Chess isn’t exactly a game that has ever been associated with chills and thrills, but the high number of drawn matches in recent times might become a threat to the game writes KW Regan. What’s really interesting though is that there are a class of players that don’t draw games as much: computers.

• Expert players now use sophisticated computer programs to prepare their moves in advance. This is in part what has led to the high number of draws.
• What’s surprising is when computers are left to battle it out against one another there are rarely any draws.
• One explanation is what Regan calls the “contempt” factor. In situations where a draw seems the way forward the programs behave more aggressively than humans.
• Since computers are also isolated from high-stakes and pressures they are more willing to take risks. In contrast those seeking to defend their championship name would be predisposed to draws over risky tactics.
• One solution might be to reduce the amount of time that games last. Rapid chess generally leads to fewer draws.

To read more about why rapid chess isn’t necessarily the solution, how the length of games has changed over time, a match that demonstrates the problem, and other innovative and technical ways to solve the problem click here.

Source: Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP

Via: Marginal Revolution

The world’s best ranked educational institution have one thing in common – they’re incredibly old. But how about the schools that are less than 50 years old? Could these fast rising stars be the next MIT? Joyce Lau reported on the lists of top-ranked schools under the age of 50:

• Asian and European schools dominate. Hong Kong and South Korea do particularly well.
• The United States which is traditionally an academic powerhouse had very few well-regarded universities that were under 50.
• The BRIC countries disappointed. While Brazil had a small presence, Russia, India and China did not feature.

To read more including how two separate rankings that looked at the same thing differed, the top university, how Singapore has become so successful, how England did, and links to the entire list to see if your university features, click here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

In an election year polling data about the views of the electorate always steal the headlines. But are opinion polls reliable anymore? Will Oremus noted:

• Pew Research Center, arguably the most respected polling organization, found that fewer than one in 10 people now respond to their surveys. 15 years ago it was 36%.
• This might be because people are less willing to pick up calls from unknown numbers in the age of caller ID. And when they do they may be less willing to discuss their political views.
• Subsequent analysis done by Pew suggests that Pew respondents are more likely to be smokers, internet users and on food-stamps.
• This is likely to bias polling results in certain areas.
• Overall though polling now is likely more reliable than it was 30 years ago, when phones were uncommon enough to require pollsters to go door-to-door to ask people their opinions.
• It may be that the 1990s and early 2000s were the golden years for accurate polling – we may never reach the kind of accuracy we did then.

To read more, including ways that Pew’s sample population is similar to the wider American population, what this may mean for Barak Obama and Mitt Romney, why a lot of the people who are likely to pick up calls from Pew callers are ineligible to give their opinions, what nonresponse bias, coverage bias, and Bradley effect mean, why higher response rates don’t necessarily mean better data, and some reflections on the future of polling, click here.

Source: Slate

Strawberries in yogurt? Soon it’ll be the other way around.

The New York Times noted that it took about a century for the light bulb to receive mainstream adoption. Inventions don’t work the way we think they do. They take time and refinements. With that in mind they listed the 32 innovations that will change our tomorrow. Some of the more interesting include:

• Airplane cabins are dry and have thin air because of the materials they are made of. They are too weak for highly pressurized interiors and the dryness mitigates rust. Carbon fiber though is the future and shares none of these problems. In some designs humidity has tripled.
• Every person moves their body in distinct and unique ways. Even the way you answer your phone is difficult to reproduce by others. In the future these will form the basis of your passwords rather than the relatively weak, easily guessable methods we use now.
• A flavourless additive is being designed that can be added to any alcohol which then prevent hangovers the following day.
• Stick-on teeth sensors will alert you when there’s plaque buildup, and automatically schedule appointments with dentists when necessary. They’ll be cheap enough to replace daily – which you’ll have to if you take good care of your teeth.
• Our food will soon be packaged in other foods. Current packaging is wasteful. In the future your yogurt will come inside a strawberry – which you can either wash and eat, or throw away.

