2024-01-26
Via Marginal Revolution:
The explanation for this is pretty obvious when you think about it. Just as today, people bought tickets and their names were written on the tickets.
I never get tired of the "you were taught this in school, but it probably didn't happen" type of thing.
2024-01-22
Gaissmaier and Gigerenzer found that Americans flew less and drove more in the year after 9/11, which led to 1,600 more traffic deaths over that period than would otherwise have been expected.
From Range Widely by David Epstein
2024-01-17
It pains me to see the warm vineyards and villages on the sunny side of the main Valais valley on the north side of Lake Geneva and the heavily-farmed sunny slopes of the north side of the Anterior Rhine Valley in the shade, while the wooded slopes on the shady side are bathed in blazing sunlight.
From the Swiss National Museum.
A somewhat trivial topic: Swiss relief maps show the sunlight as coming from the Northwest when in real life it comes most often from the South. The article is beautifully rendered. Something about it transports me to summertime in the Alps.
The culprit? Most artists draw with their right hands and write from left to right and so European maps tend to show shade on the right-hand side of the map. Via The Browser.
2024-01-09
I saw this yesterday afternoon and it caught my eye:
That study that found men frequently leave their wives when they get sick was retracted/corrected.
— Leah Libresco Sargeant (@LeahLibresco) January 6, 2024
Trouble was: People who left the study were actually miscoded as getting divorced.
https://t.co/I2qHTzg6eY
It reminded me of #49 in my list of 52 things I learned in 2022: If a married woman is diagnosed with a brain tumor, there is a 21% chance that the couple will divorce; if the husband has a tumor, there is only a 3% chance they will divorce, which I found via Rob Henderson.
Based on some googling, I don't think this is the exact same study, but in the spirit of intellectual honesty, I figured I should post it.
There is some nuance, but the general relationship between illness and husbands divorcing their wives no longer holds.
Congratulations to I-Fen Lin and Susan Brown, who found the error, and Amelia Karraker who handled the correction with dignity.
2024-01-08
New to me this week is Dean Bog who does 15 minute videos on various neighborhoods around the city of Pittsburgh.
If you have any interest at all in the city, I suggest you check them out. The Bloomfield video (I think his first one) is a good one to start with, but they're all worthwhile. As someone who grew up in Pittsburgh, I'm amazed at how much they teach me, both about the "facts" of the city and it's culture.
One thing Dean points out is that the city neighborhoods have a distinct feel because of the geography. The hills and rivers mean that two neighborhoods that are side by side on a map may not have any actual connections between each other and so can evolve totally differently.
I found out about Dean via this City Cast Pittsburgh episode where he talks about his process. I'm paraphrasing here, but one thing he does is basically walk around and talk to people until they introduce him to the unofficial mayor of the area, who tells the story of the place.