Thaaaat's Numberwang

"Number occupies a strategic position in this conflict, because it is simultaneously the most generalized basis of thought and that which demands most abruptly the question of its being." — Alain Badiou

See also Mitchell & Webb's "Numberwang" sketch.

November 22
"the predictive failures of the pundits became obvious"

“In other words, a dart-throwing chimp would have beaten the vast majority of professionals”
October 31
“[A]lthough 0.1 might have only one significant digit in decimal, in binary notation the mantissa is a repeating sequence. This means that 0.1 can never be represented accurately in binary, no matter how many bits you use. — Why Computers Suck at Math A practical outcome: The calculation of where to look for confirmation of an incoming missile requires knowledge of the system time, which is stored as the number of 0.1-second ticks since the system was started up. Unfortunately, 0.1 seconds cannot be expressed accurately as a binary number, so when it’s shoehorned into a 24-bit register – as used in the Patriot system – it’s out by a tiny amount. But all these tiny amounts add up. At the time of the missile attack, the system had been running for about 100 hours, or 3,600,000 ticks to be more specific. Multiplying this count by the tiny error led to a total error of 0.3433 seconds, during which time the Scud missile would cover 687m. The radar looked in the wrong place to receive a confirmation and saw no target. Accordingly no missile was launched to intercept the incoming Scud – and 28 people paid with their lives.
“[A]lthough 0.1 might have only one significant digit in decimal, in binary notation the mantissa is a repeating sequence. This means that 0.1 can never be represented accurately in binary, no matter how many bits you use. — Why Computers Suck at Math

A practical outcome:

The calculation of where to look for confirmation of an incoming missile requires knowledge of the system time, which is stored as the number of 0.1-second ticks since the system was started up. Unfortunately, 0.1 seconds cannot be expressed accurately as a binary number, so when it’s shoehorned into a 24-bit register – as used in the Patriot system – it’s out by a tiny amount. But all these tiny amounts add up.

At the time of the missile attack, the system had been running for about 100 hours, or 3,600,000 ticks to be more specific. Multiplying this count by the tiny error led to a total error of 0.3433 seconds, during which time the Scud missile would cover 687m.

The radar looked in the wrong place to receive a confirmation and saw no target. Accordingly no missile was launched to intercept the incoming Scud – and 28 people paid with their lives.
October 23
nevver: Avedon’s instructions to his printer. Avedon’s instructions to his printer. (Monoscope)

nevver:

Avedon’s instructions to his printer. Avedon’s instructions to his printer. (Monoscope)

October 22
“If I was studying today, I would go get a master’s in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective.” — Just because Malcolm Gladwell can be a bit of contrarian anecdotalist doesn’t mean he doesn’t have some good advice for journalists who want to have a job in five years.

“If I was studying today, I would go get a master’s in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective.” — Just because Malcolm Gladwell can be a bit of contrarian anecdotalist doesn’t mean he doesn’t have some good advice for journalists who want to have a job in five years.

October 20
“In other words, the little contrarian thing is almost never anywhere near as important as the big first-order thing it rides on. And as journalism has come increasingly to focus on contrarianism, it has become less and less adept at actually describing the world.” — Contrarianism’s End? It’s probably going to turn out like the purported end of irony, except far more welcome.
“In other words, the little contrarian thing is almost never anywhere near as important as the big first-order thing it rides on. And as journalism has come increasingly to focus on contrarianism, it has become less and less adept at actually describing the world.” — Contrarianism’s End?

It’s probably going to turn out like the purported end of irony, except far more welcome.

October 19
“The great thing about anecdotes is when you get busted on them, you can just say ‘who cares?’ even if your entire methodology is built on anecdotes”. — Anecdotes will happen more, from Felix Salmon’s March 2005 review of Freakonomics: There have been lots of lists of names, but no numbers at all: the whole chapter reads as though if you pile up enough anecdote, you can generate empirical conclusions by sheer mass alone.
“The great thing about anecdotes is when you get busted on them, you can just say ‘who cares?’ even if your entire methodology is built on anecdotes”. — Anecdotes will happen

more, from Felix Salmon’s March 2005 review of Freakonomics:

There have been lots of lists of names, but no numbers at all: the whole chapter reads as though if you pile up enough anecdote, you can generate empirical conclusions by sheer mass alone.
October 18
“What signal does it send when you put someone who ran the group that assigned some of the worst ratings in Moody’s history in charge of preventing it from happening again?”— How Moody’s sold its ratings — and sold out investors

“What signal does it send when you put someone who ran the group that assigned some of the worst ratings in Moody’s history in charge of preventing it from happening again?”— How Moody’s sold its ratings — and sold out investors

October 13
I'm sure we can agree that numbers exist
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“ We will arrange things so that when persons are in dispute, they will simply say to each other, ‘Let us calculate.’ Leibniz, quoted in Radio 4’s In Our Time
October 8
Michael Pollan’s Readers’ Food Rules

Michael Pollan’s Readers’ Food Rules