prior probability

The cake pictured below was baked in honor of the great Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, whose abstract art “reached a point where his artistic vocabulary was reduced to simple geometric elements,” to quote from Wikipedia. (As an aside, both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day of the same year: 12 February 1809!)

Hat tip: @pickover

We have mixed feelings about “Black History Month.” On the one hand, joyous celebrations of so many great heroes (especially unsung heroes) are in order, but at the same time, such celebrations and remembrances should not be confined to a single month. Bravo to Black history writ large!

Three of the five are economics courses! The full report by Sophia M. Armenakas (The Crimson) is available here. Without further ado, here are the top five: (1) Economics 10b: “Principles of Economics” (455 students); (2) Life Sciences 1b: “An Integrated Introduction to the Life Sciences” (443 students); (3) Economics 1152: “Big Data” (enrollment number not specified in the Crimson article); (4) Psychology 18: “Abnormal Psychology” (415 students); and (5) Statistics 104: “Introduction to Quantitative Methods for Economics” (336 students). Postscript: I wonder what the five least popular courses are? Hat tip: Tyler Cowen.

The official press release and the full schedule of the 2019 Grand Chess Tour (GCT) are here.

Hat tip: @Kasparov63

For some strange reason, both of the beautiful Roman-centric maps pictured below the fold popped into my Twitter feed less than two hours apart on 4 February 2019. Hat tips to Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) for the top map, circa 20 A.D., and to Cliff Pickover (@pickover) for the bottom map, circa 43 A.D. Thanks Twitter! Continue reading →

Did you know Facebook turns 15 years old this month? (Although there are several alternative dates for marking Facebook’s founding, Mark Zuckerberg launched his once “clean and simple” social network from his dorm room in Kirkland House (Harvard College) on 4 February 2004.) So, have we reached “peak Facebook” or “peak Google” yet? Even if we have, will Internet giants like Facebook and Google last another 15 years, or will they crash and burn before then?

While we were attending the 2019 Federalist Society Florida Chapters Conference on 1 February 2019, we saw the beautiful globe map pictured below in the lobby of Disney’s Beach Club Resort. Since growing up in Los Angeles, California and completing my formal education at UCSB and Yale in 1993, I have lived in the seaside towns of San Juan and Ponce in Puerto Rico (1993 to 2009) and in Orlando, Florida (2009 to present). As an added bonus, my wife Sydjia is from Jamaica. Also, during this time I have visited Havana (my favorite city in the world) six times. In the meantime, I must ask, When will Cuba be free?

Photo credit: F. E. Guerra-Pujol