Category: Writing

This overhyped Zone 2 must not be discrete

On By In Statements, Writing
Natural distribution of heart rates vs that from modern life.

Heart rates must be Lognormal in distribution. Simply, it is not possible to have a negative heart rate and at low variance (and a mean > 6 standard deviations away from 0), the lognormal behaves like a normal.

Incidentally I failed to understand from San-Millan’s paper(s) the 2 mmol lactate threshold claimed in the podcast with Petter Attia and elsewhere. I don’t see a threshold. Even for athletes (top graph below) there is a mix outside asymptote (Lactate >5 mmol becomes 0 fat oxidation).

Link to full article – https://fooledbyrandomness.com/blog/2022/10/16/this-overhyped-zone-2-training-must-not-be-discrete/

Detecting BS in Correlation Windows

On By In Statements, Writing
S&P 500 and 10-year US Treasury Bond Rolling Correlation of Monthly Returns

Financial theory requires correlation to be constant (or, at least, known and nonrandom). Nonrandom means predictable with waning sampling error over the period concerned. Ellipticality is a condition more necessary than thin tails, recall my Twitter fight with that non-probabilist Clifford Asness where I questioned not just his empirical claims and his real-life record, but his own theoretical rigor and the use by that idiot Antti Ilmanen of cartoon models to prove a point about tail hedging. Their entire business reposes on that ghost model of correlation-diversification from modern portfolio theory. The fight was interesting sociologically, but not technically. What is interesting technically is the thingy below.

Link to full article – https://fooledbyrandomness.com/blog/2021/11/24/detecting-bs-in-correlation-windows/

Nassim completes 3rd edition of The Bed of Procrustes

On By In Twitter, Writing

Nassim tweeted that he added more aphorisms on the 3rd edition of his book, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms.

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms is a philosophy book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb written in the aphoristic style. It was first released on November 30, 2010 by Random House. An updated edition was released on October 26, 2016 that includes fifty percent more material than the 2010 edition.

[Medium] Snowden, Phony hence Traitor?

On By In Statements, Writing

When you catch someone with a shoddy-but-carefully-curated story, Edward Snowden, producing the mother of bad faith arguments (in effect, lying) while, in addition, facilitating a character assassination (and severe cyberharassment), something very, very sinister about the person emerges that can help answer some fundamental yet still hanging questions.

Continue reading on Medium: medium.com/incerto/snowden-phony-hence-traitor-86ee41197578

Paper: Bitcoin, Currencies, and Bubbles

On By In Statements, Writing

This discussion applies quantitative finance methods and economic arguments to cryptocurrencies in general and bitcoin in particular —as there are about $10,000$ cryptocurrencies, we focus (unless otherwise specified) on the most discussed crypto of those that claim to hue to the original protocol \cite{nakamoto2009bitcoin} and the one with, by far, the largest market capitalization.

Link to Paper – fooledbyrandomness.com/BTC-QF.pdf

Answering questions and providing derivations for the #bitcoinblackpaper

Link to Supplementary Material / Simplifications – fooledbyrandomness.com/BTC-QF-appendix.pdf

[YouTube] P-Value Hacking

On By In Videos, Writing

We saw that 1) many metrics are stochastic, 2) what is stochastic can be hacked. This is the simplification of my work showing that “p-values are not p-values”, i.e. highly sample dependent, with a skewed distribution. For instance, for a “true” P value of .11, 53% of observations will show less than .05. This allows for hacking: in a few trials, a researcher can get a fake p-value of .01.

Paper is here and in Chapter 19 of SCOFT (Statistical Conseq of Fat Tails): Link to paper – A Short Note on P-Value Hacking