Homework 1
This is a large homework, counting 3 times as much as a small homework.
Due ????
Instructions
Read the article (TAN.1) Thinking About Numbers: The Epicurean Frame-Of-Mind to answer the following questions. Answers must be typed and written in complete, thoughtful sentences. I am not asking you to list blurbs or a few phrases of what you read. Instead I want to see answers indicating you read the article and watched the videos at least twice and gave considerable thought to your answer.
For example, when telling me what “casting lots” means I want to know every instance you saw it in the article, and your brief thoughts on it. This is frustrating, I know, but this is my way of making sure you really read the articles carefully. Test questions will be pulled from the homeworks.
How you write is a sign of what kind of person you are. Incoherent sentences with bad grammar indicates a student who cares little about learning or earning a good grade, and has not learned the proper rules for writing. If you show little interest in learning good grammar, how is the reader to have confidence that you learned other things you presume to talk about?
If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building. . . .
Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies, iFixit or Dozuki, takes a mandatory grammar test. Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, English language learners, etc.), if job hopefuls can't distinguish between "to" and "too," their applications go into the bin. . . .
[G]rammar is relevant for all companies. Yes, language is constantly changing, but that doesn't make grammar unimportant. Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're. . . .
If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use "it's," then that's not a learning curve I'm comfortable with. So, even in this hyper-competitive market, I will pass on a great programmer who cannot write.
Grammar signifies more than just a person's ability to remember high school English. I've found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing—like stocking shelves or labeling parts.
—Tech industry CEO Kyle Wiens in the Harvard Business Review on July 20, 2012. Quoted in The Wall Street Journal on August 9, 2012. A11. Notable & Quotable.
Your grammar doesn’t need to be perfect, not in a homework (in “Important Emails” grammar must be near perfect). I simply need you to write in a way that shows you are an educated person. You should get into the habit of this, so that when you exchange emails in your first job you earn the confidence of others.
You grade will be determined by the accuracy of your answers and my impression of how well you studied and thought about the article. This means you have to think hard about what "impresses" me, and will never know for sure, just as you would have to go about trying to satisfy your boss.
(A) Definitions—define the following words or terms and how they are discussed in the article, and do so using thoughtful sentences.
(A.1) Stochasticity
(A.2) Empirical
(A.4) Sabermetrics
(A.5) Auspicious
(B) People, Stories, and Concepts
(B.1) When I say you must be an Epicurean to perform data analysis, what do I mean?
(B.2) What did the Templeton Foundation discover about prayer?
(B.3) What do we know about the happiness and health of religious people, compared to less religious people?
(B.4) Suppose you have a choice between two jobs, and you choose jobs by flipping a coin. What does that coin flip mean to a modern American, compared to an ancient Jew, Greek, or Roman?
(B.5) Why did Medieval art look so unrealistic?
(B.6) What did Karl Marx lie about?
(B.7) What made Skinhead Frank Meenik change his views on other races?
(B.8) How does the retailer Target know when its customers are pregnant?
(B.9) How does Target advertise to women they believe are pregnant without the women knowing Target is tracking their personal life?
(B.10) Explain how Moneyball used statistics to commit arbitrage. In your answer, explain what arbitrage is.
(B.11) How did Lisa Simpson learn about Sabermetrics?
(B.12) How did Thales uses his knowledge of astronomy to make money?
(B.13) In recent years, compared to past decades, how has the bell-shaped curve for global temperatures changed? Answer by discussing whether it has shifted left or right and/or whether it has flattened or become steeper. Do this by studying Figure 6.
(B.14) This is a true story. A man by the name of Professor Pope Hill flipped a coin 100,000 times in the 1930s. It took him an entire year, but he did complete the exercise, finding that 49,855(49.855%) resulted in a 'heads' and 50,145 (50.145%) resulted in 'tails'. Does this mean that a ‘tails’ is more likely than a ‘heads’ in a coin flip? Answer how the field of statistics approaches this question, paying careful attention to the role of stochastic and deterministic factors in the coin flip. A coin flip analogy was made in Section C, and you might find it helpful.
(B.15) What famous founding father considered himself an Epicurean?
