Wordle 953

 

A Possible Google Interview question

•  Are you familiar with vinyl LP records?
• Do you happen to know what "LP" stands for?  If you don't know, please guess. (Long Playing)
• What speed, in RPM do these records play at?  If they don't know, tell them 33 1/3
• How much music is held on an LP?  Bear in mind, they have two sides and you can have content on both sides.  Tell them about 25 minutes per side but some is lost in gaps between songs.
• How many grooves are there in an album?  The true, but mathematically trivial answer is 2, one on each side, but for this exercise; how many grooves would you have to cross if you went from the rim to the center in a straight line?  They must do this in their head:

In 3 minutes, the record will have made exactly 100 revolutions, there are (for ease of math), 21 minutes per side and 3 goes evenly into 21 7 times.  So, 700 grooves per side or 1,400 grooves total.

Wordle 952

 

Wordle 951

 

York at Zenith

So, to summarize: Walz and his wife used a technique, IUI, that nobody opposes. But Walz saw political benefit in falsely alleging that Vance opposes a different treatment, IVF, which Vance does not, in fact, oppose. Then Walz embellished the accusation by giving a seemingly emotional personal account of his own use of IVF, which was false. Walz’s untruths left Vance mystified. “It’s just such a bizarre thing to lie about, right?” Vance said Tuesday. “There’s nothing wrong with having a baby through IVF or not having a baby through IVF. Like, why lie about it? I just don’t understand that.”

LINK 

Wordle 950

 

Greg Mankiw's Two Hypotheses

In the first part of his post he rightly skewers the awful Harris "price gouging" plan and then offers two hypotheses.

One is that the Harris campaign believes that the remaining persuadable swing voters are economically ignorant, so the campaign is offering them economically ignorant economic policies. Bryan Caplan's wonderful book The Myth of the Rational Voter documents a lot of mistaken beliefs among the general public, including an anti-market bias. Ms. Harris's political advisers may be steering her to pander to these mistaken beliefs,

A second hypothesis involves campaign personnel. The people I see mentioned as Harris economic advisers are Brian Deese, Gene Sperling, Mike Pyle, Deanne Millison, and Brian Nelson. All smart people, no doubt. But as far as I know, none of these people is trained as a PhD economist. They all seem to be lawyers. Maybe lawyers are more inclined to see a problem and think, "I know what new law will fix that." True economists are more respectful of the invisible hand and more worried about the unintended consequences of heavy-handed regulation.

Allow me to offer a third hypothesis:  Harris is herself, economically ignorant.  She either never took a basic econ course or took a course and didn't understand it or dismissed it as BS.  In her mind, the law of supply and demand might as well not exist.  

Surely she has some people who have a rudimentary grasp of economics, that they can't get through to her says either a lot about who she surrounds herself with or about her ability to be open to new (to her) ideas.  Neither of these options are acceptable in an executive of any kind, let alone the US President.

Wordle 949

 

Wordle 948

 

Wordle 947