Chance News 107
Quotations
"Mr. Slemrod [a public finance economist at the University of Michigan] also urged economists to talk in terms of ranges rather than point estimates when discussing how taxes affect the economy, to reflect the fact that these figures are simply educated guesses. But he understands why they don’t. 'Washington wants a number,' he said. “Washington doesn’t like confidence intervals.'"
Submitted by Bill Peterson
“If ten thousand people flip a coin, after ten flips the odds are there will be someone who has turned up heads every time. People will hail this man as a genius, with a natural ability to flip heads. Some idiots will actually give him money. This is exactly what happened to LTCM. But it’s obvious that LTCM didn’t know [bleep] about risk control. They were all charlatans.”
Submitted by Margaret Cibes
Forsooth
The last edition of Chance News included a story on Lightning and the lottery, which is reminiscent of the following greeting card:
Submitted by Alan Shuchat
"In the chart below, I’ve listed the share of Democratic voters who identified as liberal, and as white, in the 39 states where the networks conducted exit polls during the 2008 Democratic primaries. Then I’ve multiplied the two numbers together to estimate the share of Democrats in each state who were both white and liberal."