Misc

Miscellaneous is often where the gems are.

Misc

Perception vs. Reality

  • YouGov neatly demonstrate how Americans see small subgroups as much larger than they actually are, while large subgroups are systematically underestimated.
  • For example on average people thought that muslims made up 27% of Americans when the true proportion is 1% or that gays and lesbians made up 30%, when the true number is 3%.
  • On the other hand “we find that people underestimate the proportion of American adults who are Christian (estimate: 58%, true: 70%) and the proportion who have at least a high school degree (estimate: 65%, true: 89%).” 
  • Full results here.
Misc

Do Founders make good VCs?

  • Nearly 7% of venture capitalists (VCs) were previously founders.
  • This paper, using the VentureSource database, asks if this group is any good at investing?
  • Successful founder-VCs have investment success rates that are 6.5% higher than professional VCs.
  • If you are an unsuccessful founder-VC your investment success is actually 4% lower than professionals.
  • The reason isn’t down to deal quality but value add – “Using an instrumental variables approach to separate unobservable deal quality from value-add, we find that the outperformance of successful founder VCs is consistent with them adding more value post investment.“
Misc

Compounding

  • Compounding is very difficult for human minds to comprehend.
  • As the famous riddle goes:
  • “Imagine it’s 10:00 AM on a small pond with a single lily pad. If the number of lily pads on the pond doubles every minute, and the entire pond is full of lily pads by 11:00 AM, at what time is the pond half full of lily pads?“
  • The answer is here and many get this wrong.
  • Morgen Housel brings this up in his conversation with Tim Ferriss (worth a full listen) when he talks about Warren Buffett who’s real talent, when compared to other greats like Jim Simons, was not the level of investment returns (Simons’ are much higher) but their longevity. As he says “if Buffett had retired at age 60, like a normal person might, no one would’ve ever heard of him” (transcript).
Misc

Sustainable Infrastructure

  • Beautiful read about Kyoto, Japan and the idea of building for the very long term.
  • In 1610, a single family (Suminokura) decided to build a canal connecting the port of Fishimi to central Kyoto.
  • The article talks about how powerful this decision was – the weight efficiency ratio increased 22.5x, the agricultural footprint was a fraction (no need to feed all those ponies), and there was no noise or other pollution. The list goes on.
  • Building should be for the long term – for example did you know that the cobble stone streets of Copenhagen haven’t been resurfaced in 500 years.
Misc

The Technology Bribe

  • “Nearly 50 years ago, long before smartphones and social media, the social critic Lewis Mumford put a name to the way that complex technological systems offer a share in their benefits in exchange for compliance.“
  • This “bribe” makes it clear that “this is not an offer of a gift but of a deal“
  • “the bargain we are being asked to ratify takes the form of a magnificent bribe.”
  • A fascinating theory and tool to understand the current world.
  • “The danger, however, was that “once one opts for the system no further choice remains.”
Misc

Are you Smart enough to work at Google?

  • 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66 … what is the next number in this series?
  • Give it a try.
  • This is a question asked during an interview at Google.
  • So is this one “You are shrunk to the height of a penny and thrown into a blender. Your mass is reduced so that your density is the same as usual. The blades start moving in sixty seconds. What do you do?”
  • Both of these interview questions are taken from this brilliant book which is about difficult interview questions at top companies.
  • Once you tried those questions – hit this preview link for the answers.
Misc

Another 52 Things List

Misc

Corruption and Parking Tickets

  • Tim Harford writes about a study by Fisman and Miguel of corruption.
  • The two economists looked at the behaviour of diplomats in New York City (in the area around the UN building in midtown Manhattan, where many consulates are located).
  • Remember, diplomats then had immunity so can happily ignore parking fines. So whether any were left unpaid can be reasonably hypothesised to be down to purely to cultural attitudes to rules.
  • By looking at parking violations between 1997 and 2002, Fisman and Miguel found a strong and significant correlation between unpaid tickets and corruption perception.
  • The worst offenders – Kuwait, Egypt, Chad, Sudan and Bulgaria. “One Kuwaiti diplomat managed to accumulate two unpaid parking fines every working day for a year.“
  • The best – Denmark, Norway and Sweden and, to everyone’s collective sigh of relief, the British – who did not have a single unpaid parking ticket over the six year period.
  • “The same may not be true for all British politicians. A certain Boris Johnson once worked as GQ magazine’s motoring correspondent. His editor noted that Johnson had cost GQ “£5,000 in parking tickets”, but he wouldn’t have him any other way.“
Misc

Ukraine

  • The tragedy in Ukraine is why Snippet took a short pause earlier this week.
  • Here are a few interesting articles on how and why we got where we are today.
  • This is an excellent, well documented piece from Spiegel on the subject of NATO’s eastward expansion. Did the West cheat? As usual – it is complicated.
  • This was a good talk by the brilliant Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner recorded three years ago (2018), who tried to give a point of view not well expressed in Western press. The whole thing is worth a listen.
  • The five books series is always great on any topic and this one on Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy, professor at Harvard in Ukrainian History is worth a read.
  • This was also an interesting read on the history of Ukraine and Bolshevism and the idea of a nation.
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