2.4 million mobile phones in North Korea. 3-4 years ago that number was 0.
Source: this talk by Lars-André Richter I was at.
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The Golden Rule, improved
Don't do unto others as they would not have you do unto them.
Imagine if you could publish e.g. a blog post that formulates an interesting argument for position X, without people then confidently assuming that you hold position X.
Lol?
Writing tip for Bayesians: Don’t write “maximum likelihood estimate” or “mode of the distribution” where you could equivalently write “best guess”.
How to deal with sticky wages, and other nominal rigidities attributable to the psychology of fairness
Apparently it also works with small children.
Courtesy of 9gag, Land of Lols.
Toward market clearing, dating edition
Go on more dates by simply placing a bid. Now you can date anyone, anywhere, anytime for the right price.
I understand the site allows only for men to bid money on dates with women and never vice versa.
Yo, is this uncharitable?
The quotes seem cherry picked, but I wouldn't be so uncharitable as to accuse the maker of the video of deceitful editing.
Or, slightly more seriously:
- The video is awesome IMO, in that the editing works impressively well and makes for a genuinely good and funny song.
- Perhaps one can appreciate the video as criticism of David Cameron and supporters, though as such I think the criticism is qualitatively weak. On the other hand, it seems like a good caricature of his less sophisticated critics, in that it showcases the sorts of positions that they might genuinely attribute to their tribal opponent.
Car engine sounds: The cake is a lie
The engine growl in some of America's best-selling cars and trucks is actually a finely tuned bit of lip-syncing, boosted through special pipes or digitally faked altogether.
Mathematical ability tests biased in favour of/against women
Robin Hanson, back in 2008 [emphasis his]:
Discussion of the Science article on gender differences in math test variance got me thinking. Since a test score is a noisy measure of some underlying ability, an unusually high score can come either from an unusual high ability, or from an unusually positive measurement error (or both). If higher male score variance is due more to a higher male ability variance than to a higher male measurement error variance, then a high female score is more likely to be due to measurement error than is the same high male score. If so, treating the same score value as the same ability, independent of gender, as is common in school admissions, creates a bias (vs. men) in favor of high scoring, and against low scoring, women.