Around the Internet: September 2010 Edition

 

• Everything you never wanted to know about figs (hat tips once, twice and three times removed to Tyler Cowen, Andrew Sullivan and Christina Agapakis respectively).
• Micronaut: The fine art of microscopy (hat tip to Tyler Cowen).
• Stairway to Heaven [A Climber's View going up a 1768 foot gided tower] (hat tip to Richard Wiseman)

Fun with Probabilities

This post by Stephen Landsburg on his Big Questions blog has got me thinking about probabilites.

I'd like to post my own (well, plagarised from here) problem to readers:

Three poker chips are in a cup. One is marked with a BLUE dot on each side, another with a RED dot on each side, and the third has a BLUE dot on one side and a RED dot on the other. So there is one blue/blue chip, one red/red chip, and one blue/red chip.

Without looking, you take out one chip, and lay it on the table.

1. Suppose the up-side turns out to be BLUE? What is the chance that the down-side will also be BLUE?

2. What if the up-side is RED? What is the chance that the down-side will also be RED?

3. Before you see how the chip has fallen, what is the chance that it has the same color dot on both sides?

4. Suppose you answered 1/2 in response to Questions 1 & 2. That would mean that whichever the up color of the chip, the chance is 50/50 that the color on the down side is the same. But if at Question 3 you said that chance is 2/3, aren't you contradicting yourself?

If you follow the link to the paper the question comes from you'll get an explanation of the correct answer.  This is essentially a rephrasing of the more familiar Monty Hall problem.

UPDATE: The original link to this problems source no longer appears to be active.  You can try this one instead.

Around the Internet: August 2010 Edition

• Awesomeness Reminders (hat tip to Tyler Cowen)
• Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. (hat tip to Adam Rosalky)
• Extraordinary Stroboscopic Effect (hat tip to Richard Wiseman)
• Monkeys hate flying squirrels, report monkey-annoyance experts (hat tip to Tyler Cowen again)
• The Mpemba Effect
• Roads fit for People: Spontaneous order on the road (hat tip to Alex Tabarrok)

Around the Internet: July 2010 Edition

Another quiet month for the 'Around the Internet' section I'm afraid.

• The End of History (hat-tip to Tyler Cowen)
• This Too Shall Pass music video by Ok Go

Vince Cable's Graduate Tax

The latest news about university funding is Business Secretary Vince Cable's proposed Graduate Tax, where graduates pay a tax dependent on income after graduation and the money is channelled directly to universities.

Left Foot Forward covers the story here, however the focus is on Cable himself and on whether or not he will keep his campaign promise of scrapping tuition fees, rather than a discussion of whether this proposal is the best way to fund higher education or of the wider implications of the policy.

LFFs analysis is based on the assumption that:

The fair solution is to abolish tuition fees and ensure that graduate contributions are based on actual earnings in the real world, rather than sticker prices in prospectuses, which are based on guesswork.

However, little to no thought appears to have been given to whether or not this is the best way to fund higher education and what impact this will have on decisions made by students and graduates alike.

I think this is the appropriate time for a full disclaimer:

I am a university graduate; I have an engineering degree and a pretty good job; I had the privilege of attending university without the need to pay any tuition fees whatsoever (I do have a substantial loan to pay back, but that was only to cover living expenses).

In principle I have nothing against the idea of getting the people who have benefited most from a service to pay the most for it.  My concern is not simply out of self-interest of not wanting to pay any more tax.  My concern is in how the tax will affect people's behaviour.

For example how many potential students of engineering/medicine/law/etc. will choose to study history or teaching instead, figuring that they're likely to earn less in those professions therefore avoid the graduate tax?  How many potential students will decide not to go to university at all?  (This may or may not be a legitimate concern, considering that UK universities are already grossly over-applied for).  What will be the impact of these decisions on the wider economy in the long term?

Maybe the numbers are small and these concerns of little consequence.  What troubles me is that I haven't seen any analysis of the proposals that even considers these questions.

Public Transport in Cuba

I recently had the opportunity to visit the fascinating country of Cuba.  Whilst there I was informed by a tour guide of the solution the Cuban government have come up with to tackle the problem of providing public transport.

As you may already be aware Cuba is a socialist country, in fact judging from my own experiences it is by far the most socialist country I have ever visited (including China and Vietnam).  The government owns just about everything: it's part or whole-owner in all the hotels, about half of the cars we saw driving around were government owned (you can tell from the colour of the license plate), 85% of the farmland, all of the shops and most residential property lies in the government's hands.

As a foreigner you're not allowed to buy property in the country, you can only lease it from the government.  Prices in shops are set by the government so are the same everywhere (our rep pointed out that even though there is a 'duty free' shop at the airport this is essentially a joke as the prices are no different to anywhere else) - the only exception to this are flea markets.  Locals are only allowed to buy a private car from government-run car dealerships; the type of car they are permitted to buy is dictated by how much they have paid to the government in taxes.

Many locals therefore, drive government-owned cars and/or rely on public transport.  The solution the government have come up with to provide it's citizens with public transport is to introduce a simple law which is essentially this:

If you are driving a government vehicle (i.e. one with blue license plates) and you have space for additional passengers you must stop to pick up hitch-hikers.

They enforce this by having government officials man hitch-hiking posts (which operate like bus stops) and flagging down vehicles with blue license plates to check if they can accommodate the hitch-hikers.

I wouldn't dream of hitch-hiking or picking up a hitch-hiker in this country, but I've been assured that it's an incredibly common and safe practice in Cuba.

