prior probability

On the eve of Hurricane Irma, my wife and I finally got around to seeing Christopher Nolan’s mesmerizing 2017 film Dunkirk at Regal Cinema in Winter Park. This movie is a masterpiece. Among other things, it brought to our mind Ernest Hemingway’s classic sentence in The Old Man in the Sea: “But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Check out this report by Scott McCartney describing the new Bombadier C Series airplane manufactured in Montreal, Canada. The Bombadier has wider seats and larger overhead bins and makes less noise than most other commercial passenger jets.

Is there a correlation between “Big Data” and the level of fraud? Following up on our previous post on Facebook’s false ad metrics, below are some links on the growing problem of data fraud:

1. “Fabrication in survey data” (Mike Spagot)
2. “The best of retractions” (Retraction Watch)
3. “Data analysis techniques for fraud detection” (Wikipedia)
4. “Research fraud as tort” (Science)
5. “Legal liability for data fraud” (Statistical Journal of the IAOS; ungated version here)

File under “fake it til you make it.” William Turton was the first to report (via Gizmodo) that you can “unfollow” Mark Zuckerberg but you can’t “block” him. On a different note, check out this report by John Glenday describing Facebook’s glaringly fake ad metrics:

“According to Facebook, it can reach 41m 18-24 year old’s and 60m 25-34 year old’s in the US. However, one analyst … has called out the firm for massively overstating the number of people who view ads on the platform, given that census data confirms there are only 31m and 45m people respectively in each age bracket.”

Image credit: spottedtoad.wordpress.com

Why don’t any of the planets or moons in our solar system have their own flags? Calder Hansen proposes a new flag for Mars. More information about this proposed Martian flag is available here. Hat tip: kottke. [Update (14 June 2019): There is some controversy as to the actual origins of the design for the flag for Mars. See the comments section and here.]

Credit: Calder Hansen

We just heard (via Tyler Cowen) that Judge Richard Posner has decided to retire from the bench, though we hope he will continue to write and teach. In his honor, here are a just few links relating to Judge Posner’s theories of judging:

1. Posner’s unimpeachable honesty (Glenn Reynolds)
2. Posner criticizes legal jargon (via ABA Journal)
3. Posner/Rakoff dialogue (via Slate)
4. The incoherence of Antonin Scalia (Richard Posner)
5. What do judges maximize? (Richard Posner)
6. Cass Sunstein’s eulogy of Posner (via Bloomberg)
7. 

Update (3 Sep 2017): My wife and I binged-watched all 10 episodes of the third season of Narcos this Labor Day weekend. To avoid spoilers, all we will say are two things: (1) the show paints a compelling picture of corruption permeating all levels of Colombia’s government, and (2) the show’s main protagonist, Agent Javier Pena (played by Pedro Pascal), personifies the utter futility of the war on drugs.