The world through the lens of Kao.
I learned about the James-Stein Estimator a few months ago and for an instant my world shook. As intelligent, well-educated adults, we’d like to think that we have a good understanding of the world; that though we may not know everything perfectly, we have the basic tools for reasoning down pat. But here come Messrs James and Stein who tell us that all this time we’ve been predicting multiple…
I was sitting in a darkened corner of the office late one night in 2014 when I picked up on a conversation that would come to have a significant impact on my life.
The hardest thing about discussing abortion is being charitable to the other side when so much is at stake. This, we must find in ourselves to do — no one can help us with it. The second hardest thing is recognizing exactly where we disagree. This is vital for productive discussions and knowing what to expect in future.
In a quote very reminiscent of statistics, Arnold Sommerfeld said:
I have long been fascinated by words whose labels have some important connection to their meanings. On learning of this connection, one often feels like one hadn’t really understood the word before. This is my collection of well-named words:
Background This is an analysis I did in 2016 to convince myself that buying the dip is smart. At that point, I had two years of savings but not invested anything in the stock market because I thought that it was overpriced and that I would be better off sitting it out and going in after the inevitable big crash. Ironically, this analysis convinced me not to try to buy the dip and I ended up…
I have often wondered why Singapore is such a competitive, status-driven society. Part of the answer lies, I think, in its overwhelming homogeneity.
There are many lonely people around us. Just by probability, some subset has to be predisposed to becoming friends if only a connection could be made. Essentially, there has to be a market, so why can’t a price be found? What’s to stop people from putting up a sign saying: “I’m lonely. Come talk to me if you’re lonely and think I’m cool?”
There is a fine line between having a preference and being close-minded. For instance, I have been asked whether I would date someone of a different race. We’re all allowed to have our own tastes in people, but at what point does that cross into racism or bigotry?
It is useful to think of training on a spectrum from expansion to consolidation. Expansion is attempting something far harder than previous accomplished. Consolidation is mastering something that can already be achieved.