Log base 2

"Be the change you wish to see in the world"--It's no wonder this saying (let’s call it BTC) has become so popular. From its sense of immediacy to its spiritual turn of phrase, BTC hits all the right notes. It doesn't hurt that it is commonly attributed...

"Data! Data! Data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay." — Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.
Data may be the preeminent obsession of our age[1]. We marvel at the ever-growing quantity of data on the Internet, and fortunes are made when Google sells shares for the first time on the stock market. We worry about how corporations and governments...

Is more placebo better?
A friend of mine pointed me to the above TED talk, by Ben Goldacre. It's a entertaining presentation with lots of interesting content, although Goldacre's discussion of the placebo effect—"one of the most fascinating things in the whole of medicine"...

Suppose a clinical trial randomizes 100 patients to receive an experimental drug in the form of pills and an equal number of patients to receive identical pills except that they contain no active ingredient, that is, placebo. The results of the trial...