Debate post-mortems

The post-mortems on the first presidential debate provided me with first-hand experience of something that I had previously only read about, which was that the reactions of actual viewers of such debates immediately after watching them can differ quite widely from the media consensus generated afterwards. The things that we are told were significant events in past debates tend to be things that many viewers did not even notice in real time but were created as part of the post-debate narrative. [Read more…]

Sri Lanka beat Pakistan in World Cup semi-final game

In the first semi-final game against Pakistan in the Twenty20 world Cup tournament, Sri Lanka scored 139 in their 20 overs. This was lower than the 160 or so runs that teams feel gives them a pretty good chance of winning but according to the analysts, the quality of the pitch (an important factor is cricket where the ball bounces before reaching the batsman) was such that this was a reasonable score. And they were proved right when Pakistan was able to score only 123 runs in their 20 overs. [Read more…]

Have we have destroyed our children’s taste for food?

[Sorry about the confusion about the posts! I accidentally posted the text of one post under the heading of the other!]

The comments on last week’s post on some students protesting the new nutritious food guidelines for school lunches were quite lively. So I went back and tried to find some data to see if that might clarify the situation. [Read more…]

Review of the first presidential debate

[Sorry about the confusion about the posts! I accidentally posted the text of one post under the heading of the other!]

So I ended up watching the first debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.

I thought the format was much better than previous ones that I have seen. It allowed for much freer exchanges between the candidates and more time for direct exchanges and thus was more like a real debate. In the process, both speakers ended up running rough-shod over the moderator Jim Lehrer and some may accuse him of having lost control. But that was better than in some ‘debates’ from years past when the moderator acted like a circus ring master cracking the whip at the candidates. The less we see and hear of the moderator the better. [Read more…]

The ‘statistical tie’ fallacy

As I said earlier, journalists will use every device to persuade us that elections are closer than they are, in order to keep interest high. One of the things they do is to assert that if the difference between the predicted votes for two candidates is smaller than the margin of error of the poll, then the two candidates are in a statistical tie. This gives the impression that it is a toss-up, i.e., 50-50 chance, as to who is ahead. This is simply not true and worth reiterating during the election season, like I did back in 2008 around this time. [Read more…]

The New York subway ‘jihad poster’ fracas

Some of you may have been following the controversy involving posters in the subways. Pamela Geller, who sees the threat of Sharia under every bed, wanted to place signs in the subway stations of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) of New York that said “In any war between civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” The odd wording derives from something that Ayn Rand once said. [Read more…]

Cricket World Cup

The Twenty20 World Cup cricket tournament is currently going on in Sri Lanka. The original 16 teams were whittled down to eight in preliminary group matches. Those eight were then reduced to four (West Indies, Sri Lanka, Australia, and Pakistan) in another set of group matches. These teams will now play in a sudden-death format to see who emerges as the winner. [Read more…]