Is Keith Olbermann’s the “worst sports person in the world”?

Posted on August 27, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

The debut of “Olbermann”, Keith Olbermann’s new show on ESPN2, occurred last night. Among other things, Mr Olbermann criticized Manish Mehta, a sports reporter for the New York Daily News, for the way he conducted himself at a post-game press conference after a NY Jets pre-season game against the NY Giants last Saturday. (To recap, Mr Mehta questioned NY Jets coach Rex Ryan for playing star quarterback Mark Sanchez in the fourth quarter of a meaningless pre-season game … Sanchez was injured after he was put in the game.)

prior probability, by contrast, commends the sports reporter who questioned Coach Ryan and got under his skin. Coach Ryan, visibly annoyed at Mr Mehta’s line of questioning, eventually responded with “I don’t have to answer your question …” Maybe so, but a sports reporter has every right to ask questions and to follow-up when he or she doesn’t get a straight answer. Perhaps, then,  Mr Olbermann  should self-nominate himself (and Coach Ryan, for that matter) for “The Worst Persons in the Sports World”

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“Give me liberty or give me … social science?”

Posted on August 26, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Richard Thaler argues in his Economic View column in the Sunday Times that social scientists should play a greater role in shaping public policy, but prior probability wonders whether the opposite is true. After all, most published social “science” findings are false, and moreover, so-called social “scientists” are unaccountable to voters and have the same cognitive biases that most people suffer from.

In any case, Thaler’s three examples of how social science can help improve people’s lives are pretty weak. First, Thaler writes about the “word gap” between children from poor and rich families, but he admits there is no silver bullet for closing this word gap, so if there is no solution to a given problem, one wonders whether there is a problem at all (or, as economist Luke Froeb likes to say, “If there is no solution, there is no problem“). Also, even if we were somehow able to close this word gap between rich and poor children, we suspect that rich children would still have more advantages than poor ones.

Next, Thaler talks about wait times at the National Domestic Violence Hotline call center. The problem here, according to Thaler, is that many victims hang up before they’ve had a chance to speak with a counselor. But isn’t this just a simple resource-allocation problem (i.e., we need to hire more counselors to handle these calls)?

Lastly, Thaler notes how difficult it is to get (some) patients to follow up on their own treatment regimens. But at the end of day, if certain individuals choose to avoid taking responsibility for their own health, why should the rest of us care? Yes, we all want sick people to get well, domestic violence victims to get help, and children to excel, but how much government intrusion and “nanny-state” tactics are we willing to tolerate to achieve these goals? Thaler (once again) fails to address these larger, more fundamental questions.

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Why we should study the Declaration of Independence in law school

Posted on August 25, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

I am getting ready to teach another semester of that most political of legal subjects: constitutional law (“conlaw”). When I teach conlaw, I like to begin with the Declaration of Independence of 4 July 1776, one of this country’s most important founding documents, in which the North American colonists commit treason by stating their reasons for declaring their political independence from Britain. (By the way, my favorite line from the Declaration is “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.“) In particular, I like to pose two questions regarding the Declaration of Independence: one practical, the other theoretical:

1st. The Declaration lists a “long train of abuses and usurpations” to justify the separation of the colonies from Britain, but how “bad” were these abuses in reality, or are they just a pretext to justify the insurgent or law-breaking acts of the American revolutionaries?

2nd. Although the Declaration is an important document, does it have the force of law like the Constitution or a statute? When was the last time a constitutional lawyer actually cited the Declaration, and when was the last time a court actually relied on the Declaration to reach a decision?

(So why bother studying the Declaration of Independence? Why is the Declaration so important? Be ready to discuss these questions on the first day of class.)

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What critics of Nate Silver get wrong

Posted on August 24, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis, professors at NYU, wrote up this critique of Nate Silver’s best-selling book The Signal and the Noise for The New Yorker magazine several months ago.

prior probability finally got around to reading their critique and is now ready to file this reply:

First, Marcus & Davis try to take Silver down a notch by noting that Bayesian methods are not new, that the Bayesian approach to probability “is built around a two-hundred-fifty-year-old theorem that is usually taught in the first weeks of college probability courses.” True, Baryes’ famous theorem has been around a long time, but that is not the whole truth. The whole truth is that the intellectual history of mathematics and statistics has been openly hostile and dismissive of Bayesian methods until recently.

Next, after grudgingly conceding the superiority of Bayesian reasoning in many situations, Marcus & Davis state (incorrectly) that “the Bayesian approach is much less helpful when there is no consensus about what the prior probabilities should be.” But this is plain wrong, and shows that Marcus & Davis missed one of the main take-away lessons of Silver’s book: it doesn’t really matter what your priors are so long as you update them whenever you receive new evidence regarding the matter you are uncertain about.

