Re: Risk and insurance
Archives are on www.inet-one.com At 02:50 PM 10/23/00 +0300, Sampo A Syreeni wrote: On Sun, 22 Oct 2000, Tim May wrote: The book I recommended a week or two ago, Judea Pearl's "Causality," is much more advanced in its mathematics. (But the math is important if one is actually trying to construct the causality diagrams Pearl is talking about.) Would it be too much to ask you to recant the main point made? It sounds pretty interesting... Sampo Syreeni [EMAIL PROTECTED], aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
Re: Risk and insurance
On Mon, 23 Oct 2000, R. A. Hettinga wrote: recant "Recount", right? So right it hurts. GOD! Asking Tim, or anyone else here for that matter, me included, to recant something, is, of course, an invitation to verbal violence. :-). You can say that again. For less, even, as I well know. Every once in a while I just hate not being a native. Sampo Syreeni [EMAIL PROTECTED], aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
Re: Risk and insurance
At 2:50 PM +0300 10/23/00, Sampo A Syreeni wrote: On Sun, 22 Oct 2000, Tim May wrote: The book I recommended a week or two ago, Judea Pearl's "Causality," is much more advanced in its mathematics. (But the math is important if one is actually trying to construct the causality diagrams Pearl is talking about.) Would it be too much to ask you to recant the main point made? It sounds pretty interesting... I'll recount it, but not recant it. Think of spacetime diagrams, a la the lightcones of Minkowski diagrams. Events A and B precede Event C. The same kind of diagrams obviously apply in ordinary events, without regard to the speed of light. A directed acyclig graph (DAG) of various events, some in the "causal chain" leading to some Event C, some outside the causal chain. Pearl addresses Bayesian networks in terms of DAGs and provides tools for analyzing when events actually "cause" other events. Of great interest for deciding when, for example, some drug test produces meaningful results, when some legal proof of causality is being challenged, etc. Pearl doesn't produce some magical formula for separating causes from non-causes, just a bunch of theorems and corollaries which may be useful in policy analysis, experiment design, and just thinking about the world. I think of it as a kind of "network analysis," akin to tools for circuit analysis (like Kirchoff's Law, for example). More discussion is of course available at Amazon or in search engines. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Risk and insurance
At 12:33 AM 10/22/00 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote: On Wed, 18 Oct 2000, Nathan Saper wrote: So these people are entitled to something for nothing? (or in this case, $1500 of treatment for $1000 of premiums)? That's the whole idea of insurance, isn't it? You're trolling, aren't you? Insurance is a good idea for the insured because it takes money to make money. On the topic of risk and insurance, and apropos discussion of reading lists, cypherpunks may find the book "Against the gods: The remarkable story of risk" by Peter Bernstein of interest. -- Greg Broiles [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Risk and insurance
At 2:44 PM -0700 10/22/00, Greg Broiles wrote: At 12:33 AM 10/22/00 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote: On Wed, 18 Oct 2000, Nathan Saper wrote: So these people are entitled to something for nothing? (or in this case, $1500 of treatment for $1000 of premiums)? That's the whole idea of insurance, isn't it? You're trolling, aren't you? Insurance is a good idea for the insured because it takes money to make money. On the topic of risk and insurance, and apropos discussion of reading lists, cypherpunks may find the book "Against the gods: The remarkable story of risk" by Peter Bernstein of interest. I support this recommendation. A readable book for the layman (most of us), on a par with past classics like "Lying with Statistics" and "Lady Luck." Available in a trade paperback for about $15 or so. The book I recommended a week or two ago, Judea Pearl's "Causality," is much more advanced in its mathematics. (But the math is important if one is actually trying to construct the causality diagrams Pearl is talking about.) --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
