Links: Probability and DNA Testing, 16th Century Executioners, Walmart as a Bank, Etc.

Jordan Ellenberg has an excellent article in Slate about probability and DNA testing for crimes. This is important to think about, especially as we consider the implications of the recent Supreme Court decision on such testing. (In particular, the larger the database, the bigger the problem.) What was it like to be an executioner in …

Links: Number Theory, Mel Brooks, Garden Hermits, Gay Marriage, Passwords, etc

I promise to have some real posts soon—an announcement describing my freshman writing course about math, and a two-part series on the late economist Albert Hirschman, including a discussion of how his theories apply to the tech world—but for now a few links: There’s big news in math with Yitang Zhang’s proof of a big …

Interesting Articles: Syria, Free Speech and Privacy Online, Dogs, Fossil Fuels, How to Win at Poker, and More

A good article by Dexter Filkins in the New Yorker on Syria. A really complicated situation. An interesting etymology from the recent New Yorker article (paywall) by Rivka Galchen about Elmhurst Hospital: The word “pedagogy” comes from the Greek term for the slave who escorted a child to school. (p. 55) No comment about whether …

Interesting Articles: Humanities Make Money, The Purchase of Instagram, Kierkegaard, and More

UCLA English professor Robert Watson writes a very interesting article about the economics of higher education: Bottom Line Shows Humanities Really Do Make Money I have a good deal to say about the misleading arguments often made about the cost of higher education. Perhaps at some point I’ll take the time to say that here. …

Interesting Articles: The Dickens/Dostoevsky Hoax, the Mars Rover, Jason Collins, Janet Malcolm, Einstein’s Hoagies

If you haven’t read Eric Naiman’s fascinating article about the hoax of Dostoevsky meeting Dickens yet, you should. (It’s a long but fun read; give yourself time to enjoy it.) A great New Yorker article on NASA’s Curiosity rover to Mars, by Burkhard Bilger. A few questions: (1) There’s a high failure rate in these …

Interesting Articles, Links, Etc.

Some more links. Why do companies buy out startups just to get their employees, rather than just offering them higher salaries, which seems like it would be cheaper? An interesting article in the NYT gives some answers to this puzzle about so-called acqui-hiring in Silicon Valley.1 See also the longer law article by the original …

Interesting Links

I imagine in the blog that I will be sharing various links to articles, etc., that I find interesting. Perhaps lightly annotated. Rather than overburden your RSS feed or whatnot with too many individual entries (cough, cough Andrew Sullivan, who I would subscribe to if there would be some way to do so without it …