police officer’s defense sounds plausible to me, but those are two BIG assumptions. Also, given that Mr Blake was shot in the back multiple times at point-blank range, this case should be decided by a jury–not next year, or in two years, but before the end of this year–in an outdoor courtroom, if necessary.

Updated (8/27, 9:30 PM): This semester, I am asking my students to choose the theme of their business law survey course: “Tiger King” or “The Social Netwtork”, Joe Exotic or Mark Zuckerberg, big cats or social media. So far, a total of 764 out of 866(!) enrolled students–88% of the entire class–has voted. I will post the final tally as soon as the survey closes on Friday. Pictured below is the homepage of my course (Canvas App version):