Blog Entries - August 2008

Death of the 0.400 Hitter

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Why aren't there any more 0.400 hitters in baseball? The eminent evolutionary biologist and baseball fan Stephen Jay Gould answers this great sporting puzzle in his book, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, which is only partly about baseball. It is really about understanding basic statistics and along the way you get a great discourse on the animal world and in particular bacteria. He uses these examples, and a terrifying intellect, to argue that just looking at [...]

More or Less?

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Let's say you are a cell phone manufacturer and you have to make a decision about a new phone. Your clever engineers have developed several new features that could make your phone much more distinctive in the market. What do you do? Do you put as many features as you can into one phone, or do you introduce several phones, each with a different set of features? Researchers at the University of Maryland asked this question and conducted a series of experiments to answer it. Surprisingly, [...]

Video: The Stand-Up Economist

rsambandam@trchome.com — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Yoram Bauman is a micro-economist who calls himself the world's first and only stand-up economist*. This is his take on an economics text book.

The Ten Principles of Economics

Other, more colorful, routines can be found on You Tube by simply searching for Yoram Bauman.

*This claim is disputed by several others, as posted on his website.

Books: In Defense of Food

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

To be clear, Michael Pollan is not a food scientist, nutritionist, physician or a government employee. He is a journalist with a long interest in food and its impact on society. Consequently this book does not contain a specific diet nor does it focus on combating a particular condition such as weight loss. What it is, oddly enough, is what it says it is - a defense of food. It might seem strange that someone would need to write a [...]

What's in a Name (or Initial)?

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Do names have an impact on performance? How about initials? Would major league baseball players with the initial K strikeout more than others? Would people with intials C or D perform worse in class? Are people with white or black sounding names likely to be more or less successful in life? Interesting research has been done in both the areas of initials and names and the results are seemingly contradictory.

The research on initials (Nelson and Simmons) relies on a previously demon [...]

Insighter: Dallas Abbott

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Asteroids are space objects and sometimes they hit earth. Depending on their size they can cause great damage. Small asteroids can burn up when they enter the atmosphere. Larger ones can hit earth and cause damage directly and indirectly. The most popular reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago is asteroid strikes and the resulting global climactic changes. Okay, nothing new so far. Everyone can agree that asteroid strikes can have no to devastating impact. The ne [...]