Lars P. Syll

Cholesky decomposition (student stuff)  [embedded content] Advertisements

How the laws of physics lie Melvyn Bragg and guests — Nancy Cartwright, Mark Buchanan and Frank Close — discuss if there are any Laws of Nature. And if so — are they really ‘facts of life’? http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/iots/iots_20001019-0900a.mp3 Advertisements

Political correctness is hopelessly incorrect  [embedded content] Advertisements

The dangers of neglecting methodology Alex Rosenberg — chair of the philosophy department at Duke University, renowned economic methodologist and author of Economics — Mathematical Politics or Science of Diminshing Returns? — had an interesting article up on What’s Wrong with Paul Krugman’s Philosophy of Economics some time ago. Writes Rosenberg: Krugman writes: ‘So how do you do useful economics? In general, what we really do is combine...

Bedridden with a severe cold, it’s easy to get restless. Solving fun math problems is my way of enduring … [embedded content]  [embedded content] Advertisements

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The Ricardian Vice (II) The completeness of the Ricardian victory is something of a curiosity and a mystery. It must have been due to a complex of suitabilities in the doctrine to the environment into which it was projected. That it reached conclusions quite different from what the ordinary uninstructed person would expect, added, I suppose, to its intellectual prestige. That its teaching, translated into practice, was austere and often unpalatable, lent it...

The Ricardian Vice (I) Ricardo’s … interest was in the clear-cut result of direct, practical significance. In order to get this he cut that general system to pieces, bundled up as large parts of it as possible, and put them in cold storage — so that as many things as possible should be frozen and ‘given.’ He then piled one simplifying assumption upon another until, having really settled everything by theses assumptions, he was left with only a few...

Gimme Some Lovin’ (personal)  [embedded content] Steve Winwood’s voice still, after fifty years, gives me goose pimples. Absolutely fabulous. Advertisements

The benefits of free trade — a fallacy based on a fantasy Plenty of people will try to convince you that globalization and free trade could benefit everyone, if only the gains were more fairly shared … This belief is shared by almost all politicians … and it’s an article of faith for the economics profession. You are right to reject it … It’s a fallacy based on a fantasy, and it has been ever since David Ricardo dreamed up the idea of “Comparative Advantage...