Mike's notes.
How much should new information matter? Or, is this time different? Because sometimes it’s not. “Merlin (Heidemanns) said that essentially the polls gain more weight. It’s not that we construct a model and weight the polls. We don’t take a weighted average of the polls, we estimate latent parameters and the polls are data. That … Continue reading 3 prompts to being Bayesian
A quarantine activity in my sister-in-law’s family is buying stocks. Stonks. Gamestonks? Each week, each kid, gets five dollars. They invest in whatever they want. The best returns, to date, are from my niece. She’s 8. Her name begins with ‘T’ so her stock choices begin with ‘T’. She owns Tesla. My three nieces and … Continue reading How to complete next year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball bracket
Names make thoughts legible. Here are a few recent paradoxes to consider. The Abiline Paradox. Don’t rock the boat (YouTube). Or, when one person goes along with another because they think that I think that they think I want to go along. More from Rory Sutherland. The Fire Paradox. The more successful humans are suppressing … Continue reading The Abiline, Frie, and Simpson’s Paradox
One non-intuitive concept, at least in scale, is the network. Like average numbers, it takes some work to construct the correct conclusions. Graph, chart, and count the way that people interact, decide, and connect and there will be patterns. It’s network effects which fuel companies like Instagram and create the increasing returns economy. Networks, as Nicholas … Continue reading The Vaccine Friendship Paradox
Like Gambling with Covid19, betting markets can demonstrate probabilistic thinking. In that post we considered an idea from Matt (+EV) about Tom Brady’s potential passing yards. In April Brady’s over-under yardage was 4,256, nicely inline with previous years of 4057, 4355, 4577, and 3554. However, Matt noted, there’s a lot more room under 4,256 than … Continue reading Gambling with Votes
Is it more likely for an infected football player to transmit a disease to their teammates or their competition? Adi Wyner: "I would expect intrateam transmission by far. Not only huddle time, but the time on the bench, in the locker room, and while they travel. It’s a small chance of any given pairing but … Continue reading Large N Small p
This idea is related to Tyler Cowen’s idea of ‘meta-rationality’ which you read about in this pay-what-you want pdf. Perhaps there’s no better time to see, sort, and participate in over reactions than week one of the NFL. Though I only watch a full game or two a year, there are a lot of lessons … Continue reading An easy way to change your mind.
Wharton Moneyball Super Bowl Show. “I was blessed to know Bill (Belichick) back in college. We worked together for seventeen years. Bill can make complicated game plans but his general principles aren’t very difficult. He had three rules: be on time, pay attention, and work hard. Those seem like simple things but when you’re deaing … Continue reading The Right Proxies
Well before he won The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, Richard Thaler wrote The Loser’s Curse. Along with co-author Cade Massey (well before he hosted the Wharton Moneyball podcast), they found that NFL teams tend to trade too many assets to choose higher in the draft. With the idea … Continue reading Thaler, Massey, and Losers
Bias warning, My wife and I can work from home, my kids kinda like homeschool (but really miss their friends) and I wiped down the groceries in the garage. It’s always helpful to ask, has someone faced my situation before? The answer is often yes. Rory Sutherland thrives at this. On recent podcasts from Deep Dive (#249) … Continue reading Gambling with CoVid19
