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POPSOdds of conception
I saw this posted on Slate, and just want to make a comment about the math. The "extraordinary odds" of a 43-year-old conceiving naturally are only 1-3 (or maybe 5)% in a given month, says the article. Question: what are the odds in two months? This is just a basic probability question. What are the odds of not getting pregnant two months in a row? Say there's a 5 percent chance of getting pregnant, there's a 95% chance of not getting pregnant. The odds of not getting pregnant for two months are thus (.95*.95=.9025). So there's a .05 chance in one month but a .0975 chance of pregnancy in two months. For three months it's (.95*.95*.95=.857). For a three month affair, that'd be a 14.43% chance of pregnancy. Still unlikely but not really extraordinary. Say an affair lasts for 16 months, from February 2006 to May 2007 perhaps. At 3 percent per month, the math works to a 41% chance of getting pregnant. At 5% it's a 59% chance of pregnancy. "Extraordinary odds"? The math says not
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POPS9 Questions for Ben Bernanke This is very sharp. A lot of commentary on the Fed quickly devolves into conspiracy theory and pumping gold portfolios, and so it's refreshing to see some substantive ideas.
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POPSIn Denial About Financial Reform Also see Dan Indiviglio over at The Atlantic: http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/09/why_is_washington_ignoring_the_real_causes_of_the_crisis.php The danger of putting a lawyer in charge of something like this is, in my opinion, best exemplified by Neil Barofsky, the attorney they put in front of TARP oversight. Barofsky has used his pulpit to put out some really meaningless and misleading numbers. We need real information from these guys, not noisy innumerate numbers. See: http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/27/bailout-bad-math-business-washington-barofsky.html
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POPSFinally, Some Late-Night Stability As NBC tests the waters with another (risky) hour of late-night fare (in prime-time) CBS is wise to hold on to its stable alternative. After a decade-plus at no. 2, the tiffany network's veteran host has a real shot at poaching former Leno viewers and winning the ratings war.
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POPSObama to Lunch with Credit Card Execs Credit card debt is a huge burden to the average American. Since rates can jump at anytime to any level, cash-strapped consumers are at the mercy of cc companies. Here's an idea: why not refinance credit card debt instead of mortgages? That's the real interest rate crunch and principle writedowns wouldn't be necessary since it's the interest accruing and not the amount owed that's the trouble.
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POPSDelta Bags More Fees Delta Airlines will slap a $50 fee on all passengers checking a second bag on international flights, pressuring competitors to do the same. Delta also reports a $794 million quarterly loss, but says the worst may be behind it.
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POPSExodus Out of the Big Banks There's an intriguing idea here that it's good for the talent to disperse to smaller institutions. That it will be a sort of Darwinian process that whittles big banks down until they're no longer too big to fail. And it creates a more diverse Wall Street in the process. Well, really? It seems to me that's no longer true if a handful of the big banks (say Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan) are able to pay off their TARP funds early. Shrinking Citi and Bank of America to beef up Aladdin Capital and Broadpoint may be dandy and help the too-big-to-fail problem. But aren't we just as likely to be shrinking Citi and Bank of America to enlarge Goldman and JPMorgan? I'm not suggesting anything in particular other than that I'm not sure this talent reallocation really does anything material to the bank size issue.
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POPSAriad Patent Dead Derek Lowe does a dance of joy. Eli Lilly had compared the patent in question to "patenting gravity." Ariad basically described some basic biology, then hand-waved the potential drugs that could affect it.
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POPSStanford Tearfully Denies Wrongdoing It has been tough on Stanford since accusations surfaced he is running a Ponzi scheme. This article reports the ex-billionaire has been forced to fly commercial flights after his private jets were seized. "They make you take your shoes off and everything, it's terrible," reportedly said Stanford.
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POPSFreezing Football Ticket Prices Coming off a 1% drop in attendance in 2008, the NFL doesn't want the recession to drive more fans away this year. So most of the league won't raise ticket prices in 2009.
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POPSHarvard Business School Examines Its Failure I find it hard to imagine there's really much soul-searching in many MBA programs. Is the metric they focus on still salary-upon-graduation? Where's the incentive there not to chase and inflate the next bubble?
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POPSImages of the Recession In the 1930's, the U.S. government sent photographer Walker Evans to rural areas, where he documented the Great Depression. The NYT is taking a slightly different photographic twist on this downturn, asking readers the world over to send in their recession-themed photos. It's an interesting use of new media, and a pretty good example of the fact that, as journalism evolves, readers (i.e. not just paid journalists) will become increasingly involved in the creation of the news.
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