Disqus - Latest Comments for TorontoBentley

Re: Tropical tiki bar Miss Thing’s moves into Parkdale

Paul Hewitt — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 11:49:20 -0000

We dined there last night and it was excellent. We were particularly impressed by the service - knowledgeable, friendly and efficient. We trusted our server's recommendations, as some of the menu items appeared to be a bit outside our comfort zone, and we were glad we did! The "spam" dish (see what I mean?) didn't appear to be that appetizing, but it sure was tasty, as were the coconut shrimp, perfectly cooked chicken wings and the amazing lobster bisque ramen dish. We will definitely be back.

Re: Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Book Review)

Paul Hewitt — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 11:00:00 -0000

Excellent review of an extremely important topic. From my observations as a former university student, the academic standards were much higher in the past. Still, most graduated, even if they didn't acquire all of the skills of critical thinking, ability to solve (or at least analyse) complex problems, and, ahem, the ability to write coherently. In my experience, those graduating in the top 5% were worthy of their degrees. The next 20% were "passable" in their knowledge and abilities, and the rest should not have been graduated.

Now, it appears that universities have lowered their standards (and study requirements) to pander to the lower 95%. This is probably a function of "profit"-seeking behaviour on the part of universities. Unfortunately, it degrades the value of the degree, which used to be a signal of one's potential, and of course, the graduates aren't really qualified to take their places in the real world.

As other commenters have noted, the real problem is with pre-university education. Rote learning just doesn't cut it. It never did. Yet elementary schooling has always focused on memorizing facts. Many new university students are completely unprepared for the different style of learning (even though it has been substantially watered down over the years).

Re: 5 things we learned in Monday's debate

Paul Hewitt — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 17:40:59 -0000

Last night's debate shocked me, for two reasons. I was surprised at how unprepared Romney was to provide any unique insights into foreign affairs. I was flabbergasted to see that Romney agreed with Obama on so many foreign policy issues!

President Obama gave Romney a free education on foreign policy matters, and how to handle them. In watching Romney, on the split screen, when Obama was talking, he reminded me of a student listening to a lecture from a very knowledgeable professor. Romney did pay attention to what Obama was saying. Now, it could be that Romney was learning something new, or Romney was paying attention to be able to formulate his "own" policy talking points for when he would have a turn to speak. This was so plainly evident, I'd almost place a bet that after the debate, Romney asked Obama if he would be his Secretary of State, if he were to win the election!

If I had to describe each candidate's overall impression in one word:

Obama: Presidential
Romney: Scattered (or Scary...just in time for Halloween!)

Re: Why Are Women Paid Less?

Paul Hewitt — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:18:19 -0000

I'm shocked that a noted labor economist, specializing in issues of discrimination, would be unable to answer the last question about the one piece of legislation that might reduce discrimination in the workplace! Granted, there are no useful economic theories that explain discrimination and why it persists, but there are concepts that can be used to at least partially explain how discrimination operates in the workplace. Signaling theory comes to mind. Sometimes, we have to look outside the basic economic framework to gain a better understanding of the issues, and this is one of those instances. Sociology and anthropology offer useful concepts, too. In theory, signaling is quite objective, but in practice, it is subject to perceptual biases, many of which are institutionally based. Anything that helps reduce the perceptual bias of employers will reduce discrimination. Surely, the good professor can come up with some concrete examples of institutional reform that would greatly reduce discrimination or at least speed up the process.

Re: How To Vote

Paul Hewitt — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:41:16 -0000

If you think the super PACs have too much influence now, wait until they can leverage their millions in prediction markets!

While we're at it, if the markets tell people which candidate to vote for, why not just eliminate the costly voting process?

Re: Coulter: Obama’s base is ‘stupid single women’

Paul Hewitt — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 17:23:33 -0000

I'll pay for Coulter's contraception. The world doesn't need any more like her.

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here's Why.

Paul Hewitt — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 10:36:07 -0000

Very true. We had to read a lot of literature books in high school, but received very little actual grammar instruction. I had to teach myself how to write properly! Grammar should be taught from the earliest grades.

Once, in a debate on this issue, a teacher defended the position of not being too hard on the little dears, for fear of stunting their creativity. The response was, who gives a damn what they're thinking, if they can't express it clearly to others.

