This here is quality from Agata Pyzik.
The minor detail that there is no evidence any central bank actually uses the famous Taylor rule, and the somewhat less minor one that using it requires making a priori decisions about two of its parameters as well as the inflation target itself.
I occasionally wondered precisely what Southern Comfort was, which is why as far as I know I’ve never tasted it. The mystery, explained – whatever you call industrial spirit, apricot concentrate, and sugar, it’s certainly not whisky.
The Murdoch gets into some detail about the Royal Australian Navy’s especially aggressive approach to Cold War intelligence gathering, apparently in order to promote the planned procurement of 12 new long-range SSKs. Notable both for this quote from Prime Minister Bob Hawke:
“No, you are wrong,” he replied. “I’ve got a degree in statistics and I can tell you that the probability of detection does not increase as the number of patrols increase. They are discrete, one-off events and the probability of detection is constant.”
…mate. Also for the hair-raising near-thing mission to Shanghai river in 1992 that caused the missions to be suspended in the first place.
The Yorkshireman, often wrong, never in doubt:
He went to Belfast as deputy commander 39 Brigade. His hook, prominently displayed as he went through the streets, was highly polished and as sharp as a razor….As Chief of [SHAPE] Crisis Management Staff, he said that his personal inclination, in the event of a crisis, was to “Nuke ’em till they glow.”
Why is the Circle Line no longer circular? London Reconnections explains.
The UK Data Explorer, as close as you can get to FRED for Britain and a damn sight better than the ONS web site.
Browser extension that automatically trawls the Universal Jobmatch web site and generates sufficient applications to stop the abuse. Jaroslav Hasek, you should be here to see this.
Not a bucket of water for the Alzheimer’s drug, more like a cupful, worth reading anyway.
I’ve changed the shade of orange on TYR to international orange(aerospace) from whatever it was before.
So Southern Comfort is kind of like an Amaretto?
“I’ve got a degree in statistics and I can tell you that the probability of detection does not increase as the number of patrols increase. They are discrete, one-off events and the probability of detection is constant.”
Really not sure about that at all. What on earth do you suppose he was getting at? If each patrol is a discrete event, then p(failure in 1975) is proportional to (number of patrols in 1975) surely.
Well, Hawke was obviously thinking in terms of a given probability of detection, with each patrol being an independent draw, like rolling a dice. In which case, he’s right.
It is true that if you’ve not been caught yet and the probability of detection is nonzero, you eventually will be, but that’s not the same thing as the probability itself going up. Rather, it’s just that probability is a continuum but is experienced in binary terms – you don’t experience a p(caught) of 0.06, you experience either caught or not caught. The felt reality of that probability is roughly 99 successful trips and one disaster.
I think a more telling criticism is the assumption of independence itself – in this case it holds only if the enemy doesn’t change or learn and the Aussies don’t get sloppy or try something new that doesn’t work – and had I been Hawke’s treasury devil I’d have pointed out that the point of the exercise was to observe improvements in Chinese and Soviet antisubmarine warfare but they were assuming it wouldn’t improve.
Well, Hawke was obviously thinking in terms of a given probability of detection, with each patrol being an independent draw, like rolling a dice. In which case, he’s right.
It is true that if you’ve not been caught yet and the probability of detection is nonzero, you eventually will be, but that’s not the same thing as the probability itself going up.
The probability of _any given patrol_ being detected doesn’t change, sure, but that’s irrelevant. Context:
“The cautious admiral Mike Hudson, chief of the naval staff, dismayed the submariners by telling Hawke that while the operation was professional and produced good intelligence, it was very hazardous. A submarine might be detected and possibly captured, with serious international consequences. “As we do more and more patrols, the likelihood of this happening will increase,” Hudson said.”
What Hudson is worrying about is the probability of _any of the patrols_ being detected and he’s absolutely right that doing more patrols increases that risk. If p(caught) is 0.01 per patrol, and you run ten patrols, then there is a 9.6% chance that one of your submarines is going to be caught. If you run fifteen patrols, then the chance goes up to 14%. Hawke is just being a smart alec and deliberately misunderstanding his admiral here.