Comments for Matt Barr Live! http://www.mattbarr.com/wp I used to have a scene with him! Sat, 20 Mar 2010 06:00:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 Comment on Why have you stopped blogging, blog boy? by Matt Barr Live! » Blog Archive » Nothing to see here http://www.mattbarr.com/wp/?p=330#comment-431 Fri, 03 Nov 2006 12:04:13 +0000 http://www.mattbarr.com/wp/?p=330#comment-431 [...] Conclusion? You’ll never guess.  See The Grand Unified Theory below. [...] […] Conclusion? You’ll never guess.  See The Grand Unified Theory below. […]

]]> Comment on Is there a case for a libertarian Republican? by kreiz http://www.mattbarr.com/wp/?p=329#comment-414 Wed, 04 Oct 2006 21:27:21 +0000 http://www.mattbarr.com/wp/?p=329#comment-414 A hell of a post, Matt. Very nicely written and thought-provoking. I'm attracted to libertarianism on a variety of levels (including the ones you've enumerated). But libertarianism's achilles heel is its tendency to attract the anti-socials and/or druggies. A hell of a post, Matt. Very nicely written and thought-provoking. I’m attracted to libertarianism on a variety of levels (including the ones you’ve enumerated). But libertarianism’s achilles heel is its tendency to attract the anti-socials and/or druggies.

]]> Comment on Is there a case for a libertarian Republican? by The Glittering Eye » Blog Archive » Eye on the Watcher’s Council http://www.mattbarr.com/wp/?p=329#comment-413 Wed, 04 Oct 2006 15:48:28 +0000 http://www.mattbarr.com/wp/?p=329#comment-413 [...] Matt Barr Live!, “Is There a Case For a Libertarian Republican?” [...] […] Matt Barr Live!, “Is There a Case For a Libertarian Republican?” […]

]]> Comment on Sita Sewnarine by Teena http://www.mattbarr.com/wp/?p=325#comment-409 Thu, 21 Sep 2006 04:03:43 +0000 http://www.mattbarr.com/wp/?p=325#comment-409 Thank you for honouring Sita. I participated as well. Thank you for honouring Sita.

I participated as well.

]]> Comment on Your chance of dying in a terrorist attack by david foster http://www.mattbarr.com/wp/?p=326#comment-412 Sun, 17 Sep 2006 01:17:17 +0000 http://www.mattbarr.com/wp/?p=326#comment-412 The "we are personally safe" analysis represents a serious misuse of statistics, in addition to being narrow. You can only use past probabilities as a guide to future probabilities if conditions remain the same. At an early stage of an epidemic, your chances of catching the disease might be 1 in 10 million...it would be really, really dumb to assume that this ratio will still hold in 6 months. Similarly, someone might look at the history of a particular airliner and conclude that the probability of a wing spar failure was very low. But a more serious analyst might look at the same data and conclude that--even though there have only been 3 failures in the entire fleet--they have all occurred at around 12000 flight hours, and most of the fleet hasn't gotten to that point yet. Today's terrorist threat is probably more like the epidemic situation or the wing-spar-failure situation than it is like the naive static-probability model. The “we are personally safe” analysis represents a serious misuse of statistics, in addition to being narrow. You can only use past probabilities as a guide to future probabilities if conditions remain the same. At an early stage of an epidemic, your chances of catching the disease might be 1 in 10 million…it would be really, really dumb to assume that this ratio will still hold in 6 months.

Similarly, someone might look at the history of a particular airliner and conclude that the probability of a wing spar failure was very low. But a more serious analyst might look at the same data and conclude that–even though there have only been 3 failures in the entire fleet–they have all occurred at around 12000 flight hours, and most of the fleet hasn’t gotten to that point yet.

Today’s terrorist threat is probably more like the epidemic situation or the wing-spar-failure situation than it is like the naive static-probability model.

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