Lars P. Syll

Bayesian statistics — an introduction If you look for a Bayesian statistics textbook accessible also to students with limited knowledge of statistics and math — this is the book!

What it takes​ to become a great economist The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts …​ He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man’s nature...

Finland’s basic income experiment​ — a preliminary evaluation According to the analysis of the register data, basic income recipients were no better or worse at finding employment than those in the control group during the first year of the experiment, and in this respect there are no statistically significant differences between the groups … According to the analysis of the survey data, the wellbeing of the basic income recipients was clearly better than...

 [embedded content] Lors de la manifestation des ‘gilets jaunes’ à Paris de ce samedi, le philosophe Alain Finkielkraut a été insulté par certains manifestants avec des expressions antisémites. «Ni victime ni héros,» mais d’abord «inquiet pour tous les Juifs de France,» Finkielkraut ne porte pas plainte: «Ce n’est pas l’esprit de vengeance qui m’anime, mais j’ai envie de contribuer à la prise de conscience. Il s’agit aujourd’hui de réfléchir à ce qui nous arrive, pour trouver...

Machine learning — getting results that are completely wrong Machine-learning techniques used by thousands of scientists to analyse data are producing results that are misleading and often completely wrong. Dr Genevera Allen from Rice University in Houston said that the increased use of such systems was contributing to a “crisis in science” … The data sets are very large and expensive. But, according to Dr Allen, the answers they come up with are likely to...

 [embedded content] This satirical film is not far from reality today. Most of us working within the universities have for a long time been aware of what the degradation of teaching and research do to both students and teachers. [h/t Steve Keen]

Why I am not a Bayesian What I do not believe is that the relation that matters is simply the entailment relation between the theory, on the one hand, and the evidence on the other. The reasons that the relation cannot be simply that of entailment are exactly the reasons why the hypothetico-deductive account … is inaccurate; but the suggestion is at least correct in sensing that our judgment of the relevance of evidence to theory depends on the perception...

I dessa tider, när ljudrummet dränks i den kommersiella radions tyckmyckentrutade ordbajseri och pubertalflamsande tjafs, har man nästan gett upp. Men det finns ljus i mörkret. I programmet Text och musik med Eric Schüldt — som sänds på söndagsförmiddagarna i P2 mellan klockan 11 och 12 — kan man lyssna på seriös musik och en programledare som har något att säga och inte bara låter foderluckan glappa. Att få höra någon med intelligens och känsla tala om saker som vi alla går...

Der Überirdische ist tot [embedded content] Bruno Ganz (1941-2019). RIP.