To read the entire list which is divided into six categories: Morning Routine, Commute, Work, Play, Health and Home, and get a glimpse of how our relationship with our clothes, our pets, and even our dreams will soon be transformed, check out the interactive page here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

The Taxi services of many major cities operate on a medallion system. Jeff Horwitz and Chris Cumming explored the (mostly negative) consequences of this in New York City:

• The medallions were first issued in the 1960s and their supply hasn’t increased by much. In fact, New York even went 60 years without issuing a new one.
• When the medallions were first issued they were worth 150 inflation adjusted dollars. Today buying one can cost as much as $1 million.
• Cab drivers start off their 12 hour shifts owing, on average, $130. This explains the bad service – they race around and refuse to go to far off locations because they have to work long hours just to break even.
• Cab fares have risen but the income of taxi drivers has fallen because of increasing medallion costs and fuel costs.
• The medallion owners have lobbied to end initiatives that could increase the number of cabs on the streets – including a plan to shift to hybrid taxis.

To read many more details, including how the medallion system fares in other cities, what the finance office in Washington DC had to say about implementing such a system in Washington, what the Mayor of New York has to say about it, the history of taxi drivers, the number of medallions in NYC, why taxis are cash cows, what the average pay for a cab driver is, how the medallion owners lobby to get a cut off fare hikes, and why this inertia is inherent to the medallion system, click here.

Source: Slate

Robert Cooter wrote a book about the relationship between laws and economic development titled Solomon’s Knot: How Law Can End the Poverty of Nations. Some highlights of an excerpt posted online with his permission include:

• There is a double trust dilemma in innovation. The innovator must trust the financier not to steal the invention, and the financier must trust the innovator not to steal the money.
• In a way this dilemma has been around for centuries. In the fifth century two Kings exchanged their children as hostages to one another to ensure that they didn’t betray each other.
• Laws can play a role in helping to develop that trust between parties.
• Most economies start off with a relational basis of finance. You trust your family members and they trust you and so you can cooperate.
• However relational finance doesn’t scale for large scale businesses and across large economies.
• This is not to suggest that relationships become irrelevant. Indeed they have become more important than ever through the internet where online reviews of buyers and sellers play a crucial role.

There are other interesting thoughts and reflections scattered throughout the chapter including our favourite:

• Economic and biological evolution differ in an important way. Economic evolution leads to individuals copying the original innovator – it “emulates the most fit through profit detection, whereas biological evolution eliminates the least fit through natural selection.”

You can get the entire book here, and you can check out the entire excerpt to find out more about the links between biology and economics, why establishing trust in modern business is like exchanging hostages, what China’s administrative structure shows us, the role that relationships play in diamond exchanges, and what the industrial revolution demonstrates to us about the evolution of finance.

Source: The American

Via: Marginal Revolution

Are Facebook ads worth it? Ryan Holiday explained why he withdrew all ads from Facebook:

• People go to Facebook to interact with friends and so the ads get ignored. In contrast people go to Google to find things and the ads that it serves up might actually be what users are looking for.
• Everybody who’s tried out Facebook ads has given up on them eventually. Yet the company is still profitable because its success builds upon itself. People hear how big Facebook is, advertise on it, realize that the advertisements are worthless, and stop advertising. But the next group of companies are willing to buy up ads to try them out.
• Facebook will either have to start charging users money for their profiles, or it will have to figure out a way to get people to actually look at the ads. If not then revenues will plummet.

To read more including how Facebook is like a Ponzi scheme, the odd behaviour of investors in the lead-up to the IPO, Facebook’s sketch “sponsored story” platform, and what Zuckerberg may not even know, click here.

Source: Forbes

Via: Newmark’s Door

The proportion of Americans that move across states has halved in the past two decades. What explains this? Brad Plumer reports on the most likely explanation.

• A lot of analysts focus on why this might be a bad thing. Perhaps it’s a sign of America aging or perhaps it’s the recession.
• Yet data doesn’t fit these explanations. Instead it’s because of the changing nature of the job market, and the transformative influence of the internet.
• Jobs aren’t as location specific as they used to be. The service sector is more uniform than the older manufacturing sector meaning that there’s less of a reason to move.
• The internet also means that you can research a location before you move to it. Rather than moving and then looking for a job, now people find their job first and then move. This reduces the amount of needless moves.
• People also have the ability to research where they want to end up in the long run – and that’s where they move first, reducing the need to ever move.

To read many more details including why this explanation makes the most sense, the role that immigrants play, why Wall Street is sort of an exception, and why there’s no need to fret, click here.

Source: The Washington Post

Via: Marginal Revolution