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
Some links I’ve found interesting recently: Tim Harford thinks that capitalism should be about more than just money, while John Kay thinks that it needn’t be about greed and gambling. For me, one of the best things about this time of the year is the start of the brussels sprout season, but those who don’t [...] Read more
Tags: Blackberry, capitalism, genetics, Lisp, probability
A month ago I, like many other general insurance actuaries, was at GIRO, our annual conference. There were around 650 people there, slightly under 20% of whom were women. And the proportion of speakers who were women was even lower (many thanks to Kathryn Morgan for the stats). I think it’s fair to say that [...] Read more
Tags: technology, women
Take reports of changed pension deficits with large amounts of salt. It’s always important to put news in context, and to think about what’s going on underneath, especially when you read a story based on a survey or report produced by a consultant. And yes, I am a consultant, and that applies to surveys or [...] Read more
Tags: estimates, pensions, uncertainty
Some links I’ve found interesting recently: Uses and abuses of crowdsourcing (via Bruce Schneier) Does High Frequency Trading improve liquidity? A Maserati for £1 – your best bet is roulette Game theory in a fairly literal sense Much more influential than Steve Jobs
Tags: crowdsourcing, Dennis Ritchie, high frequency trading, liquidity, uncertainty
This is the first issue of an occasional newsletter. It’ll be a bit like the one I used to send out until a few years ago (which is archived on my website), but will be a bit unlike it too, as my interests have, naturally enough, changed over the years. After four immensely interesting and [...] Read more