Hal Varian (Chief Economist, Google) recently shared a concise article with the title “How auctions set ad prices”. The article is a clear exposition of how ad prices determine the sorting order of bidders for online advertising. However, the tone of the article is not quite compatible with how it […]
Betting Best of Series is a new expository paper describing the mathematics involved in betting on something like the United States’ Major League Baseball World Series. It isn’t so much about baseball as about demonstrating some of the really great ideas from mathematical finance in a simplified setting. This sort […]
author: John Mount, 5-13-2008 Anand Rajaraman recently wrote a very thought-provoking entry on his Datawocky blog. He asks “Is Search Advertising a Giffen Good?” As he explains a Giffen Good is a sort of economic doomsday machine that some segment of consumers are forced to buy more of an inferior […]
The other day’s blog post and a recent Andrew Binstock interview of Donald Knuth made me think more about how the ACM is really not serving the interests of computer science.
“Sorting Used in Anger” (A rambling glimpse into the mind of a theorist) Author: John Mount 4-24-2008 The other day I had a bit of time to kill before an appointment. Luck was with me: there was a nearby bookstore and I was able to pass some of the time […]
Author: John Mount March 1, 2008 http://www.win-vector.com “A second goal of 23andMe [is] to collect a large database of genetic information and then come back to you over time with invitations to provide specific health data and participate in research.” 23andMe Board member Esther Dyson Unregulated companies managing personal medical […]
Hello World: An Instance Of Rhetoric in Computer Science John Mount: jmount@mzlabs.com February 19, 2008 Computer scientists have usually dodged questions of intent, purpose or meaning. While there are theories that assign deep mathematical meaning to computer programs[13] we computer scientists usually avoid discussion of meaning and talk more about […]
author: John Mount I have finally written up and released a paper in PDF: Automatic Generation and Testing of Trades describing a lot of the statistics and optimization methods used when I was technical trading on a Banc of America Securities proprietary program trading desk. It was a very exciting […]
author: John Mount Nina and I just finished up our analysis of some of the statistical difficulties encountered by users of Google AdSense. It came out a bit long- but we found the right statistical reference to prove that there are real barriers to understanding in this market. The paper […]