thebigquestions.com
What’s Fair is Fair at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics
http://www.thebigquestions.com/2015/07/28/whats-fair-is-fair
This Would Be a Great Illustration of Comparative Advantage if It Weren’t Such a Great Illustration of Absolute Advantage ». What’s Fair is Fair. July 28, 2015. Suppose you’ve got 1000 students to assign to two schools, each with 500 slots available. Everyone prefers the Good School to the Bad School. Which of the following is a fair way to decide who goes where? Randomly assign each student to one of two groups. Then flip a single coin to determine which group goes to the Good School. Economists often i...
thebigquestions.com
Innumeracy Watch at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics
http://www.thebigquestions.com/2015/07/10/innumeracy-watch
What’s Fair is Fair ». July 10, 2015. While a team of four has just six interconnections, a team of 16 has 120 interconnections. It is near-exponential growth: n(n-1)/2. 8212; Rich Karlgaard and Michael S. Malone. July 10, 2015. To comment or read others’ comments. What’s Fair is Fair ». Responses to “Innumeracy Watch”. Feed for this Entry. July 10, 2015 at 9:59 pm. 8230;for sufficiently small values of exponential. July 10, 2015 at 10:31 pm. July 11, 2015 at 1:20 am. It seems okay to me. The term “...
thebigquestions.com
Sweet Talk at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics
http://www.thebigquestions.com/2015/05/05/sweet-talk
Bosonic Ka-Ching Theory ». May 5, 2015. Is it only me who is driven crazy by the American Heart Association’s campaign against “added sugars”, and the attendant campaign to label foods for their added sugar content? Look I am no expert, so correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I can tell from a trip around the Internet, sugar is sugar. More precisely, fructose is fructose, glucose is glucose, and so it goes. The fructose in an apple is exactly as bad for you as the fructose in a Cola drink. Thus it̵...
thebigquestions.com
Bosonic Ka-Ching Theory at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics
http://www.thebigquestions.com/2015/05/12/bosonic-ching-theory
News Flash ». May 12, 2015. George Johnson of the New York Times writes. In a saner world, where science and the law meshed more precisely, a case like Firstenberg v. Monribot would have been dead on arrival in court. It would be easy — in fact, Mr. Johnson of the Times finds it extremely easy — to see this case as nothing but a minor tragedy with comic overtones. But the issues it raises are deeper than that. First, this case is about as good as it gets if you’re looking for a reductio ad absurdum.
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