I just finished and highly recommend “The Biggest Bluff” by Maria Konnikova, which is our USV book club selection for January. It is nominally a book about Poker, but it is really about learning to live in a world where skill is confronted with luck again and again. An no, I don’t mean the world of poker, I mean the world at large. Each chapter does a wonderful job of tightly weaving together an episode of Maria’s journey to becoming a poker pro with a much deeper discussion of a topic, such ...

I just finished and highly recommend “The Biggest Bluff” by Maria Konnikova, which is our USV book club selection for January. It is nominally a book about Poker, but it is really about learning to live in a world where skill is confronted with luck again and again. An no, I don’t mean the world of poker, I mean the world at large. Each chapter does a wonderful job of tightly weaving together an episode of Maria’s journey to becoming a poker pro with a much deeper discussion of a topic, such ...

On July 11 at noon I will be teaching my Skillshare class on Bayesian Probability and a Theory of Life again. I am really looking forward to doing so for a bunch of different reasons. First, I really enjoyed teaching the first one and it’s been way too long. Second, I get to test out some brand new Skillshare features that are still in limited beta. Third, all the proceeds will go to Pencils of Promise. Fourth, the issue of fundamental misunderstanding of probability keeps popping up. For ins...

On July 11 at noon I will be teaching my Skillshare class on Bayesian Probability and a Theory of Life again. I am really looking forward to doing so for a bunch of different reasons. First, I really enjoyed teaching the first one and it’s been way too long. Second, I get to test out some brand new Skillshare features that are still in limited beta. Third, all the proceeds will go to Pencils of Promise. Fourth, the issue of fundamental misunderstanding of probability keeps popping up. For ins...

When I taught my Skillshare class on Bayesian Probability, I wound up spending a fair bit of time sharing my fascination with the foundations of probability. Why is there uncertainty in the world to begin with? How do we measure it? I have therefore decided to break that material out into its own class: Foundations of Probability. This class will be a romp through physics, philosophy, mathematics and more to examine where uncertainty comes from, how to measure it and how to think about it’s i...

When I taught my Skillshare class on Bayesian Probability, I wound up spending a fair bit of time sharing my fascination with the foundations of probability. Why is there uncertainty in the world to begin with? How do we measure it? I have therefore decided to break that material out into its own class: Foundations of Probability. This class will be a romp through physics, philosophy, mathematics and more to examine where uncertainty comes from, how to measure it and how to think about it’s i...

Last night Susan and I watched “Catfish,” a movie from last year about a case of a fabricated online identity. The movie starts with a young man who is engaged in an online correspondence with what he believes to be a young girl who appears to be a painting prodigy. He also chats with the girl’s mother and carries on several increasingly steamy exchanges with her older sister. [Spoiler Alert!] Eventually, a variety of inconsistencies surface and he becomes suspicious. Together with his brothe...

Last night Susan and I watched “Catfish,” a movie from last year about a case of a fabricated online identity. The movie starts with a young man who is engaged in an online correspondence with what he believes to be a young girl who appears to be a painting prodigy. He also chats with the girl’s mother and carries on several increasingly steamy exchanges with her older sister. [Spoiler Alert!] Eventually, a variety of inconsistencies surface and he becomes suspicious. Together with his brothe...

So last Uncertainty Wednesday, we introduced the simplest possible setup with two states and two signal values. Today we will introduce the concept of probability. If you go on Wikipedia you can find a great many different definitions of probability, such as classical, frequentist, and Bayesian. If you read all of these you will “probably” find yourself thoroughly confused and feeling you know less afterwards (that’s “certainly” been the case for me). So I will take a slightly different appro...

So last Uncertainty Wednesday, we introduced the simplest possible setup with two states and two signal values. Today we will introduce the concept of probability. If you go on Wikipedia you can find a great many different definitions of probability, such as classical, frequentist, and Bayesian. If you read all of these you will “probably” find yourself thoroughly confused and feeling you know less afterwards (that’s “certainly” been the case for me). So I will take a slightly different appro...

Today in Uncertainty Wednesday we are continuing with some of the math of probability. As a reminder from last Wednesday, we have two states, A and B and two signal values H and L for four possible elementary events AH, AL, BH, and BL. We defined events as some combination of elementary events. So for instance we could have E = {AH, BL}. We write P(E) for the probably of event E and we saw that P(Ø) = 0 and P({AH, AL, BH, BL}) = 1. Since events are sets, we can also reason about the probabili...

Today in Uncertainty Wednesday we are continuing with some of the math of probability. As a reminder from last Wednesday, we have two states, A and B and two signal values H and L for four possible elementary events AH, AL, BH, and BL. We defined events as some combination of elementary events. So for instance we could have E = {AH, BL}. We write P(E) for the probably of event E and we saw that P(Ø) = 0 and P({AH, AL, BH, BL}) = 1. Since events are sets, we can also reason about the probabili...

I have a long standing interest in probability and am fascinated by how fantastical a role it plays in our lives. Recently, I wrote about my concern regarding the Large Hadron Collider based on the “infinite” downside of some long tail events. This weekend I read the Atlantic Monthly’s “The Sky is Falling” which provided a great summary of the recent changes in the assessment of catastrophic risk from a meteoroid strike. It appears that the probability of a major hit occurring is significantl...

I have a long standing interest in probability and am fascinated by how fantastical a role it plays in our lives. Recently, I wrote about my concern regarding the Large Hadron Collider based on the “infinite” downside of some long tail events. This weekend I read the Atlantic Monthly’s “The Sky is Falling” which provided a great summary of the recent changes in the assessment of catastrophic risk from a meteoroid strike. It appears that the probability of a major hit occurring is significantl...

In the last two Uncertainty Wednesdays, we went over the basic math of probability and the definition of events. Today we are going to come back to the underlying framework of reality, explanations and observations which we have modeled as states and signals. As a reminder, we assumed two states, A and B and two signal values H and L for four possible elementary events AH, AL, BH, and BL. The signal values are what we can observe whereas the states are not directly accessible to us. So no let...

In the last two Uncertainty Wednesdays, we went over the basic math of probability and the definition of events. Today we are going to come back to the underlying framework of reality, explanations and observations which we have modeled as states and signals. As a reminder, we assumed two states, A and B and two signal values H and L for four possible elementary events AH, AL, BH, and BL. The signal values are what we can observe whereas the states are not directly accessible to us. So no let...