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Gaurav

https://gsood.com

Capuchin Monkeys and Fairness: I Want At Least As Much As The Other

In a much heralded experiment, we see that a Capuchin monkey rejects a reward (food) for doing a task after seeing another monkey being rewarded with something more appetizing for doing the same task. It has been interpreted as evidence for our ‘instinct for fairness’. But there is more to

Sampling on MTurk

In many of the studies that use MTurk, there appears to be little strategy to sampling. A study is posted (and reposted) on MTurk till a particular number of respondents take the study. If the pool of respondents reflects true population proportions, if people arrive in no particular order, and

Bad Weather: Getting Data on Weather in a ZIP Code on a Particular Date

High-quality weather data are public. But they aren’t easy to make use of. Some thoughts and some software for finding out the weather in a particular ZIP Code on a particular day (or a set of dates). Some brief ground clearing before we begin. Weather data come from weather

Why Were the Polls so Accurate?

The Quant. Interwebs have overflowed with joy since the election. Poll aggregation works. And so indeed does polling, though you won’t hear as much about it on the news, which is likely biased towards celebrity intellects rather than the hardworking many. But why were the polls so accurate? One

Raising Money for Causes

Four teenagers, on the cusp of adulthood and eminently well-to-do, were out on the pavement raising money for children struck with cancer. They had been out raising money for a couple of hours, and from a glance at their tin pot, I estimated that they had raised about $30 or