Quick Takes (Sept 2024 #1)
Are you a fan of Bayesian inferencing (and Bayesian priors). If yes, you’ll love this article about two defendants in a multi-billion dollar lawsuit dying in unsuspicious accidents within days of each other after they’re acquitted. What are the chances, eh? It is a short article, so read the whole thing: I will not spoil it for you. Link.
Stock market traders’ brains know more than the traders themselves. Researchers used fMRI scans to study the brains of professional stock market traders as they were shown information about various stocks and then asked to predict which stocks would outperform the market. The actual predictions of the traders were not great: they weren’t able to successfully predict which stocks would outperform (beyond chance). However, the fMRI analysis revealed that the activity in the reward center of their brain (Nucleus Accumbens) was higher for stocks which went on to outperform the market. In short, the System 1 brains of the traders know more than the System 2 brains. Source. (See also: System 1 vs System 2.)
Null Island: There’s a spot in the Atlantic ocean just off the west coast of Africa that has far more activity that it should. (See the bright spot in the ocean just below Nigeria in the map above.) For example, it often has a rather high AQI for a spot in the ocean (who’s polluting there?) And a bunch of Strava runners are running there (in the ocean!) And cars are also driving around that spot. What’s going on? This is “Null Island” a joke among map enthusiasts. This is the spot with Latitude 0 and Longitude 0. So, whenever a map-based app is misconfigured and ends up with lat-long co-ordinates of 0 all the corresponding activity by the user of that app gets geolocated at Null Island.
Too much government vs. too little government in building infrastructure: We all regularly complain about how slow the government is at building infrastructure. And the phenomenal growth of Gurgaon is evidence of what the private sector can achieve when the government just gets out of the way. But, Gurgaon is also evidence of what can go wrong because there’s no government to handle the commons: sewage, water, electricity, and security, all are suffering. As usual, there needs to be a balance between too little and too much.
Marketers use the confetti illusion to trick you.
All the spheres in this image are the same colour. They look different to you because of the stripes in front. Challenge: companies use this illusion to trick you into thinking that a particular product is better that it is and so you buy more Can you guess the product?
Here's the answer to "Where do marketers use the confetti illusion to trick us". In a supermarket, oranges are always in a bag like this. And it is always red. Look at the original illusion and see what the red stripes are doing.
You can’t become an expert simply by doing something for a long time unless that experience is combined with “Deliberate Practice”. This paper gives an overview of what deliberate practice means. It also describes what the ideal deliberate practice looks like: 1) It involves challenges/exercises that are a little beyond your current abilities but not too much, 2) Each exercise/challenge should be short, 3) You should get feedback on what you did wrong immediately when it is completed, and 4) It should be followed-up with other similar tasks with feedback until you are able to complete them successfully consistently. If you don’t want to read a research paper, check out my video on deliberate practice.
Self-driving cars are finally ready to take-off? Waymo in San Francisco and Baidu in China are really taking off and increasing exponentially
Your bacteria are the average of the bacteria of the 5 people closest to you. Bacteria are awesome—there are a thousand different types of bacteria in your gut which are necessary for you to live, and the composition of those bacteria decide if you’ll have obesity, diabetes, immune system problems, and much more. Now, Harvard scientists have found that over time, you acquire the bacteria of the people you hang out with: and that’s why if you hang out with fat people, you’ll get fat, even if you exercise more and eat less than them. In fact, a teaspoon of mud (soil) contains more microorganisms than people on Earth (of 50000 different species) and all life on the planet will die without some of these bacteria. And here’s some research showing that the diversity of gut bacteria of racehorces is instrumental in them winning races.
