We study identical mass black hole binaries with spins perpendicular to the binary’s orbital plane. These binaries have individual spins ranging from s=m2 0:90 to 0.90, (s1 s2 in all cases) which is near the limit possible with standard Bowen-York puncture initial data. The extreme cases correspond to the largest initial spin simulations to date. Our results expand the parameter space covered b...

The existence of “Hot Hands” and “Streaks” in sports and gambling is hotly debated, but there is no uncertainty about the recent batting-average of the New York Times: it is now two-for-two in mangling and misunderstanding elementary concepts in probability and statistics; and mixing up the key points in a recent paper that re-examines earlier work on the statistics of streaks. In so doing, it’...

Weisberg, D. S. Ebel, H. C. Connolly Jr., N. T. Kita and T. Ushikubo. Dept. Phys. Sci., Kingsborough College, City University New York, Bklyn, NY 11235 and Dept. Earth and Environmental Sci., The Graduate Center of CUNY 365 5 Ave., NY, NY. ([email protected]). Dept. Earth Planet. Sci., American Museum Natural History, NY, NY 10024. Dept. Geology and Geophys., University Wisconsin-Madison,...

ow is it that Moneyball (Lewis, 2003), a book seemingly about baseball, was among the Economist’s Books of 2003 in the Economics & Business category, was a New York Times bestseller, is referenced in Larry Bossidy’s most recent book (Bossidy & Charan, 2004), and motivated an argument in the National Review that American education would do well to adopt the rigorous analysis employed by Billy Be...

ERS P. Barkhan, M.D., London, England T. H. Bothwell, M.D., Joh6nnesburg, South Africa T. E. Brittingham, M.D., Nashville, Tenn. Jacque Caen, M.D., Paris, France J. B. Chatterjea, M.D., Calcutta, India Pietro deNicola, M.D., Pavia, Italy Ludvik Donner, M.D., Prague, Czechoslovakia A. J. Erslev, M.D., Philadelphia H. Hugh Fudenberg, M. D., San Francisco Katsuhiro Fukutake, M.D., Tokyo, Japan Rob...

We propose an approach to extracting information from text based on the hypothesis that text sometimes describes the world. The hypothesis is embodied in a generative probability model that describes (1) possible worlds and the facts they might contain, (2) how an author chooses facts to express, and (3) how those facts are expressed in text. Given text, information extraction is done by comput...

The authors are with the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. Address reprint requests to William H. Yeaton, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. This research assessed the ability of a sample of persons on a college campus to understand media reports of health research. Three or four articles on each of five contemporary health topics (dietary cholesterol and heart di...

The rational analysis of memory (Anderson, 1990) proposes that memory’s sensitivity to statistical structure in the environment enables it to optimally estimate the odds that a memory trace will be needed. We have analyzed sources of informational demand in the environment: speech to children and word usage in the front page headlines of the New York Times. In a previous paper (Anderson & Schoo...

century exceeds natural variability, and thus some of it may be due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide (Stevens, “Experts confirm human role in global warming,” New York Times, Sept. 10, 1995, page 1). This weak claim, unfortunately, is based on the assumption that variability in models is the same as variability in nature. This is not widely believed. Although the scientific statement of this pro...

Humans appear to be uniquely in their ability to transcend the present and reflect on current ideas in terms of what was experienced in the past, or fantasize about the future. This paper presents an account, in layperson terms, of how this ability came about, its importance in modern life, and why it defines our ‘human-ness’. Live in the present. This is widely accepted as ancient wisdom, as t...