Archive for June, 2006
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The (Ongoing) Vitality of Mythical Numbers
As it happens, my wife and I were just discussing the original “Mythical Numbers” paper over the weekend (in the context of predictions about effects of Avian Flu.
The article quotes one of the more egregious examples from the original paper (Singer. M. (1971). The vitality of mythical numbers, Public Interest, 23, pp. 3-9.)
In the early 1950s the Kefauver Committee published a $20 billion estimate for the annual “take” of gambling in the United States. The figure actually was “picked from a hat.” One staff member said: “We had no real idea of the money spent. The California Crime Commission said $12 billion. Virgil Petersen of Chicago said $30 billion. We picked $20 billion as the balance of the two.”
He also cites a paper I hadn’t seen: Reuter, P. (1984). The (continued) vitality of mythical numbers. Public Interest, 75, Spring, 135-147. -
CoolTool:DigitalLibraryCards
CoolTool:DigitalLibraryCards. If I ever lose access to university systems, this could be a good resource. From Kevin Kelly’s “Cool Tools.”
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Pollution From Chinese Coal Casts a Global Shadow – New York Times
Pollution From Chinese Coal Casts a Global Shadow – New York Times
It’s “foggy” in Beijing again today…
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I’m spending a few weeks in China, mostly shepherding a group of U of Michigan students around. It’s been a very interesting trip. They’ll go home the day after tomorrow, and I’ll stay about one more week and try to get some work done here. There’ve been a couple of adventures—a student lost her wallet with passport and all credit cards and money in a cab, and was far into the process of getting it replaced at the embassy when a woman who’d found it in the cab call them, and we were able to meet up with her and get absolutely everything back, which was a very wonderful experience all around. Less wonderful was that I managed to sprain my ankle at the Temple of Heaven this afternoon. I bought some spray on medicine that claims that it activates blood and dissolves pain, and it certainly did make it feel quite a bit better. Hopefully it will all be fine before I head to Inner Mongolia with Fang Ge on the 14th.The picture is from a preschool. I’m posting it because it reminds me of Xiaobin’s travails with hot water. We visited some very high-end preschools and I noted the popularity of western practices such as “centers.” Some people with more familiarity with U.S. preschools thought that we wouldn’t let preschoolers play with batteries and electricity. I thought it more noteworthy that they had to take half the kids out of the class to some other activity to be able to do their “centers,” because 35 kids (the average number in the classes we saw) is too many to manage in that kind of activity.