Archive for December, 2004

The article target="NewWindow">“Your Cheating Phone” from Dec 2, 2004 Economist
points out that Hong Kong businessmen did not leave their phones on when they
went to sleazy Macau because the ringback tone revealed their location and their
location revealed what they were doing. Once Macau changed to have the same
ringback tone as Hong Kong, roaming revenues soared.

Continue reading ‘More on ringback tones, localization, and privacy’ »

Turns out that Santa offshores some of his
development to Baghdad, and there was some collateral damage.

target="NewWindow">http://www.dial911anddie.com/Ginger05/Ginger05.html

Continue reading ‘Santa’s Baghdad Production Facility’ »

Continue reading ‘NATs NATs NATs’ »

Continue reading ‘What do you use?’ »

Many people think they are pretty good at basic
statistics and probability theory. So give this one some thought

Imagine there are two drugs, A and B,
that might help cure a problem you have and you are given the following
information. 1100 people took drug A and it helped 505 of them. And 1100 people
took drug B and it helped 195 of them. I put this in the table below along with
the percentage of people where each drug was a success. Assume you can’t take
both drugs and that neither drug has any ill effect, risk, or cost from taking
it.

Drug | Successful | Failed   | percentage success
A    |    505     |     595  |   46%
B    |    195     |     905  |   18%

Which drug would you choose to take given this
information?

Now let me provide a little
extra information. In the study above, it turns out that for drug A, there were
100 males and it worked for 5 of them and for drug B there were 1000 males and
it worked for 100 of them. From this information, and a little subtraction, I
have filled out the two tables below.

For
males

Drug | Successful  |  Failed   | percentage success
A    |      5      |      95   |   5%
B    |    100      |     900   |  10%

For
females

Drug | Successful |   Failed   | percentage success
A    |    500     |     500    |   50%
B    |     95     |       5    |   95%

Continue reading ‘How good is your basic probability theory?’ »