From Covid deaths to Usain Bolt: statistics are never black and white
Who is the greatest 100 metre male runner of all time? The answer seems obvious, even if you lack sporting common knowledge, it is only a quick Google search away. Usain Bolt’s time of 9.58 seconds is unchallenged. Both Tyson Gaye and Yohan Blake are quite away behind with records of 9.69. This year’s Olympic […]
The influencer economy: online ranking systems are a purveyor of inequality
To the victor the spoils. This well-known phrase might be thought to relate to the recent Olympics. Except that it is not a really accurate description of the Games themselves. True, the gold medallist gains more kudos than the silver or bronze. But at future athletics meets, for example, all three can expect an increase […]
The government should have been working on multiple tracing apps all along
The NHS contract tracing app has been scrapped in favour of a system developed by Google and Apple. Although health secretary Matt Hancock has been heavily criticised for this failure, the UK is by no means alone. For example, Denmark, Germany and Italy each tried to build their own app, based on the same type […]
Cyber society needs monopoly-busting competition, not misguided regulation
The hostility towards the virtual monopolies enjoyed by tech giants such as Google and Facebook reveals some strange bedfellows. The European Commission is well known for its enthusiasm for regulation. No surprise, then, that last year the Commission fined Google €2.4bn – billion! – for giving its own services preferential treatment in search results. No surprise […]
Learn Maths, Young Person! The Secret of Success in the 21st Century
A currently fashionable pessimistic topic is the lifetime prospects of children born into the middle class. Graduate debt, lack of finance to buy homes and job insecurity after they graduate, the list goes on. Alan Milburn, the government’s ‘social mobility tsar’, put the seal of approval on this prevailing angst last month. His Social Mobility […]
If it can happen to Google, who can feel safe?
The dramatic crash in Google’s share price and the temporary suspension of trading in the company’s shares made headline news. The event was triggered by the 20 per cent year-on-year fall in profits in the third quarter of this year. As usual, there was no shortage of explanations of why this happened – after the […]
USA vs China continued… The Influence of Networks (and the Olympics!)
The last three Olympics have seen a titanic battle between the US and China to head the medals table. If you combine the total of the last three Games, China stands just ahead, with 121 golds to the United States’s 116. But, the US topped the table in both 2004 and 2012, while China edges […]
