All of 110phil's Comments + Replies

Suppose 100 chickens are produced. And, suppose 100% of the population becomes vegetarian. The number of chickens produced will drop to zero.

100 fewer chickens demanded; 100 fewer produced. So, on average, between 1 and 100, the next marginal drop in chicken demand drops production by 1.

Which elicits the question: what is the pattern from 100 down to 0?

Suppose there's suddenly only one non-vegetarian left. At today's price, he would demand 1 chicken. Clearly, prices will have to rise if only 1 is produced instead of 100. He might, then, demand only... (read more)

I don't think there's anything special about the tails.

Take a sheet of paper, and cover up the left 9/10 of the high-correlation graph. That leaves the right tail of the X variable. The remaining datapoints have a much less linear shape.

But: take two sheets of paper, and cover up (say) the left 4/10, and the right 5/10. You get the same shape left over! It has nothing to do with the tail -- it just has to do with compressing the range of X values.

The correlation, roughly speaking, tells you what percentage of the variation is not caused by random error. When you compress the X, you compress the "real" variation, but leave the "error" variation as is. So the correlation drops.

I read the "heretical" statements as talking about truth replacing falsehood. I read the non-heretical statements as talking about truth replacing ignorance. If you reword the "truth" statements to make it clear that the alternative is not falsehood, they would sound much less heretical to me.

One factoid says that your chance of death doubles for each 5 km/h above the limit you are. Another says that speeding factors into 40% of crashes.

Suppose the average speeder's risk is equivalent to 5 km/h over the limit (which seems low). Then only 25% of drivers must be speeding. Those 25% of drivers make up 40% of deaths, and the other 75% of drivers make up 60% of deaths. This keeps the ratio at 2.0, as required.

But non-speeders die too, when hit by speeders. The "40% of deaths had speeding as a factor" includes those non-speeders. T... (read more)

"The Road and Traffic Authority of New South Wales claims that “speeding… is a factor in about 40 percent of road deaths.” Data from the NHTSA puts the number at 30%."

What does this mean, "is a factor"? If it means "at least one car was speeding," then it sounds like speeding might reduce the chance of a fatality. Suppose 40% of all drivers speed. Then, if speeding has no effect, the chance that neither driver is speeding is only 36%, which means speeding would be a factor in 64% of fatalities, not 40% or 30%.

Of course, ... (read more)

"Provide reasons" helps for me. Many times I think something is obviously true, and when I start writing a blog post about it, where I have to explain and justify, I realize, mid-paragraph, that what I'm writing is not quite correct, and I have to rethink it.

Despite the fact that this has happened to me several times, my gut still doesn't quite say "it may not be that obvious, and you may be somewhat wrong." Rather, my gut now says, "the argument, written down, may not be as simple as you think."

So I feel like I still have a ways to go.

Ah, OK.

That's a slightly different case, though, isn't it? The author is not saying "it's good news for Boston [fans]" because they now are right when they were wrong before, and now their map is more accurate. Rather, he's saying that it's good news for Boston [fans] because the state of the world in the "right" case means more future Boston success than the state of the world in the "wrong" case.

Suppose Bergeron was doing well instead of poorly, and the author argued that it's because the coach is playing him too much a... (read more)

The point is well-taken that there are causes other than ego, and I could have mentioned that in the post.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the hockey example, though.

Thanks! Now changed in original.

I like the castling analogy, might be able to use it someday.

Nitpick: When you mentioned the 2-4-6 experiment, I didn't know what it was, so I clicked on the link and read about it. That was unnecessary, because you immediately explained it ... but, somehow, the wording of the narrative didn't signal that the explanation was coming.

Could be just me.

OK, fair enough.

It sounds to me, though, like it should be possible to somehow quantify the benefit of donating a kidney, on some scale, at least. Or do you think the benefit is so small, relative to one suicide, that my original argument doesn't hold?

I guess it's an empirical question. A death creates two kidneys. Are there usually two people on a waiting list who need the kidneys and would otherwise die? If not, then perhaps I am indeed being too optimistic.

Yes, I assumed that the breakup value of the organs was higher. That seems reasonable to me: two kidneys save two lives, one liver saves a third life, and so on. And only one life is lost, and that one voluntarily.

Also, my argument was not contingent on anyone being paid ... donating organs on the black market works too.

Right, that's true if you're connecting them randomly -- you have a 50% probability of getting it right either way.

But if your intent is to connect red to positive, and black to negative, and you do that fairly reliably but with some chance of a mistake, then there are twice as many chances to make an error, and your chance of getting it wrong by making an odd number of errors is higher (although not exactly twice as high, which I incorrectly implied).

