Background Probability

The Agnostic Popular Front has moved to its new home at Skeptic Ink, and will henceforth be known as Background Probability. Despite the relocation and rebranding, we will continue to spew the same low-fidelity high-quality bullshit that you've come to expect.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Happy Constitution Day!

For those of you hoping to ruminate on the Constitutional issues of our times with an eye to electoral politics, I would suggest taking in a few hours of Con Law from Professor Obama. I especially recommend his own model answers, if you want to see how constitutional law is really done. Enjoy!

p.s. If anyone can find anything remotely indicative of this level of thoughtfulness on such weighty matters of law and policy from the McCain-Palin ticket, please let me know.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Midwestern Tuscan Villa

I've seen beautiful villas in Europe and on the American coasts, but I never expected to find one out here smack in the middle of Kansas surrounded by endless fields, accessible only by unpaved roads.

Seriously, this was the most amazing man-made thing I've ever seen in a rectangular state.

p.s. Congrats to the groom and best wishes to the bride!

Friday, September 5, 2008

Bible Belt Redux

UIUC’s electoral projections map fairly nicely onto my Bible Belt map from awhile back.  Coincidence? 

Modeling the Electoral College

With degrees in maths and some background in mod/sim, one might suppose that I would at some point get around to mathematically modeling to the upcoming presidential election.  I’ll spare you the gory details, but the upshot of this chart is that the odds of a McCain-Palin victory are hovering below 4% as of this morning’s state-by-state polling data.  These are roughly the same odds that Obama-Biden landslide into office with over 72% of the electoral college votes.  Naturally, I am hoping for an outcome somewhere within one sigma from the median, since elections which fall well within the tails seem to smack of systemic bias.

 

Crunch the numbers, ye conservatives, and despair.

 

p.s. The math geeks at UIUC have come to rather similar conclusions: http://election08.cs.uiuc.edu/