[20 minute read] Climate denialism has changed its clothes. On my London-Dubai flight to COP28 in November 2023, the seat next to me was occupied by a climate denier — an American man who explained that his small NGO had attended 22 annual COPs in protest of global action on climate. I did not care… Read More A new variant of climate denialism is coming from inside the house
The electronic house music thumps underneath, in the basement. Five of us partygoers are sitting in the front parlor, away from the fray. An elliptical wooden coffee table separates us, a too-small rectangular piece of cardboard mostly covering it. One of the parlor people has been entrusted with staffing the front door (keep out the… Read More An evening in the life of a thinking person among the masses
Innumeracy among the numerati (5-minute read) Convergys Consulting is a company that sells data analytics services to call centers, for the purpose of identify operating cost reduction opportunities at those call centers. The company asks prospective new-hire analysts to do a take-home analysis of 120 rows of call center data. Now, I am 20 years… Read More Bad Stats at Stats Firms
(2-minute read) It’s 2004, and two elderly Russian brothers have just finished explaining how they famously they generated the 1 billionth digit of pi (and then later the 2 billionth and later the 4 billionth). The critical path issue had been a pragmatic one: how to cool that many homemade 1990-vintage parallel computers in a cramped… Read More Euler’s Identity
Bias in the perception of poo pile concentration in dog parks (6-minute read) Non-dog people like to complain about how much dog poo they encounter all over creation—and how they feel it reflects dog people’s sloppy, or even willful, disregard of public health and aesthetics. As an ardent dog person, I believe that compliance rates… Read More The Alleged Dog Poo Problem