Thursday, June 23, 2005

A (Rare) Apolitical Post By Mycroft, Etc.

Of course, since I've called it that, he will likely point out some reason that it's not apolitical after all. Anyway, here's a thought by Mycroft that caught my fancy.

Optimists, Pessimists, and Delusion

Update: And, from a post that Mycroft linked to, advice on selectively deluding oneself. (Naturally, this advice has a double function: on the one hand, it's a how-to for constructive delusions; on the other hand, it's insightful commentary on how we sometimes destructively delude ourselves).

Re-Update: And as long as I'm catching up on all things Mycroft, he wrote a post recently about and FBI fingerprint database which contains a nice explanation of error rates and data mining* for the intelligent but perhaps uninitiated. *(i.e. some of the mathematics behind finding Bad Guys (or Girls) in the aforementioned database)

Hooray for explaining, rather than dumbing down, mathematical concepts!

No comments:

Post a Comment