Category Archives: Economics

AN ATTEMPT TO MEASURE INCREASES IN COMPUTER PRODUCTIVITY.

Posted on July 19, 2015 by Philip

AN ATTEMPT TO MEASURE INCREASES IN COMPUTER PRODUCTIVITY. I have posted several times, such as here, about the paradox that the technological revolution in computers has not produced much by way of measured productivity improvement. Jaames Pethoukis on the AEI … Continue reading →

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CONTROLLING TRAFFIC BY INFORMAL MEANS.

Posted on July 17, 2015 by Philip

CONTROLLING TRAFFIC BY INFORMAL MEANS. In the Harvard Gazette article, Mayor Mockus, as befits an academic, pays tribute to some of the thinkers who influenced him: Nobel Prize-winning economist Douglass North, who has investigated the tension between formal and informal … Continue reading →

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WHAT THE MIMES DID.

Posted on July 16, 2015 by Philip

WHAT THE MIMES DID. This post on the Freakonomics site has photos of the Bogota mimes at work. They relied importantly on shaming. They handed out thumbs up and thumbs down cards (pictured) and followed jaywalkers. This post on the … Continue reading →

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IS POST HOC SOMETIMES EVIDENCE?—THE MIME EXPERIMENT.

Posted on July 15, 2015 by Philip

IS POST HOC SOMETIMES EVIDENCE?–THE MIME EXPERIMENT. I tend to rant against the many examples of post hoc propter hoc arguments (after this, therefore because of this). The fallacy is similar to the fallacy of taking correlation to be causation. … Continue reading →

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FORMULA 1 AND TREATING HEART ATTACKS.

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Philip

FORMULA 1 AND TREATING HEART ATTACKS. I posted here six years ago about how doctors at a British hospital had studied and consulted with a Formula 1 pit crew to improve their handoffs from the cardiac care unit to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Science, Sports | 3 Comments

REDUCING DEATHS FROM HEART ATTACKS WITHOUT A SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH.

Posted on June 25, 2015 by Philip

REDUCING DEATHS FROM HEART ATTACKS WITHOUT A SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH. Instapundit linked to this article by Gina Kolata in the New York Times (June 21) which reports on the reduction of about 38% from 2003 to 2013 in the death rate … Continue reading →

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MAGNA CARTA AND COMMERCE.

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Philip

MAGNA CARTA AND COMMERCE. This article by Nicholas Vincent explains how some of the clauses of magna Carta promoted trade and markets. Clause 33 provides: “All kydells for the future shall be removed altogether from Thames and Medway, and throughout … Continue reading →

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BREAST SELF EXAMINATION AND RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED EXPERIMENTS.

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Philip

BREAST SELF EXAMINATION AND RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED EXPERIMENTS. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (“USPSTF”) represents an official view that medical treatment should be “evidence-based medicine”. That is there should be no treatment unless it has passed muster in a randomized … Continue reading →

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SCIENCE VERSUS THE HEALTH OF PATIENTS.

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Philip

SCIENCE VERSUS THE HEALTH OF PATIENTS. The argument for requiring randomized clinical trials is that this is the “gold standard” for science. (I note that there are those, such as Ziliak and Teather Posadas, who do not agree with that … Continue reading →

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IS THE “GOLD STANDARD” THE ONLY TEST?

Posted on May 30, 2015 by Philip

IS THE “GOLD STANDARD “THE ONLY TEST? It seems bizarre to conduct an experiment with some 19,000 subjects to test something that everybody has known for years. Yet the Chinese eyeglass experiment is representative of an influential line of thinking. … Continue reading →

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