Homeowner's investment investigations and dangerous statistical comparisons
We look at the alternative strategies of paying off the mortgage in full first, or investing all of one's savings and paying off the mortgage in full 20 years later. We also learn what to call the dangerous power of statistics where it lets us draw conclusions without understanding anything.
On creating text adventures and predicting the past with the future
We look at what it takes to create a well-polished text adventure (and get a chance to play mine!) and we get brief but possibly useful advice from Bueno de Mesquita.
Financial calculations in Emacs; fundamental questions of information theory
We learn how to compute with compounding interest in Emacs (and discover that the HP-12c is still better.) The two fundamental questions of information theory also get a mention.
Drones, Hill plots, and optimising the wrong thing
We speculate about the cause of the Chinese push toward better drones. We look at a bunch of Hill plots. We take a hint from Optimising Oracle Performance.
Mario colours and engine-off procedures
We do a nerdy dive into Mario title colours and marry them with entropy. Then we rehearse the first step when an engine quits in a single-engine aircraft. In case our children pull the throttle when we're on the simulator, or something.
Sigh... monty hall. And functional programming!
We learn an intuition for the Monty Hall problem that is actually intuitive, in contrast to all other intuitions. At least I think so. We also look at why functional programmers get by with less formal verification.
Stock market index value and lean development
We look at the risk-adjusted returns of stock investments and how they compare to other instruments. We also learn a neat way to phrase the purpose of lean development.
Insurance and the deadly effect of speed
We learn how to make insurance decisions and we get our yearly safe driving tip, where we look at the mathematical shape of the number of deadly accidents as a function of increased road speed.
Org parsing, shorthand generation, and paired comparisons
I get annoyed by a breakage in Org which turns out to be reasonable. We look at a swoosh generated by JavaScript. And we learn how paired comparisons get their power.
Haskell and SQLite for the win, starring corecursion
We learn how to make a side project low maintenance with clever use of boring technology. We also get an aimless look at how to achieve corecursion with foldr.
Entropic Thoughts Premium Newsletter #5
We get a hint of my latest obsession (text adventures), learn a thing or two about Haskell and the EA movement, and get a review of Code That Fits In Your Head, a book with a good premise but which falls a little flat.
Group decision-making and writing time
We get a free, easy-to-use tool to decide on things anonymously in groups. We learn a little about the time required to read and write a page of technical text.
Mobile-friendly sidenotes, and distance estimation with milliradians
We learn how to make mobile-friendly sidenotes without requiring JavaScript (though requiring some HTML templating.) We also learn to estimate distances with no external tools but our hands and a little mental arithmetic!
Dealing with Haskell errors, and how 3G works so well
We learn to read Haskell errors by example, and then we find out which sequence of coin tosses is most likely – and what that has to do with 3G cellular communication.
The greatest procedural language in the world, and some obfuscation of it
We learn in what sense Haskell is the greatest procedural language in the world, and we debate whether or not to abstract over functions.
Survival, TLS certificates, and non-obvious interpretations
Two new articles: one on statistics and one more sysadminny. Then we learn what formulations are in ethnography.
Parser combinators vs. regexes, and slurping in Perl
We compare regexes to parser combinators for an early Advent of Code problem, and we learn some Perl peculiarities that help with reading files.
Good correlations and bad flashcards
This week's article is a long one, on correlations! Even if you think you know correlations, there's probably a thing or two you don't.
Insurance perils and US Army deployment planning
Domain jargon can be funny, as is the case with insurance perils. We also learn about how the US Army plans deployments – or didn't, in that one case in 2003.
Entropic Thoughts Premium Newsletter #4
Hello, premium subscribers! Aside from the link collection, I will not be recommending a book or two today, but tell you about my top 20 (twenty!) technical...