…is $1.5 million.

A few days ago, The Washington Post wrote about two medical students who are also identical twins being accused of cheating. Their school, the Medical University of South Carolina, apparently doesn’t have anyone on staff who is both versed in statistics and willing to participate in an investigation. Enter paid consultants:

The university sent their test scores to a data forensics company, Caveon, which reported that the chances of two tests that similar being completed independently was “less than a person winning four consecutive Power Ball drawings.”

Invocation of forensics is the first red flag (see: Calculated Risks by Gerd Gigerenzer). Comparing any real-life probability ⊕ [Note: Rule of thumb: if what you are doing professionaly made it into xkcd you should stop doing it. ] to lottery is the second. The uncertanty of real-life probabilities has little to do with known odds of games of “chance”. Confusing the two leads to the ludic fallacy, or “misuse of games to model real-life situations”. [Note: Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan, 2007. ]

The twins, now lawyers, sued and won the said $1.5M. Good for them.

The older I get the more I appreciate anything in life that reduces friction. Yes, I could write a quick landing page myself and host it on Github pages for free. But for $5/year omg.lol makes it so much easier (and more esthetically pleasing than I could ever manage).

📺 Wednesday started off strong but quickly devolved into 90210 with a high body count: enjoyable, but not quite living up to the atmosphere of the first episode. It was still worth sticking it out until the end to see Fred Armisen’s Uncle Fester.

📺 Season 2 of The Mysterious Benedict Society: bright colors, quirky characters, upbeat music, and all that in sunny Europe instead of Season 1’s dreary Northwestern US. What is there not to like?

🎥 Triangle of Sadness

• Part 1: A masterpiece of dialogue, acting, pacing, everything. Give it an Oscar for the best short film.
• Part 2: Physical comedy brilliance. Absurdity starts creeping in.
• Part 3: So on-the-nose. Did Kusturica make this?

Would still recommend.

I logged in to LinkedIn for the first time in months and it looked like people were actually using it!

For self-promotion and networking, so I got what I needed and logged out before being swallowed whole.

LinkedIn: the Patrick Bateman Social Network.

Singin’ in the Rain is my all-time favorite movie so its thorough deconstruction was a joy to watch, listen, and read. 🎥

(Found via Dan Cohen’s blog, which I have just rediscovered. I look forward to finding other hidden treasures in my RSS back catalog!)

Is it too early to start with end-of-year lists? Because I would like to share my disappointments of the year. Or, more precisely, disappointment (singular), as there has been only one: LG in general, and their HU810PW laser projector in particular.

It broke just a few months out of warranty (strike 1), they have no local authorized service shops (strike 2), and a week after speaking to someone from their call center I am yet to get instructions on how to send it to them for a $600 [Note: $100 shiping and $60 insurance not included. ] repair (strike 3). I do, however, receive half a dozen spam emails per day from LG now that they have my email address (not a strike, just completely shameless).

To be clear, it is a gorgeous projector with crystal clear picture even in daylight. LG’s WebOS is the best smart TV software out there. [Note: Yes, it is a low bar. Still… ] It has generous horizontal shift that saved me from having to drill holes in the ceiling. The remote control isn’t the sleek piece of aluminium Apple TV has, but unlike Apple TV’s it is comfortable to hold, glows in the dark, and actually works! ⊕ [Note: And to be clear from a different perspective — that this is my biggest disappointment of 2022 is a good indicator that the year was pretty decent for the Miljković household, all things considered. ]

Which makes its breaking just out of warranty and LG’s lack of customer service all the more grating.