Around the Internet: June 2010 Edition

I've not had a lot of time to put together an 'Around the Internet' for this month, as you may have noticed I've not blogged for several weeks now.  The following two stories entertained me though:

"A German student created a major traffic jam in Bavaria after making a rude gesture at a group of Hell's Angels motorcycle gang members, hurling a puppy at them and then escaping on a stolen bulldozer."  Story here via Reuters.

Barbados versus Grenada, the demand for own goals, 1994.

(hat-tip to Tyler Cowen for both stories).

Holiday

I'm going away on holiday tomorrow, and am unlikely to have much internet access, so won't be blogging for the next couple of weeks.

Drought Fears, Hosepipe Bans and Bad Economics

There was a story reported by the BBC this morning about concerns over water shortages in the North-West of England due to an exceptionally dry few months.

We are told in the report to take showers instead of baths in an effort to conserve water and that we may be facing the prospect of 'hose-pipe bans' in the near future.

There are a couple of problems with this analysis and with the way of thinking which underlies it:

First, it is questionable whether or not showering rather than bathing actually uses less water.  There are a number of variables which impact on this:

How big is your bath?

How much do you actually fill your bath?

How powerful is your shower?

How long do you spend in the shower?

Without answers to questions such as these we can't say for sure which uses less water.

This, however is a moot point.  Banning use of hose-pipes is comparable to banning particular types of shower-head.  Everybody suffers as a result of the ban because no-one was willing to cut back on their own water consumption.

People seem to forget that we pay for water.  If there is not enough water it is because the price of water is inflexible to changes in supply and demand.  For any other free-market commodity if the supply were to dry up* like this the price would increase, people would cut back their own consumption and there would be no shortage, no need for a ban.

The problem is our water isn't priced appropriately.  The rate you pay for the water coming out of your taps is paid alongside your Council Tax and is linked not to the quantity of water used, but to the value of your property.  If you have a big house and live in a nice area you are likely to pay more for your water consumption, even if you use less, than someone living in a crappy one-bedroom flat in a dodgy part of town.

The appropriate response to a water shortage is not to institute a ban on certain types of usage, but to have an appropriate system of pricing water:

• Water consumption should be charged per unit used.
• The price charged per unit should fluctuate dependent on prevailing market conditions (i.e. water should cost more in summer and less in winter).

People would then adjust their consumption accordingly and, assuming you don't live in the Atacama desert, there should be no fear of there ever being a shortage of water.

* Excuse the pun.

Piracy

I recall a discussion I had with my brother recently where we got talking about piracy (the software/music/film kind; not the pieces of eight/walking the plank/jolly roger kind).  He seemed to be conflicted on the issue: on the one hand he thought that piracy was rightfully illegal, on the other hand he defended the illegal downloading of films, his grounds for doing so being that the format of the illegally downloaded films was much more convenient than DVD or Blu-Ray (I shall not bore anyone with the details).  I pointed out that this is not a moral defence, merely a convenient justification for what he sees generally as morally reprehensible behaviour.

Chris Dillow puts forward a much better defence of the behaviour here.

Putting aside the double-think that seems to be required of my brother to hold these two conflicting positions simultaneously, I am conflicted over what position to take, both generally and in my current situation.

Generally, I can see there are both benefits and costs of piracy affecting a whole range of different people.  It hurts very famous, but not necessarily talented, artists, music labels, promoters and retailers.  Although, the benefits to the consumer must outweigh these damages:

If an artist fails to sell 1000 CDs due to piracy they (and everyone along the supply chain) are worse off by the profit they would have made on those 1000 CDs.  However, 1000 consumers who would have bought the CD, but downloaded it illegally for free are all better off by the value of the CD.  In addition, many more people who would not have bought the CD, because it was priced higher than they valued it, will also download it and be better off by whatever value they attach to it.

It's impossible to know how many people who download a CD would or wouldn't have bought it if they couldn't download it, so it's impossible to know exactly how much consumers benefit by, only that it is at least equal to the cost to the music industry.  It also benefits young, lesser known and talented artists.

Specifically, there is a film out in cinemas at the moment which I would like to see and would be willing to pay for a cinema ticket to do so.  However, none of my local cinemas are screening this film, in fact no cinema anywhere near me is, so for me to see it now would require a round-trip of approximately 5 hours plus the cost of transport (be it train, bus or fuel for the car).  This is a considerably greater cost (in money, time and effort) than merely the price of a cinema ticket.  What to do?

I have four options:

1. I could spend a considerable amount of my time, effort and cash travelling to see the film now.

2. I can wait until the film is released on DVD, usually a few months after cinema release, and either buy or rent it then.

3. I can forgo seeing the film at all.

4. I can download the film illegally and watch it for free from the comfort of my own home.

If I decide that the cost of getting to see the film at the cinema isn't worth it in this case, but I do still want to see the film, that rules out options 1 and 3.

Out of my two remaining options the most convenient is option 4, whilst the only legal option is number 2.  Of course, just because something is illegal is not an argument in favour of it being illegal.  If I accept Chris's argument and my own cost-benefit analysis above there is no reason why piracy should be necessarily illegal from a utilitarian standpoint.  The argument that still stands in favour of the illegality of piracy is a libertarian one concerning intellectual property rights.

Those who are strict utilitarians won't necessarily have any problem with piracy, for those of us who do there are applications which allow us to purchase music legitimately (i.e. iTunes, Spotify), but on our terms (you can by specific songs, not just albums and the singles artists/record producers choose to publish) and from the comfort of our own homes where we can receive and enjoy the product instantly.

My analysis and my brother's experience suggests that there is a potential market for something similar to iTunes for films.