So which of these four ghost strategies would you expect to have the highest kill rate? Hat tip to jackmcxp for sharing this tidbit with us via Imgur.
“And yet it moves …” This map depicts Pangaea, a massive super-continent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras, with modern borders. Hat tip to the amazing Ada Swanson for the pointer.
We recently reviewed the abstract and slides of Deborah Mayo’s 3 Dec. 2014 presentation at Rutgers University. Her excellent talk was titled “Probing with severity: beyond Bayesian probabilism and frequentist performance.” (Both the abstract and the slides of her lecture are available here.) Here, we shall sum up what we consider to be the most valuable contribution of Dr Mayo’s thoughtful lecture and then offer a brief and friendly critique of her main point. Without further ado, then, let us begin. Continue reading
What does Google prediction spit out when you type the word “why” on Google search? Here’s what we got when we tried this little experiment from our home in Orlando, Florida at approximately 2am EST on 7 December 2014: Continue reading
Hat tip to SirSilencer via reddit.
You can see the most common scores in such sports as basketball, football, and baseball in Philip Bump’s fun Wonkblog post here. Mr Bump writes: “Each sport follows a rough bell curve … Teams that regularly fall on the left side of that curve do poorly. Teams that land on the right side do well.” Read more about Gaussian distributions here.
In light of the recent egregious examples of rigged grand juries, we want to revisit Walter Olson’s perceptive post dated 21 August 2014 on the “culture of petty fines” in places like Ferguson, Missouri. Here is an excerpt:
Race is one reason for constant police hassle in towns like Ferguson. Revenue is another. In a Cato post …, I note that court fees are the second biggest source of revenue for the small city, and that the Ferguson municipal court last year issued three arrest warrants and presided over 1.5 cases per household. As a result, many residents of the town “wind up interacting constantly with law enforcement because of a culture of petty fines” — enough to make for tense relations between the community and the police even aside from the racial divide …
In other words, policemen and judges in many cities are exploiting poor people to finance the budgets of local governments. (Recall that Michael Brown was initially hassled by Officer Darren Wilson for jaywalking, while Eric Garner was suspected of selling “loosies” or untaxed cigarettes.) These forms of petty police harassment need to stop. Leave us alone already!
Is Jadeveon Clowney a bust? Although the lackadaisical and injury-prone Clowney was the overall #1 pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, he has played in just four regular season games this year, with seven tackles and zero sacks. He’s now on injured reserve and won’t play any more games this season. Yet Mr Clowney still has his defenders. Tania Ganguli, for example, writes that it is “unfair” and “inaccurate” to call a player a bust for going on injured reserve. Isn’t this line of reasoning, however, an example of the sunk cost fallacy? The Houston Texans not only squandered their first-round draft pick; they also gave Mr Clowney a fully-guaranteed $22.2 million contract, including an up-front $14.5 million signing bonus. But all this is in the past and does not change the fact that Clowney had a terrible rookie season and is unlikely to live up to his hype.
The Texans should have taken heed of this sign.
Welcome to the online home of the IASS
Hopefully It’s Interesting.
In Conversation with Legal and Moral Philosophers
dr hab. prof. UJ, Jagiellonian University
Books, papers, and other jurisprudential things
Ramblings of a retiree in France
BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH
Natalia's space
hoping we know we're living the dream
Lover of math. Bad at drawing.
We hike, bike, and discover Central Florida and beyond
Making it big in business after age 40
Reasoning about reasoning, mathematically.
I don't mean to sound critical, but I am; so that's how it comes across
remember the good old days...
"Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences." - Sylvia Plath
a personal view of the theory of computation
Logic at Columbia University
Just like the Thesis Whisperer - but with more money
the sky is no longer the limit
Technology, Culture, and Ethics
Just like the horse whisperer - but with more pages
Poetry, Other Words, and Cats
