prior probability

Do you have the day off? The third Monday of February is a federal holiday, but what should we call it? Read about the history of Washington’s Birthday here, via Wikipedia. Below is a portrait of George Washington by John Trumpbull.

I printed out Facebook’s terms of service (10 point font or smaller) and attached all the pages together into a single master document, eliminating all blank spaces. (The picture on the bottom shows the first page of this massive undertaking.) Then I took this picture of this enormous monstrosity:

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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.