In recent years, portable battery boosters have become cheaper, which means you won't need jumper cables at all.

For $50ish, you get a battery in a sealed plastic case, with two "jumper-cable"-type alligator clamps, one red and one black. You flip the on switch, then clip the red onto your battery's positive terminal, and the black onto your battery's negative terminal. Then you start the car. Once the car is running, you remove the black connector, then the red connector, and you're done.

There are at least two advantages over jumper cables. F... (read more)

Voted up, because, this post I understand.

Nitpick: shouldn't the answer to the disease question be 1/50.95 (instead of 1/50)? One person has the disease, and 49.95 (5% of 999) are false positives. So there are 50.95 total positives.

"An alternative approach would be to allow such evidence at trial, and severely punish investigators who breach rights. ... However, a reluctance to punish high-status investigators means this approach could just result in more breaches of rights."

What if you allowed the convicted person to sue the investigators? That mitigates the reluctance to punish investigators -- or at least, the reluctance to begin proceedings against the investigators.

The convict could sue to get X years deducted from his sentence, and the investigator would have to serve a percentage of X depending on the egregiousness of the breach.

Thank you.

Sorry, what is "NT"? I read this blog often enough that I feel like I should know, but I don't.

I wish there were some examples (other than the Soviet nails) ... if I had some better idea of what G and G* might actually represent, I'd be able to more easily get my head around the rest of the post.

Ah, but now you're changing the argument! In the post, you argued that it's OK to interfere because people are being tricked (an argument for which I have some sympathy). Now, you're arguing that it's OK to interfere because the only purpose of the cards is to match borrowers with lenders. That, I dont agree with at all.

People choose a card for many different reasons. I can imagine people choosing to (perhaps falsely) signal their high wealth by choosing a high-rate card (their friends will assume they pay it off every month). They might choose the &q... (read more)

Suppose the terms "if you are even one day late with a payment, your interest rate jumps to 29.99% forever" are in very large print on the contract, and the cardholder has to read it and initial it (or, perhaps, copy it out in full!) before the card is approved.

And suppose that consumers accept those terms even after understanding them.

Would that weaken your argument?

(The reason I ask: I am fully capable of paying off my balance every month. Sometimes I forget. When I forget, it costs me $80 in interest. I am capable of borrowing money at a ra... (read more)

I've done the same thing!

Perhaps you were assuming that your net wealth was a certain fixed amount, and that if the bill had been a $5 instead of a $1, it would have meant that there was $4 less at home or in the bank.

In that case, you're rooting only for having the right change on you, rather than having less money overall.

I'd like to see an adult child hold a grudge and use the "my house, my rules" tactic against visiting parents.

"Dad, I appreciate you and Mom coming to visit all the way from Houston. But you weren't home by 10:30 as per the rules of this house, which I paid for. You're grounded for two days. I've taken your car keys. Also, Mom, if you want to live under this roof, even for a week, you'll stop using that Lady Grecian formula. No mother of mine is going out looking like a blonde harlot. And I don't care if your other 64-year-old friends are doing it."

In the community of sports statistical analysis, the most-accepted hypothesis is that coaches are reluctant to try new strategies for rational reasons. If the new strategy succeeds, they get a bit of utility, but if the new strategy fails, they get fired -- and so lose a lot more utility.

Being a maverick has a negative expectation for the coach, even though it might have a positive expectation for the team.

This hypothesis makes a lot more sense to me than assuming that coaches are unaware of the result.

The "Players whose names start with K tend to strikeout more" study, is, I believe, flawed. It's true that K names struck out more historically, but that's because K names (Kyle, Kevin, etc.) are much more common now, when strikeout rates are high, than they were in previous generations, when strikeout rates were low.

See:

http://sabermetricresearch.blogspot.com/2007/11/k-study-for-real_26.html

This may be related ... a friend once said that when she half-wakes from a dream, if she rolls over and goes back to sleep, the dream ends. But if she doesn't roll over, the dream continues.

I believe this works for me, too. Perhaps it's not just a change in sight, but in touch too. Or perhaps in any of the senses.

The man has done nothing shameful: (a) his life is his own; and (b) the insurance company bet, with its eyes open, that sufficient suicide-intenders would back down from their plans within two years that the policies would still be profitable. It lost its bet, but it was a reasonable bet.

The man has done nothing admirable, either; he has taken money from the shareholders of the insurance company, and given it to charity. Presumably this is something the shareholders could have done themselves, if they chose to. So from a libertarian standpoint, this is ... (read more)