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Blogging, Twitter and Email Break
Albert Wenger – Dec 22, 2017
As 2017 draws to a close I will be taking a break from blogging, twitter and (for the most part) email until well into January. I have a great set of book recommendations – far too many to get through [...] Read more
Looking for Book Recommendations
Albert Wenger – Dec 18, 2017
We are about to go away on a three week trip. Long trips have been a wonderful aspect of homeschooling our children. We are fortunate to have the means to show them different parts of the world and this year [...] Read more
Doug Jones Victory: Trump is Vulnerable
Albert Wenger – Dec 13, 2017
At our house we were all refreshing our computers furiously starting at 8pm with ever increasing excitement as the evening progressed. We were absolutely thrilled when Doug Jones victory was certain. If Doug Jones can win in Alabama, the state [...] Read more
Battle for the Internet: Fight for Net Neutrality
Albert Wenger – Dec 12, 2017
Later this week the FCC Commission is expected to vote along party lines to do away with net neutrality in the US. I have written extensively about why net neutrality is important for innovation. I will not rehash any of [...] Read more
AlphaZero Chess: Computers Will Think Differently from Humans, Letting them Outperform Us (on Many Tasks)
Albert Wenger – Dec 11, 2017
Planes fly differently from birds. Cars move differently from horses. And computers think differently from humans. That had always been my assumption but if you needed more proof, Google’s AlphaZero program, which had previously shown novel ways of playing Go, [...] Read more
The Quest for a Stable Coin
Albert Wenger – Dec 8, 2017
One of the objections against crypto currencies has been their volatility. Bitcoin for instance just rose by about 60% over 2 days only to then fall by about 15% in a matter of hours. Steam just ended bitcoin support citing [...] Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Suppressed Volatility
Albert Wenger – Dec 6, 2017
Last Uncertainty Wednesday provided a recap on our adventures with sample means and what those implied about the difficulties of inference. Now we will look at another equally fascinating complication: inferring volatility. As the title of this initial post gives [...] Read more
What Does it Mean to Be Human?
Albert Wenger – Dec 5, 2017
[This is a talk I was going to give at Slush but had to change my travel plans.] A 12 minute talk should be plenty to address this simple question. Just kidding. This is one of the profound questions that [...] Read more
The Emotional Benefits of Letting your Car Drive You
Albert Wenger – Nov 27, 2017
Over the holiday day weekend I did a lot of driving in a loaner Tesla (we have ordered one ourselves but it is, ahem, delayed). Well, actually, the car did a lot of the driving. I made extensive use of [...] Read more