Author Archives: mea
Google’s Driverless Cars Run Into Problem: Cars With Drivers
One Google car, in a test in 2009, couldn’t get through a four-way stop because its sensors kept waiting for other (human) drivers to stop completely and let it go. The human drivers kept inching forward, looking for the advantage … Continue reading
Posted in Interesting
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A Field Guide To Chicago NIMBYs
The origin of the term NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) is a little hazy, but is believed to have originated with the hazardous waste disposal industry in the middle of the last century. The term spread as rapidly as its … Continue reading
No-fly list uses ‘predictive assessments’ instead of hard evidence, US admits
On Friday, the ACLU asked Judge Anna Brown to conduct her own review of the error rate in the government’s predictions modeling – a process the ACLU likens to the “pre-crime” of Philip K Dick’s science fiction. “I believe this … Continue reading
Posted in Current Events
Tagged statistics, survey says
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The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car
But we’re now driving enough — and getting hit enough — that we can start to make some assumptions about that real crashes-per-miles-driven rate; it’s looking higher than we thought. (Our cars, with safety drivers aboard, are now self-driving about 10,000 miles per week, … Continue reading
Posted in Science
Tagged statistics
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How to Make Sense of China’s Plummeting Stock Market
The chart shows how easy it is to frame market data in a way that sounds either scary or benign, depending on your inclination. “The Chinese stock market has dropped 32 percent in a month” is scary. “The Chinese stock … Continue reading
Posted in Current Events
Tagged china
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