Posts

The role of skill and luck in the outcome of AFL matches.
In this post we use a simple formula described by Michael Mauboussin in his book, The Success Equation to calculate the role of luck in AFL matches, and make some comparisons to other sports.
DCL
2022-12-10
The role of skill and luck in the outcome of AFL matches.
A dystopian investment thesis
I believe there is a fairly resonable chance that the future business and political landscape will be dominiated by ultra-large, global, but vitally structually important corporations. Science fiction writers have predicted this outcome and call these entities megacorps.
DCL
2022-01-29
A dystopian investment thesis
Being data-driven doesn't protect you from being fooled by false narratives
If you work in data/statistics/DS/ML/AI and are active on LinkedIn you’ve probably seen this image. It typically recieves a large number of positive comments. This makes sense, data by itself isn’t informative without a layer of interpretation. However, without a valid model of the world, ‘telling a story from data’ typically results in an erroneous post-hoc rationalisation of events obtained from noisy, incomplete data that is not representative of the wider population
DCL
2022-01-07
Being data-driven doesn't protect you from being fooled by false narratives
The hype around crypto and web3 is insane. Here are some predictions.
The current hype around Crypto and web3 is absolutely insane. There’s very little probability we do not look back at this craze as being even sillier than what occured during dot-com bubble.
DCL
2021-11-27
The hype around crypto and web3 is insane. Here are some predictions.
How to lose $300+ million flipping property in a rising housing market with data-science*. A lesson in adverse selection.
Zillow announced it would use ‘algorithms’ to identify cheap properties that it could later flip for a handsome profit. Sounds obvious enough right? Surely with a big-data advantage, they will be able to do better in the housing market than the average punter? Turns out they couldn’t.
DCL
2021-11-15
How to lose $300+ million flipping property in a rising housing market with data-science*. A lesson in adverse selection.
I've minted some NFT's, but I still think they are a joke
If you’re somewhat technologically aware and haven’t been living under a rock for the last year, you’ve probably heard of NFT’s, perhaps specifically that one NFT sold for $69 million USD.
DCL
2021-10-21
I've minted some NFT's, but I still think they are a joke
Do multi-armed and contextual bandits really adapt to new environments or regimes?
Typical bandits are only capable of adapting to new data that are being observed, they are not ‘really’ adapting to changes in the environment. Bandit methods typically assume stationarity and that the environment or underlying phenomenon we are trying to understand doesn’t change in time!
DCL
2021-10-06
Do multi-armed and contextual bandits really adapt to new environments or regimes?
How to select a good colour map for visualising data
Some of the most popular colour maps are difficult to interpret correctly and are terribly misleading. We demonstrate some of these issues with some simple examples and suggest superior alternatives.
DCL
2021-06-15
How to select a good colour map for visualising data
Repeated positive-expectation gambles can have very negative actual outcomes
In this post we will explore how playing positive expected value games is not always a good idea, even if you can play them repeatedly. This runs counter to common beliefs regarding expected values.
DCL
2021-05-30
Repeated positive-expectation gambles can have very negative actual outcomes
We should be calling it Pseudo-Intelligence, not Artificial-Intelligence
A passage from Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age made me think that perhaps in the future we might be more honest what we now label and market as artificial intelligence.
DCL
2021-05-01
We should be calling it Pseudo-Intelligence, not Artificial-Intelligence