Re: Labor in the Age of the Smart Machine

Paul Hewitt — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:01:37 -0000

There are a few reasons why the labour share rises during a recession and falls during an economic expansion. Executive pay lags the economy, because bonuses are paid after corporate year ends. Therefore, labour's share rises as the economy heads into a recession. During a recession, inventories are drawn down, as firms cut back production (value added drops). Therefore, labour's share of total valued added increases. Layoffs lag the onset of recessions. Firms wait until they are in a recession before laying off workers. Therefore, labour's share of the value added increases during a recession and falls during the upswing.

The overall trend is definitely downward, undoubtedly the result of computerization. It took years to integrate computers, efficiently, in the workplace. So, we see the steady downward trend. Still, in most cases, computers are still a tool to be used by labour. One might argue that the remaining labour force is much more productive than ever before. Could it be that they may have more bargaining power and not less?

Re: Wisdom of the Crowds: When do we need Independence? - A Computer Scientist in a Business School

Paul Hewitt — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 09:49:48 -0000

Hi Panos...

Nice post. I'll find some time to comment in more detail later, but I'm a bit surprised you wrote that prediction markets work surprisingly well. Please don't tell me that you drank the Kool-Aid!

I think your post shows that "information" is not a "one size fits all" type of thing. In some markets, each participant will have a significant amount of information about an outcome. In others, the participants will have very little information (climate change forecasts, for example). In the former case, independence would be much more important, to cancel out the errors of the individual judgments. In the latter case, because each participant has such a small amount of information, the forecast errors are large. We would not expect such a market to generate accurate forecasts, unless the participants were sharing information.

When I first got started researching prediction markets I wanted to know which types of issues could be successfully predicted. I knew it would be a function of the information "profile" for the issue to be forecast. I had given it some thought, but put it on the back-burner. Thank you for refreshing my memory. I'll get to work on it and post the result on my blog.

Re: Measuring the prediction market industry – a proposal

Paul Hewitt — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:41:38 -0000

True enough for the general public, but the "aggregator" would know which vendors were doing better than the others. It may affect the reporting. I'd be surprised if any are doing particularly well, unfortunately.

Still, it will be interesting to see the results. All the best in this endeavor!

Paul

Re: Measuring the prediction market industry – a proposal

Paul Hewitt — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:03:53 -0000

Hi Jed...

A very good idea for a start. It is great that you have some "solid interest" from some of the software vendors. Assuming you do get the data, it will also show whether the industry is growing (net new clients over time). I'm a bit skeptical that they will release actual data on how many paid clients they have, because I don't think the numbers are there, so far. It would also show which vendors are growing. I may be wrong (hope I am). If you look at Inkling's web site, they list a few of their clients, of which most appear to be continuing their use of prediction markets.

Paul

Re: Follow-up to “Approaching business problems differently”

Paul Hewitt — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:43:50 -0000

Here is a link to a new blog on practical aspects of enterprise prediction markets, where I also discuss some of the issues holding back acceptance. I'd appreciate your comments when you have time.

http://torontopm.wordpress....

Re: The value of prediction markets

Paul Hewitt — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:09:04 -0000

I agree, public markets are very different from internal ones. Most of the public markets suffer from having too small of a "crowd". Though several cite thousands of users, few of the individual markets have more than a few actual traders. As a result, they have to use a MSR or some other form of automated market maker in order to ensure enough liquidity for the market to function at all. In my opinion, this is simply a workaround to the problem of not having enough traders (let alone their having sufficient diversity). While a MSR does allow for trading among a small number of traders, the fact that it automatically allows traders to sell out of positions affects the traders' risk preferences, skewing their "investment" behavior. Internal markets should (and must) avoid this problem, in order to be successful.

The software vendors make it sound very easy to set up internal prediction markets. We should keep in mind that the software is but a tool to be used by the prediction market, which is a tool to be used in corporate decision making. The software solution is relatively easy (apart from the choice of mechanism). The hard part is satisfying the necessary conditions (crowd, diversity, independence) for accurate predictions.

Generally, public markets stay open until just before the outcome is revealed. They provide very little useful predictive value, if any. Internal markets must reveal their predictions much earlier, if they are to be useful and become more widely used.

Finally, I believe the corporate world has missed the opportunity to use prediction markets to measure the uncertainty surrounding predictions of key events and conditions (so far, at least). There is very little literature on the use of prediction markets to measure uncertainty. I believe this would be a very valuable use of prediction markets in the corporate world.