The news that UK business secretary Alok Sharma has been tested for Covid-19 highlighted the issue of survivorship bias, that is the systematic overestimation of performance and underestimation of risk by ignoring non-survivors. In the early stages of the epidemic, the risk perception of politicians broadly matched that of the general population. However, if the …
Category archives: Political Theory
Mapping Brexit II
An updated map of Monday’s Indicative Votes but including last week’s votes for the Withdrawal Agreement. Note more analysis here: https://duncanrobertson.com/2019/03/28/mapping-brexit/ This network map shows each MP that voted for each of 5 propositions: Parliamentary Sovereignty, Confirmatory Public Vote, Customs Union, Common Market 2.0, or the Withdrawal Agreement. The large dots show the number of …
Mapping Brexit
Wednesday’s indicative votes in the House of Commons produced no definitive answer of the way forward. By using social network analysis showing the size of each voting bloc and ‘Hamming distances’ (ironically usually used for error correction), we can map how close MPs are to each other, giving an indication of how a coalition could …
The Conservative Manifesto: Care Fees as a Percentage of Initial Wealth
The Conservative Party have announced their manifesto for the 2017 General Election. Included in this (on page 64-65) is proposed We will introduce a single capital floor, set at £100,000, more than four times the current means test threshold. This will ensure that, no matter how large the cost of care turns out to be, …
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Eight Mile and the Emergence of Segregation
Eight Mile, epitomized by Eminem in the film of the same name, is a street in Detroit that marks the boundary between the majority white northern suburbs and the majority black neighborhoods closer to the inner city. But what causes this segregation in the first place? Hypothesis 1: The Central Planner In Detroit’s case, as …
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The Brexit Paradox: This is not Representative Democracy
In the UK, voters elect a Member of Parliament who is there to represent the views of their constituents. This is representative democracy, and the UK has survived pretty well with this form of government. It is one of the many things that the Romans Have Done For Us. Members of Parliament are supposed to …
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