Some things that have recently struck me in one way or another: Literary references to actuaries aren’t that common Some interesting graphical representations of relative sizes from xkcd: money (recent) and radiation (older). And from elsewhere: how big is a PhD? Old news is the latest thing US/UK culture gap: “Like most US universities, [UC [...] Read more
I love the Guardian’s datablog. It consistently presents large quantities of data in interesting interactive ways. Yesterday it took data from the annual survey of hours and earnings, and presented it in three different ways: Choose a salary, and see how earnings for different jobs compare Choose a job, and see what the earnings are [...] Read more
Tags: gender gap, women
Cause of death statistics are notoriously unreliable, for several reasons. Most notably, most of the information comes from death certificates, which only have space for a single cause. Often, there are a number of factors which together resulted in the death, and it’s rather random which cause is chosen, and which manifestation of it: proximate, [...] Read more
Tags: cause of death, mortality
Some things I’ve found interesting: Have you seen those Google ads on the tube? The example they give of a strong password isn’t so strong after all. It’s always worth checking the statistics. The important field – as usual with xkcd, make sure you read the alt-text Language is not writing, and some myths that [...] Read more
Tags: climate change, data, password, security
If we are to deal with climate change, the price of carbon-intensive energy is going to have to rise, says Tim Harford. It makes sense. We have to reduce our energy use, and pricing is a good mechanism to help that along. Along the same lines, fuel duty is a Good Thing.
Tags: climate change, energy
Possibly my attention has been primed by Ada Lovelace Day, and another recent event, but I’ve been noticing a lot in the press recently about misogynism and other forms of discrimination. The impression I get is that the mainstream is becoming increasingly laddish, or failing to become less so. Women are speaking up about death threats and other [...] Read more
Game Theory, the Economist sports blog (a fairly loose description) has had a series of articles recently on how technology is affecting sport. Telemetry (including GPS tracking) is being used in Formula 1, sailing, rugby and football, and looks likely to spread to others. Technology has been a huge influence in tennis, but it looks as [...] Read more
Tags: sport
Some links I’ve found interesting recently: What makes a good Regulator? (I was on one of the panels) Berlusconi probably agrees with James Carville* Some people think that some of us are in the right career — it’s not often actuaries make the headlines Machine learning in action: an absence of preconceptions is a good thing [...] Read more
Tags: actuaries, Berlusconi, broadband, Carville, machine learning, regulation
Ok, it’s a bit trite, but human behaviour is really important, and a good understanding of human behaviour is a goal for people in many different fields. Marketing, education and social policy all seek to influence our behaviour in different ways and for different purposes — that’s surely what the whole Nudge thing is all [...] Read more
Tags: causality, confidence, modelling, psychology