I am an immigrant. I came to the US first in 1983 as an exchange student when I was 16. I stayed with a wonderful family in Rochester, Minnesota and fell in love with this country. I returned to Germany to finish school there but knew that I wanted to study here. I returned first for college and then in 1993 for graduate school. I have lived in the United States ever since and became a citizen in 2004. I have been fortunate to always feel incredibly welcome here. These days re-entering the US...

I am an immigrant. I came to the US first in 1983 as an exchange student when I was 16. I stayed with a wonderful family in Rochester, Minnesota and fell in love with this country. I returned to Germany to finish school there but knew that I wanted to study here. I returned first for college and then in 1993 for graduate school. I have lived in the United States ever since and became a citizen in 2004. I have been fortunate to always feel incredibly welcome here. These days re-entering the US...

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...

After giving two examples (Zoltar, Coin Flipping), it is now time in Uncertainty Wednesday to formalize the ideas. The following picture will be useful. It shows a very simple reality/system (the blue box) we are trying to understand and the observation (the arrow) we are making to do so.In particular, our system has only two possible states A and B. And our observation can take on only two possible values, 0 and 1. This is the simplest possible setup that is of interest. Why? Let’s see if it...

After giving two examples (Zoltar, Coin Flipping), it is now time in Uncertainty Wednesday to formalize the ideas. The following picture will be useful. It shows a very simple reality/system (the blue box) we are trying to understand and the observation (the arrow) we are making to do so.In particular, our system has only two possible states A and B. And our observation can take on only two possible values, 0 and 1. This is the simplest possible setup that is of interest. Why? Let’s see if it...

susandanziger:My parents were immigrants. My husband is an immigrant. My business partner is an immigrant. We vehemently oppose the excessive executive orders targeting immigrants already holding U.S. visas and green cards. Today Albert Wenger and I are matching donations made to the ACLU. We will be matching donations up to a total of $10,000 made TODAY ONLY. Simply tweet your receipts with today’s time stamp to @susandanziger and @alberbertwenger.

susandanziger:My parents were immigrants. My husband is an immigrant. My business partner is an immigrant. We vehemently oppose the excessive executive orders targeting immigrants already holding U.S. visas and green cards. Today Albert Wenger and I are matching donations made to the ACLU. We will be matching donations up to a total of $10,000 made TODAY ONLY. Simply tweet your receipts with today’s time stamp to @susandanziger and @alberbertwenger.

I am super excited about today and woke up in advance of my alarm clock. Why? Because today is the first day of class for the second year of the NYU Stern Course I am co-teaching with Arun Sundararajan (btw, if you are interested in the sharing economy, I highly recommend Arun’s book). I love teaching, which is the reason I originally pursued a PhD. The title of our course is “Tech and the City” (yes, pun on a “long ago” HBO show – we didn’t pick it, sort of a bit like writing a column and ha...

I am super excited about today and woke up in advance of my alarm clock. Why? Because today is the first day of class for the second year of the NYU Stern Course I am co-teaching with Arun Sundararajan (btw, if you are interested in the sharing economy, I highly recommend Arun’s book). I love teaching, which is the reason I originally pursued a PhD. The title of our course is “Tech and the City” (yes, pun on a “long ago” HBO show – we didn’t pick it, sort of a bit like writing a column and ha...

The other day I was pointed to an essay about how people are overreacting to Trump. That we should all adopt a wait and see attitude instead. In thinking about how to reply it occurred to me that this is exactly how big companies lose against startups. They wait around to see what the startup will do, and by the time they have figured out that it’s important it is too late to catch up. This is why Andy Grove’s motto at Intel was “Only the paranoid survive.” So working with startups has taught...

The other day I was pointed to an essay about how people are overreacting to Trump. That we should all adopt a wait and see attitude instead. In thinking about how to reply it occurred to me that this is exactly how big companies lose against startups. They wait around to see what the startup will do, and by the time they have figured out that it’s important it is too late to catch up. This is why Andy Grove’s motto at Intel was “Only the paranoid survive.” So working with startups has taught...

I was going to start formalizing the concepts from Uncertainty Wednesday but I got a reader suggestion to do this in the context of a coin flipping example. This is what pretty much every introductory text uses because, well, coin flips are actually used in practice to decide things (especially in sports) and also coins have only two sides (heads and tails). It will be interesting to see if I can show how the Uncertainty Wednesday framework makes coin flipping more interesting than the way it...

I was going to start formalizing the concepts from Uncertainty Wednesday but I got a reader suggestion to do this in the context of a coin flipping example. This is what pretty much every introductory text uses because, well, coin flips are actually used in practice to decide things (especially in sports) and also coins have only two sides (heads and tails). It will be interesting to see if I can show how the Uncertainty Wednesday framework makes coin flipping more interesting than the way it...

When your company is growing you have to add new layers of management. One common mistake is to only look outside the company. This is often promoted by investors who are worried that the early employees are too young and inexperienced. But if you only hire from the outside it can be demotivating for the people inside the company who may come to think that they cannot have a career here. That’s why I like to see a balanced approach that also includes a lot of internal promotions. Internal pro...

When your company is growing you have to add new layers of management. One common mistake is to only look outside the company. This is often promoted by investors who are worried that the early employees are too young and inexperienced. But if you only hire from the outside it can be demotivating for the people inside the company who may come to think that they cannot have a career here. That’s why I like to see a balanced approach that also includes a lot of internal promotions. Internal pro...

Many of the people in power or currently grabbing for it are trying to maintain the recent past or even go back further. This is the fight of our lifetime. The Past against the Future. It is NOT: left against right, rich against poor, black against white, Islam against Christianity, men against women. Do not let yourself get dragged into these fights, that for now just serve to keep us in the past. Yes, there are vast injustices in the world that need to be addressed, but if we get stuck in t...

Many of the people in power or currently grabbing for it are trying to maintain the recent past or even go back further. This is the fight of our lifetime. The Past against the Future. It is NOT: left against right, rich against poor, black against white, Islam against Christianity, men against women. Do not let yourself get dragged into these fights, that for now just serve to keep us in the past. Yes, there are vast injustices in the world that need to be addressed, but if we get stuck in t...

There is a good thing about today’s inauguration. Despite having the lowest approval rating of an incoming president in a long time, it appears that we will have a peaceful transfer of power. That is what democracy is designed to do. Now we will also need the other parts of democracy to work, namely the institutions that have been put in place to help safeguard from abuses of power by the executive branch of government. This will be a difficult challenge with the current distribution of power...

There is a good thing about today’s inauguration. Despite having the lowest approval rating of an incoming president in a long time, it appears that we will have a peaceful transfer of power. That is what democracy is designed to do. Now we will also need the other parts of democracy to work, namely the institutions that have been put in place to help safeguard from abuses of power by the executive branch of government. This will be a difficult challenge with the current distribution of power...