Sometime during the late 19th or early 20th century, a simian immunodeficiency virus that infects wild chimpanzees made the jump to humans who hunted the animals. The mutated human strains spread from one individual to the next through intimate contact — usually unprotected sex or needle sharing — often leaving carriers absent of symptoms for... »
Yesterday Decision Science News asked “Should you buy car insurance?” By which they mean collision insurance, liability insurance being required by law in these parts. I’m shocked and appalled that decision scientists could even ask such a thing. Actually, it’s a good question with some legitimate subtleties. I just happen to have an unreasonably strong opinion about... »
For a lot of engineering problems, “almost right” isn’t good enough. Remember the Mars Climate Orbiter? Traveling through space for nearly a year, and covering 700 million kilometers, the Orbiter disintegrated after entering the Martian atmosphere at an altitude just one-hundred kilometers lower than planned. That’s like a $100 million dart exploding when you miss... »
This article is co-authored with
Bethany Soule. If you want to
(bee)mind
how you spend your time (and
Anyone who knows me knows that I love power laws. What other distribution even comes close? The normal? Boring. Poisson? Too fishy. Hypergeometric? Ok, that one’s pretty cool, too. But still, power laws reign supreme in my mind. Evidence of the mystical power of power laws is found by simply looking at references to “power laws”... »
