Saturday, October 24, 2015

Republican 2016 presidential primary...

Republican 2016 presidential primary...  The current data (derived from Betfair wagering).  While the U.S. polls show Trump and Carson at the top, by far ... the people putting their money down on the race are favoring Rubio by a wide margin.  What do they (think they) know that the pollsters aren't picking up?

If you're not familiar with using betting data in a situation like this, here's the one thing that's important to know: since about the mid-'90s, the betting data has been far more reliable in predicting the outcome of elections than polls have been – and that difference is increasing over time.  Either bettors are getting better information, pollsters are getting worse (or are more overtly biased), or both.  I'm guessing both...


Online encyclopedia of integer sequences...

Online encyclopedia of integer sequences...  I've posted about this fascinating resource before, but today I ran across a nice story about Neil Sloane, the mathematician who created it...

I don't get too excited...

I don't get too excited ... when I read about foreign countries spying on us.  One reason why: we do it too.  Another reason: we do almost nothing to stop it.  If we don't like the spying, then instead of being all offended and self-righteous when friend or foe spies on us, we should instead concentrate on defending ourselves.  The current plague of Chinese industrial spying, for example, should be seen as a failure of our defenses against spying (in effect, inviting the spies!) – not as some nefarious Chinese plot.

The current situation is as if we tore the front door off our house, put giant billboards advertising that fact on the freeway, then act surprised and hurt when thieves rush in to steal all our stuff.  I know from personal experience at the last several software companies I worked for that stealing all their source code would only have been moderately difficult for a complete outsider with no internal connections – and completely trivial for anyone with any insider assistance at all.  Anyone with even the slightest interest in the technology I worked on could have had it all (and quite possibly did!) very easily...

Pluto is weird!

Pluto is weird!  The photo at right is one of the latest downlinked from New Horizons from its Pluto encounter earlier this year.  Those sure look like “canyons” formed by some kind of flowing liquid!  Pluto is just chock full of surprises, making the scientists on the project very happy. 
Also in today's Pluto-related news: a first photo (at left) of Kerberos (one of its moons), which isn't anything at all like what astronomers expected.

Researchers really hit the jackpot with the New Horizons probe...