prior probability

Edge-matching puzzle with no logical solution

Posted on January 26, 2016 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

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The facemash fiasco (Lessons 1 & 2)

Posted on January 25, 2016 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Because our large business law class meets only once per week (on Mondays), we are going to combine Lessons 1 & 2 into a single lecture. In addition, we are going to re-enact Mark Zuckerberg’s fall 2003 “Ad Board” hearing at Harvard College. (Some background: Before he launched Facebook, Harvard sophomore and computer genius Mark Zuckerburg created a website called Facemash. In brief, Facemash presented the user with two randomly-selected student I.D. photos of women students enrolled in Harvard and then let the user choose which one was “hotter.” Mark’s website quickly went “viral”—in a matter of hours, the site attracted 450 visitors, who had voted on their classmates’ photos at least 22,000 times.) We will thus need several student volunteers for this in-class assignment:

1. Complainant #1 (the role of Leyla Bravo, student and president of Fuerza Latina): Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to deliver a short “closing argument” to the Ad Board. Specifically, from your (Fuerza Latina’s) perspective, what did the respondent Mark Zuckerberg do wrong?

2. Complainant #2 (the role of Kevin Davis, Director of Residential Computing for Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services): Your mission is to deliver a short “closing argument” to the Ad Board. Specifically, from your (the college’s) perspective, what rules or legal duties may the respondent Mark Zuckerberg have possibly violated or breached?

3. The Respondent (the role Mark Zuckerberg, hacker): Your mission is to deliver a short but compelling “closing argument” to the Ad Board in your defense. Did you do anything wrong, and if so, what type of punishment would be a fair one?

4. The Ad Board: The Class as a whole will play the role of the Harvard Ad Board. At the conclusion of the closing arguments, the class will deliberate in small groups and will vote to determine what punishment, if any, to impose on the respondent, hacker Mark Zuckerberg.

Or is it?

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Bud Light for President?

Posted on January 24, 2016 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Cheers! This lighthearted beer ad actually teaches an important lesson regarding statutory and constitutional interpretation–a fundamental lesson often lost on naive “originalists” or textualist legal scholars: a word or term of art like “party” (or “speech,” “arms,” “natural born,” etc.) can have multiple meanings.

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Art History Graffiti

Posted on January 23, 2016 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Hat tip: sirblackhand (via reddit)

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Vertical history

Posted on January 22, 2016 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Tim Urban invites us to think about history in vertical terms in this thoughtful blog post. (By the way, we discovered his post via jason kottke, one of our favorite bloggers of all time.) Mr Urban presents a beautiful botanical metaphor (in bold below) in order to compare and contrast “horizontal history” (i.e. familiar timelines of historical events presented in chronological order) and his original conception of “vertical history” (i.e. the vertical visualization of the overlapping lifespans of great historical actors in a given era; see, for example, the table above). Mr Urban writes:

Normally, we learn about history’s storylines in isolation. We might have a strong sense of the history of physics breakthroughs or the progression of western philosophical thought or the succession of French rulers—but we’re not as clear on how each of these storylines relate to each other. If you think of history like a tangle of vines growing upwards through time, studying one type of history at a time is like following the path of one particular vine while ignoring the other vines around it. It’s understanding history in a vertical sense. * * * Mozart wrote his Requiem the same year the US forefathers were writing the Bill of Rights and that Beethoven had a love-hate relationship with Napoleon—but using the lifespan diagram, you can see both of these stories visually.

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Is Judge Judy a fraud?

Posted on January 21, 2016 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

She is the highest paid “judge” in the world. In reality, she’s a private arbitrator who pretends to be a real judge on her famous court TV show, but that is not why she might be a fraud, at least not according to this critical blog post by Alex Mayyasi (via Priceonomics). According to Mr Mayyasi’s Priceonomics post, Judge Judy “reiterates the theme of responsibility and accountability over and over … On her show, she gives a tongue lashing to defendants who make excuses and reprimands victims who exercise poor judgment.” But in reality, after she admonishes guilty defendants and orders them to pay for what they’ve done, it’s the producers of her show who end up paying for those damages. (See the sample letter below the fold.) Nevertheless, we respectfully disagree with Mr Mayassi’s analysis. It’s true that when defendants agree to go on Judge Judy’s TV show, they do so in exchange for avoiding liability in their original court cases. But that said, there is still some positive probability that the defendant in any given case will prevail. Moreover, win or lose, the defendant is still assuming the very real residual risk that Judge Judy will embarrass him or her before a national audience. By accepting this risk (i.e. by willingly subjecting themselves to the possibility of such ridicule and embarrassment from Judge Judy), the defendants are, in fact, assuming responsibility for their actions, at least on some level. What do you think?

Winner of Best Book Title

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Posted in Deception, Ethics, Law | 5 Comments

Prime number update

Posted on January 20, 2016 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself. The number 3, for example, is a prime number. Now the update: The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search project has announced the discovery of the largest known prime. It is 2 times 2 times 2 … (repeat this step 74,207,281 times in all) … minus 1, or (2)^74,207,281 – 1 in formal mathematical notation. (By the way, in case you’re wondering, the next largest prime is (2)^57,885,161 – 1.) Both of these numbers are so-called Mersenne primes, or prime numbers that take the form 2^p – 1, where p is also a prime. There are only 49 known Mersenne primes. (Read more about this mathematical discovery here.)

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Is Senator Cruz a “natural born citizen”?

Posted on January 19, 2016 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

(P1) Major premise: Article II of the U.S. Constitution categorically states: “No person except a natural born citizen … shall be eligible to the office of President” (emphasis added). This proposition is thus our “major premise” or general principle of constitutional law.

(P2) Minor premise: Senator Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz was born in Alberta, Canada to an American mother and Cuban father. This proposition forms our “minor premise” or specific set of facts.

(C) Conclusion: Your guess as to the correct conclusion in this case is as good as ours because nowhere does the Constitution define the precise meaning of the term “natural born citizen.” That is, when we try to apply the general principle or rule of law to the facts in this case, it turns out that the meaning of the applicable law is ambiguous or open to interpretation.

Accordingly, when constitutional law scholars consider whether Senator Cruz is a “natural born citizen” or not, they might be asking the wrong question. After all, what makes one scholar’s interpretation of an open-textured term the “true” or correct one? What legal scholars should be asking instead is this: who decides? That is, which branch or which level of government (i.e., the Congress, State legislatures, federal or State courts, etc.) should have the power or legal authority to decide who is a natural born citizen?

Natural born citizens?

Posted in Current Affairs, Language, Law | 1 Comment

Non-random coin toss?

Posted on January 18, 2016 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

How to not flip a coin

What conditions must a coin toss satisfy in order for it to be truly “random,” and why isn’t this particular coin toss a “random” one … or is it? Perhaps another way of approaching the problem of randomness (assuming no bad faith on the part of the person tossing the coin) is to ask, What is the probability that the number of times that the coin will flip over will be equal to zero?

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Tinder trailer

Posted on January 17, 2016 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Questions about Tinder: How does the “Super Like” function described in the video above overcome or solve the problem of cheap talk or false signals? Also, does Tinder improve or reduce the overall level of “welfare” or “utility”–as economists define these imprecise terms? And lastly, would you prefer just one all-purpose Tinder or different sub-types of Tinders, i.e. one for retirees, another for religious devotees, etc.? (Feliz cumpleaños mama!)