Antimap - Open Source data gathering tools

Antimap - an open source toolkit for recording data (augmented wtih GPS / Compass) with an Android phone and then visualizing the resulting data.

Moved to Blogger

Apparently the site has been giving an error as I had not paid wordpress.com the domain mapping fee - so I moved it to blogger ;-) Hopefully I will get around to posting something one of these days...

Why you won't live forever

Interesting (and depressing!) post on the exponential mortality rate:

"Your probability of dying during a given year doubles every 8 years. For me, a 25-year-old American, the probability of dying during the next year is a fairly miniscule 0.03% — about 1 in 3,000. When I’m 33 it will be about 1 in 1,500, when I’m 42 it will be about 1 in 750, and so on. By the time I reach age 100 (and I do plan on it) the probability of living to 101 will only be about 50%. This is seriously fast growth — my mortality rate is increasing exponentially with age."

Mitigated speech and disaster avoidance

Interesting article on accidents caused in the aviation and medical industries where people notice deadly problems but don't convey the seriousness to other team members out of politeness or deferring to a senior team mate. For example:

Korean Air Flight 801, almost the same exact situation as Air Florida. In trying to warn the captain of severe weather problems that would eventually lead to the deaths of 228 of the 254 people on board, the first officer says, "Don't you think it rains more? In this area, here?" and "Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot"…

Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot?! What are these people doing? They're hinting at the impending problem, in hopes that the guy who's a little busy with the whole "flying an airplane" or "trying to bring 99 planes circling Kennedy airport in for a landing" thing is going to catch on, read their mind, and solve the problem for them self.

...

The official term for this is "mitigated speech" and Malcolm Gladwell provides a fascinating account of how it has effected the airline industry in his book Outliers. He defines it as "any attempt to downplay or sugarcoat the meaning of what is being said." and explains that "we mitigate when we're being polite, or when we're ashamed or embarrassed, or when we're being deferential to authority."

Michael Lewis on the myth of prediction in the financial crisis

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_XWuIeuN1c]

Rationalize your fears with Lethal

One of the big criticisms after 9-11 was that terrorist attacks, while horrifying, were a lot less likely to kill you than mundane occurrences like car accidents and smoking.  In general people fixate on the newsworthy rather than the everyday risks in life because your more likely to hear about the former and more likely to fixate on it. Bruce Schneier has articulated this quite well:

I tell people that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." It's when something isn't in the news, when it's so common that it's no longer news -- car crashes, domestic violence -- that you should start worrying.

Additionally, the very horrific nature of specific events makes us incorrectly assess the risk due to anchoring:

Anchoring and adjustment is a psychological heuristic that influences the way people intuitively assess probabilities. According to this heuristic, people start with an implicitly suggested reference point (the "anchor") and make adjustments to it to reach their estimate.

An audience is first asked to write the last 2 digits of their social security number, and, second, to submit mock bids on items such as wine and chocolate. The half of the audience with higher two-digit numbers would submit bids that were between 60 percent and 120 percent higher than those of the other half, far higher than a chance outcome; the simple act of thinking of the first number strongly influences the second, even though there is no logical connection between them.

Lethal is an iPhone app designed to combat this irrationality - based on your current location it gives information about the relative likelyhood of different types of lethal events:

Want to know everything in your area which poses a threat? LETHAL uses auto-location to deliver information you need to be on your guard. Find out more about the dangers which could surround you — the hostile animals, the likelihood of crimes, the prevalence of disease, and the potential accidents and disasters.

Drawing from a proprietary database compiling information from government and academic statistics and research, LETHAL offers information on 650 locations in the US and Canada.

Survivor Bias for retailers

From Forbes, is appears the good news is, if you can stay in business things might start to be looking up - survivors in retail get are picking up business for