2015 October Archive at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics

Monthly Archive for October, 2015

Party of the Rich

Published

on October 29, 2015

in Current Events, Politics, Rants and Silk

. 28 Comments

I did not watch the debate. I chose to go to my aerial silks lesson instead.

When I got home, the debate was half over. I turned it on for about a minute, during which Marco Rubio managed to turn my stomach to the point where I just couldn’t go on.

Apparently he’s all worried about American tech companies “taking advantage” of relaxed immigration laws to hire foreigners who can work more efficiently than Americans. Any firm that does this should be subjected to strict regulations on who they can hire going forward, etc. etc. And there should be a 180 day waiting period before they can hire that foreigner in the first place, etc. etc.

So let’s be clear about this: Rubio cares enormously more about American engineers than about American consumers, American investors, and low-skilled American workers, all of whom benefit from more efficient engineering. Who do you suppose is richer to begin with — the average engineer, or the average consumer/investor/low-skilled worker?

I cannot stand this stuff.

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Boys, Girls and Hot Hands

Published

Steve Landsburg

on October 7, 2015

in Bad Reasoning, Blogging, Puzzles, Statistics and Surprises

. 64 Comments

This is a post about hot hands in basketball. But first, some relevant history:

The single most controversial topic ever broached here on The Big Questions was not Obamacare, or tax policy, or the advantages of genocide, or the policy treatment of psychic harms. It was this:

The answer, of course, is that you can’t know for sure, because (for example) by some extraordinary coincidence, the last 100,000 families in a row might have gotten boys on the first try. But in expectation, what fraction of the population is female? In other words, if there were many such countries, what fraction would you expect to observe on average?

The “official” answer — the answer, for example, that Google was apparently looking for when they posed this as an interview question — is that no stopping rule can change the fact that each birth has a 50% chance of being either male or female. Therefore the expected fraction of girls in the population is 50%.

That turns out to be wrong. It’s true that no stopping rule can change the fact that each birth has a 50% chance of being either male or female. From this it does follow that the expected number of girls is equal to the expected number of boys. But it does not follow that the expected fraction of girls in the population is 50%. Instead, that expected fraction depends on the country size, but is always less than 50%.

If you don’t see why, I encourage you to browse the archive of relevant blog posts. If you still don’t get it, I encourage you to keep browsing. Whatever your objections might be, you’ll find them addressed somewhere in the archive. I’m not interested in relitigating this. I will, however, happily renew my offer to take $5000 bets on the matter, on the terms described here. Last time around, all takers changed their minds before putting any money on the table.

Now let’s get to the hot hands.

Continue reading ‘Boys, Girls and Hot Hands’