Continuations

Money Ball was a good movie (I have to admit to not having read the book) with a crucial theme: statistics beats human intuition in complex situations. With the predictions for the 2012 elections we saw the same theme play itself out as Nate Silver crushed the pundits by using data. There are is also a fantastic example in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow (which I did read) of a relatively simple data based model outperforming all “experts” when it comes to predicting the future pric...

Last week I introduced my view that the various interlocking components of the industrial system are beginning to break down. The first one I mentioned was that “financial markets have been allocating capital into vast asset bubbles instead of into productive investments.” To dig deeper into this claim a good starting point is to look at wealth. The following chart shows the growth of private wealth in the United States, where private wealth is the sum of household and nonprofit organizations...

It was great fun to see XKCD take up the subject of Bayesian probability. That was a good reminder that it’s been a while since I taught my Skillshare class on the subject. And so I have added a new date for a lunch class on December 4th. As per usual, all proceeds go to Pencils of Promise. I have been asked if I am going to teach this class online as opposed to in person. Some day I may do that. But for now I really enjoy being together in a room. There is something very gratifying for me to...