Query

Posted on November 12, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Why does one player get off with a slap on the wrist (an undisclosed monetary fine), …

… while another player gets “suspended indefinitely” for essentially committing the same offense?

True, the second guy’s racial slur was directed toward a teammate (a highly-paid teammate, we might add), while the first guy’s slur (the same slur!) was directed toward an ordinary (i.e. lowly-paid) private citizen. But from a moral or ethical perspective, is third-party bullying somehow “less worse” than bullying among friends or co-workers?

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Is the Constitution “living”?

Posted on November 11, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

prior probability and Gerald Walpin will be discussing originalism and “the living Constitution” tomorrow at 5pm at Barry Law School

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Can Twitter be monetized?

Posted on November 10, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Enough people seem to think so, if Twitter’s rising share price is any indication. But is the market “wrong” on this one? After all, if given a choice, who really wants to waste time following “sponsored” (i.e. paid) tweets?

The larger question is this: is there an effective and “cool” way of solving the inherent tension between the need to commercialize or monetize nominally “free” websites like Twitter and Facebook on the one hand and a website’s level of hipness and utility to its users on the other hand?

prior probability, for one, still remains skeptical, though Google and gmail are good counter-examples.

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Prior probability 101

Posted on November 9, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Here are the opening lines of Wikipedia’s excellent entry for the Bayesian concept of prior probability:

… a prior probability distribution, often called simply the prior, of an uncertain quantity p (for example, suppose p is the proportion of voters who will vote for the politician named Smith in a future election) is the probability distribution that would express one’s uncertainty about p before the “data” (for example, an opinion poll) is taken into account. It is meant to attribute uncertainty rather than randomness to the uncertain quantity.

In other words, the “prior” is a value that measures one’s level of uncertainty about a given event. Also, notice that by openly acknowledging one’s uncertainty about events in the world, the prior serves as a useful starting point (not an end point) towards knowledge.

In future posts, we will explain the process of “updating” one’s priors and how Bayesian methods might apply to law and the legal process.

Bonus links:
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Are player unions good for sports?

Posted on November 9, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

And for other professions? Would the quality of teaching, for example, go up or down if professors were unionized?  

In a recent interview with Daniel Benson of The Pacific Standard, the disgraced cycling legend Lance Armstrong talked about the difference between cycling and other professional sports:

Well listen, the biggest difference between cycling, football and tennis is the players’ union, an athletes’ union. We have no voice, no unity. There are guys all over the place. Those sports, major league sports, they’re not letting that happen and the owners wouldn’t allow it to happen. Whereas we’ve [cyclists] just been living in the Wild West. The riders have no rights, ASO [the body that organizes the Tour de France] continues to make millions, the teams don’t own anything. The only thing a team owns is its current contract, and when that’s up you’re fucking done. You might have a couple of buses and a truck. There’s no equity and value. It’s a fucked up business model.

Doesn’t Lance Armstrong have a point? 

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Why is there no “Unlike” or “thumbs-down” button on Facebook?

Posted on November 7, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

The geeks at Facebook have just introduced new “Like” and “Share” buttons on their popular social media site, but there is still no “Unlike” or “Dislike” buttons on Facebook.  Why not?  Similarly, why is there is no -1 option (as opposed to +1) on Google Plus? (Youtube videos, by contrast, always have both the “thumbs-up” and “thumbs-down” icons.)  This glaring omission is clearly not an engineering or design problem but rather a conscious decision by Facebook (and Google+) to “nudge” people away from expressions of negativity.

Also, why doesn’t Facebook or Google+ allow one to express the intensity of one’s expression of the “Like” or +1 preference (e.g., “Like A Lot” and “Like A Little” on Facebook or values ranging from +0.9 to +0.1 on Google Plus, with a value of +0.5 indicating total indifference)?

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What is the optimal number of time zones?

Posted on November 6, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

proposed-time-zones

Allison Schrager, a New York-based economist and writer, explains here how the US could coordinate on just two time zones:

This year, Americans on Eastern Standard Time should set their clocks back one hour (like normal), Americans on Central and Rocky Mountain time do nothing, and Americans on Pacific time should set their clocks forward one hour. After that we won’t change our clocks again – no more daylight saving. This will result in just two time zones for the continental United States. The east and west coasts will only be one hour apart. Anyone who lives on one coast and does business with the other can imagine the uncountable benefits of living in a two-time-zone nation (excluding Alaska and Hawaii).

What do you think of Ms Schrager’s proposal? Does the continental US really need four time zones?

Hat tip: Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution

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Pop Quiz

Posted on November 5, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

From the math/science section of the G.E.D. high-school equivalency exam:

Assume the probability of rain on each of the next three days is as follows:

Tuesday: 30%

Wednesday: 45%

Thursday: 50%

Based on the above probabilities, what is the probability that it will rain on all three days?

The mathematically-correct answer may surprise you.

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Aliens or robots as parents?

Posted on November 4, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

That is the fun title of this report by Richard Perez-Pena in the Sunday Times about a small but growing number of top colleges that have added off-kilter or oddball questions to their admission applications to measure the creativity of their applicants.  Here are some examples:

Tell us your favorite joke and try to explain the joke without ruining it. (University of Chicago)

If you could choose to be raised by robots, dinosaurs or aliens, who would you pick? (Brandeis)

Or prior probability‘s favorite:

How did you get caught? (Chicago)

Why don’t any elite law schools try this approach?  What quirky question would you add to the law school application process if you could?

Birds and Dinosaurs

Cartoon courtesy of xkcd

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“Yo la tengo …”

Posted on November 2, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Yesterday morning, Professor John Nowak shared the following short story at the opening plenary session of the Fourth Annual Constitutional Law Colloquium in Chicago:

During the 1962 major league baseball season, New York Mets center fielder Richie Ashburn and Venezuelan shortstop Elio Chacón often collided in the outfield due to a language barrier.  Whenever Riche Ashburn went for a pop up in shallow left-center field, he would scream, “I got it! I got it!” only to run into Elio Chacón, who spoke only Spanish.  To avoid future collisions, Ashburn learned to yell, “¡Yo la tengo! ¡Yo la tengo!” to call Chacón off shallow fly balls.

In a later game, Ashburn happily saw Chacón backing off.  As he positioned himself to catch the ball, bam!  This time, he was run over by left fielder Frank Thomas, who understood no Spanish.

Considering that Professor Nowak is a distinguished scholar of US Constitutional Law and that he told this story at a conference on Constitutional Law, what do you think the moral of this story is?

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