Last, Marcus & Davis attempt to mount a rearguard defense of R.A. Fisher’s frequency approach to probability, long the dominant approach in modern statistics, noting that “the advantage of Fisher’s approach … is that it sidesteps the problem of estimating priors where no sufficient information exists.” (By the way, what is it with the frequentists and their unwholesome obsession with priors?) But Marcus & Davis are being disingenuous here, for they themselves “sidestep” the major flaws with Fisher’s frequentist approach, especially its ad hoc nature and the fact that most events about which we are uncertain do not lend themselves to a frequency analysis.

Because Nate Silver’s book is such an important work, prior probability will soon be conducting a chapter-by-chapter review of The Signal and the Noise in future posts.

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Is economics a science?

Posted on August 23, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Economists Noah Smith (“A few words about math”) and Bryan Caplan (“Economath fails the cost benefit test”) have recently presented powerful and persuasive critiques of the over-use of mathematics in economics, but prior probability thinks they both miss the larger question, i.e., is economics a science? In addition to the points made by Smith and Caplan, we think that many economists use fancy mathematical symbols in order to create the false impression that their discipline is a science when, in fact, it is not (it is mostly a branch of moral philosophy dressed up in the language of mathematics). What do you think?

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Do poor people prefer cash or in-kind benefits?

Posted on August 23, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

What’s the best way to help the poor in developing countries? How about giving them $1000 USD in cash, with no strings attached? If this idea sounds crazy to you, then check out this report in the Sunday Times describing the work of the charity GiveDirectly in Africa, which gives money to people in the poorest villages in Kenya without any pre- (or post-) conditions. Instead of food stamps, public housing, and other in-kind benefits, why don’t more governments try this direct cash-payment approach?

depositphotos.com

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Pfc. Bradley Manning … political prisoner?

Posted on August 22, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Is Private Bradley Manning, who was just sentenced to 35 years in prison for disclosing military secrets, now the US’s youngest political prisoner?

prior probability thinks so. Manning’s pre-trial detention was inhumane, and he was tried and convicted by a military court for disclosing evidence of military misconduct that otherwise would have been withheld from the public. Here is Private Manning’s full post-sentencing statement.

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Ballet bribery

Posted on August 22, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

One of prior probability‘s favorite social science papers is The Standing Ovation Problem by John Miller and Scott Page. (Here is a good summary of Miller & Page’s model.)  So what happens when some members of an audience are paid off by the performers on stage to applause?

For example, check out this story by Ellen Barry in the Sunday Times about Roman Abramov, who is paid to create fake ovations at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. Here is an excerpt from Ms Barry’s expose:

“Watching over all this is Mr. Abramov himself, his dark, intelligent eyes scanning the lobby. His job is to engineer applause and ovations, on the basis of secret agreements with dancers, using associates planted in the audience. These collaborations — part passion, part commerce — can go on for years; they can also occasionally sour into nasty, revengeful dramas.”

prior probability is fascinated by the pervasiveness of deception in human affairs, especially when we did not expect to observe deception of this magnitude at the ballet

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Al Jazeera America bets on an American audience for serious journalism

Posted on August 21, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Will this bet pay off?

In any case, prior probability is reblogging this post since we are big fans of Al Jazeera … P.S. we really like AJ’s full-page in the Times:

al jazeera america launch

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/al-jazeera-america-launch-day-full-page-ad_n_3784800.html

Alex's avatardigiphile

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I’m watching the launch of Al Jazeera America here in DC, on Channel 107*. (No HD in this media market, from what I can tell.) It’s the biggest launch in broadcast media since Fox News, in 1996, and in media since Politico, in 2007.

Goodbye Current TV, hello Al Jazeera America.

It remains to be seen whether Americans will tune into to a 24-hour news channel that is, like Brian Stelter notes in his piece on Al Jazeera America’s approach to the news, something akin to a journalism professor’s dream, with 14 hours of news daily, documentaries and an aspiration to cover all of the U.S.A. Andrew Beaujon wrote a good primer on the Al Jazeera America launch over at Poynter, from its hiring to its talent to the big question about whether people want straight news.

At launch, I’m optimistic about Al Jazeera America’s programming, at least based…

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A book that changed me

Posted on August 21, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

prior probability is reblogging this post … this recommended book will go on our late summer reading list, along with The Recursive Universe by William Poundstone

Jie Yi See's avatarBook of words

The ElementThe inspiration for this blog post came from the Guardian site which encourages readers to contribute short blurbs about books that left them with a lasting impression.

For me, my choice would be non-fiction book “The Element” by educationalist Ken Robinson. I bought it during a long transit at London’s Heathrow airport to kill time but it turned out to be the right book, ‘speaking’ to me at a point in my life where I was standing at a crossroad after completing my undergraduate degree.

For many of us, graduation is a milestone in our lives where we are being thrust with the responsibility to decide how we are going to take our first steps into the real world. I thought long and hard, even when I was traveling, about various considerations mentioned in the book such as money, career and passion.

And I regretted. I started re-thinking about my…

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