Epistemic Status: 4/4 – Maximum Effort

Doing Things Differently – Adventures Raising the Next Generation

By Mellivora | 7 March 2024 | Comments 4 comments
Epistemic Status: 4/4 - Maximum Effort

It has been some time since I posted on this blog. Writing posts that are good enough for me to consider posting takes a reasonable amount of effort, and since my last post I embarked upon a new project that significantly reduced my time available to work on such things. Given the title of this post, it will come as no surprise that the new project in question is “everything associated with having and raising a child”. This project is probably of limited interest to some, but there are aspects of the experience that I feel that I should share, in case it is of benefit to others.

By “doing things differently”, I refer to the process of questioning why an approach to something may be the norm, and choosing an alternative path that is more optimal (for me at least – other people’s predilections may differ). This of course carries risks, and I try to think through as many reasons why the norm is indeed the norm, before I cavalierly leap over Chesterton’s fence. However, if after this process, I still feel that I can make my life easier/better/more efficient with minimal risk, then I give the alternative approach a try…

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Heavy Tailed Distributions and the States of Randomness

By Mellivora | 24 June 2020 | Comments 1 comment
Epistemic Status: 4/4 - Maximum Effort

I. Normality

The “Normal Distribution” (also called the Gaussian Distribution) is a very useful and well-studied tool for analysing data. It is however often misapplied, despite the efforts of Benoit Mandelbrot and Nassim Taleb to raise awareness of areas where it might be inappropriate to use. One reason people may be tempted to overuse it might be its name, which is a little too suggestive of it being some kind of “standard”, so henceforth I will use its alternative name to avoid perpetuating this any more than is inevitable.

The trouble is, that everyone is so familiar with the Gaussian Distribution, that it is very seductive to shoehorn your data into it and try to use the familiar techniques to analyse your data. When people see a “bell curve”, their first thought is usually “looks like it is Gaussian distributed”, meaning that the data behaves like it has been sampled from the graph below…

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Arguments for a UBI – Conclusion

By Mellivora | 27 May 2020 | Comments 8 comments
Epistemic Status: 4/4 - Maximum Effort

This post is part of the sequence Arguments for a Universal Basic Income.

Implementation Possibilities

Having addressed the idea of a Universal Basic Income from a wide range of perspectives, it is hopefully not unthinkable that such a policy could generate a similarly wide base of support, given the right framing. If the same policy can appeal to socialists, capitalists, conservatives and liberals alike, whilst being both practical and affordable, it is clearly in need of more attention. The issue is, that it is quite a dramatic policy shift that would be politically untenable to achieve in one fell swoop…

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Arguments for a UBI – The Realist

By Mellivora | 25 April 2020 | Comments 2 comments
Epistemic Status: 4/4 - Maximum Effort

This post is part of the sequence Arguments for a Universal Basic Income.

Demonstration of Viability for the UK

It is a complaint often made about a Universal Basic Income, that it would be impossible to finance. Using the UK as an example, I will demonstrate that this is not the case, by estimating the likely actual cost of such a programme, showing that it is in fact no more unrealistic than the system of state benefits in place now. I have used the UK government’s statistics for the financial demographics of the UK…

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Arguments for a UBI – The Accountant

By Mellivora | 22 April 2020 | Comments 5 comments
Epistemic Status: 4/4 - Maximum Effort

This post is part of the sequence Arguments for a Universal Basic Income.

Simple Tax Code

In countries that try to have a progressive tax system, income taxes can be exceedingly complicated. The tendency is to try not to tax people very much when they are earning less than a certain amount, then to increase the percentage that their income is taxed at, as that income increases. This is seen as preferable to taxing everyone at the same rate, as although 20% of a £10,000 income is much less than 20% of a £100,000 income, that £2,000 is essential for the first person to be able to eat, whereas the person earning £100,000 could spare a lot more than £20,000 before even noticing the difference…

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Bayesian Updating

By Mellivora | 4 April 2020 | Comments 0 Comments
Epistemic Status: 4/4 - Maximum Effort

Question

You have a randomly biased coin picked from the uniform distribution U(0,1). It is flipped 3 times and comes up heads twice and tails once. What is probability that 4^th flip is a head?

This is a question that we can answer using Bayesian Updating, but unlike most simple examples of Bayes Theorem, we are not updating a single probability but an entire probability distribution. There are many very good explanations of how to apply Bayes Theorem to update a single probability (video, article). The principle is the same for updating a distribution, but it is a little more involved…

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Computus – Calculating the Date of Easter

By Mellivora | 25 March 2020 | Comments 4 comments
Epistemic Status: 4/4 - Maximum Effort

This may seem like an odd topic, but it is nevertheless quite interesting. Quite aside from any ecclesiastical purposes, it is useful to know when Easter is going to be, as in many countries there are public holidays associated with it. As well as telling you when you might be able to get 16 days off by only using 8 days of leave (or alternatively, telling you when all the places you want to go will be super busy), Easter has significant financial implications too. Supermarkets usually have much higher sales volumes, and of course, banks and the stock market are closed for four days in a row. The calculation of the date of Easter is of such historical importance that it even has its own name – “Computus”.

Lots of businesses use Microsoft Excel for all manner of purposes – often financial. Therefore it would probably be useful to be able to calculate the date of Easter in an Excel formula. Hahaha. Let’s get started shall we…

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