March 2019

  • Sardines in a Tincan Hurtling Through The Air

    I fly a lot.

    In fact, I just hit five million "butt-in-seat" miles on American Airlines. 

     

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    I don't expect to continue at this place forever … but now is the time to push.

    I have a different workflow when I travel, and it works for me.

    Ultimately, I believe that good things happen when you are in motion! 

    Many people, however, are focused on the hassle.

    The practical realities of travel mean I spend some time thinking about the things airlines do well or poorly.  Nonetheless, I appreciate the benefits more than the frustrations.

    Yes, it is true … Status means much less today than it used to.  Every week it feels like they make the space between seats smaller while the time for finding overhead luggage space gets shorter. 

    Yet, the planes themselves are getting better.  Here, for example, is what an empty 787 looks like. 

     

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    It looks more like a set from Star Trek then the hellscape passengers complain about on a regular basis. 

    What about the boarding process? 

    Here is a video that presents the findings from studies on experimental boarding methods that work better. 

     

    via CGP Grey

    If you really don't like commercial flying, you can fly on any of the "economical" private options like JetSmarter or WheelsUp. Or, better yet, you could be like this guy and buy the world's only private Boeing 787 Dreamliner. 

     

    via Sam Chui

    You can rent it out for a measly $70k an hour … What a bargain!

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – March 31st, 2019

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    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

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  • Billions (with a B)

    Kylie Jenner was recently named the world's youngest "self-made" billionaire by Forbes. 

    There was a lot of controversy over the title "self'-made" … Regardless, her accomplishments are impressive. Jenner is an example of a different form of intelligence and hard work (and the power of the Kardashian media empire).

    Clearly, Americans are fascinated with the idea of billionaires as an extension of the American dream.

    Here's the world's "official" richest people. 

     

    Screen Shot 2019-03-20 at 11.06.31 AMvia Forbes

    The actual data is interesting. The US has about doubled in Billionaires since 200.  Meanwhile, China has grown from 1 Forbes list billionaire to over 300. In that same time, the US GDP grew from approximately 10.5 trillion  USD to 21.5 trillion, and China's GDP went from about 1.3 trillion USD to over 13 trillion. 

    Global GDP has increased by 2.5x since 2001.  Consequently, most people in the world are richer than they were back then. 

    How many billionaires are there … and how many in America? Forbes has an interactive chart to answer those and many more questions.,  Click the chart below to see the data. 

     

    Screen Shot 2019-03-20 at 11.04.23 AM

    via Forbes

    The issue with this chart – and any chart on this subject -  is that the data is incomplete and suspect for a variety of reasons.  For example, think about the assumptions made on the amount of money tied up in a variety of assets like private companies, art, and real estate. 

    In addition, there are many billionaires who don't want to be tracked. For example, the list only shows  Saudi Arabia having 20 billionaires.  Likewise, it is estimated that India has over $500 billion in undocumented wealth (with some estimates putting it as high as  $1.5 trillion.)

    Not a bad list to be on!

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – March 24th, 2019

    Cartoon-ai-march-madnessvia KDNuggets

     

    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

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    Trading Links:

  • March Madness: The Quest For The Holy Grail

    March Madness is in full swing and will have the world's attention for a few more days. As you could guess – most brackets have already busted. Louisville lost, UC Irvine won, and Duke barely weathered UCF's onslaught. 

     

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    via FanSided

    Lots of skill, lots of adrenaline and lots of natural talents (including amazing physical talents).  Here is a picture of 7'6 Tacko Fall. Tacko still looks taller than his opponents even when kneeling. 

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    via UCF Basketball

    The allure of March Madness is the same as gambling or trading.  These are all fertile grounds for emotion, biases, and statistics. 

    The holy grail is mighty elusive in March Madness (as in most things)  … For example, the odds of getting the perfect bracket is 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (2.4 trillion based on a Duke Mathematician's formula that takes into account rank).  It's easier to win back-to-back lotteries than picking a perfect bracket. Nonetheless, I bet you felt pretty good when you filled out your bracket.

    Here's some more crazy March Madness Stats: 

     

    via Duke University

    Feeding the Madness

    "Not only is there more to life than basketball, there's a lot more to basketball than basketball." – Phil Jackson

     

    In 2017, I highlighted 3 people that were (semi) successful at predicting March Madness. A 13-year-old who used a mix of guesswork and preferences, a 47-year-old English woman who used algorithms and data science (despite not knowing the game), and a 70-year-old bookie who had his finger on the pulse of the betting world.  None of them had the same success even a year later.

    Finding an edge is hard – maintaining an edge is even harder.

    That's not to say there aren't edges to be found. 

    Bracket-choosing mimics the way investors pick trades or allocate assets. Some people use gut feel, some base their decisions current and historical performance, and some use predictive models. You've got different inputs, weights, and miscellaneous factors influencing your decision. That makes you feel powerful. But knowing the history, their ranks, etc. can be helpful in making an educated guess and they can also lead you astray. 

    The allure of March Madness is the same as gambling or trading. As sports fans, it's easy to believe we know something the layman doesn't. We want the bragging rights of that sleeper pick, of our alma mater winning, of the big upset. 

    You'd think an NCAA analyst might have a better shot at a perfect bracket than your grandma or your musical loving co-worker.

    In reality, several of the highest-ranked brackets every year are guesses. 

    The commonality in all decisions is that we are biased. Bias is inherent to the process because there isn't a clear cut answer. We don't have the answers to "who will win" and we don't have the answer to "what makes a perfect prediction". 

    Think about it from a market efficiency standpoint. People make decisions on many factors – sometimes irrational ones – and that creates inefficiencies & complexities. It can be hard to find those inefficiencies and capitalize on them – but they're there to be found. 

    In trading, that's where AI and advanced math come in – taking away our biases and identifying inefficiencies humans miss.

    Can machine learning also help in March Madness?

    “The greater the uncertainty, the bigger the gap between what you can measure and what matters, the more you should watch out for overfitting – that is, the more you should prefer simplicity” – Tom Griffiths

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    The data is there. Over 100,000 NCAA regular season games were played over the last 25+ years, and we generally have plenty of statistics about the teams for each season. There are plenty of questions to be asked on that data that may add an extra edge. 

    That being said, people have tried before with mediocre success. It's hard to overcome the intangibles of sports – hustle, the crowd, momentum – and it's hard to overcome 1 in 9.2 quintillion odds. 

    Two lessons can be learned from this:

    1. People aren't as good at prediction as they predict they are.
    2. Machine Learning isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to all your problems

     

    Something to think about. 

  • Celebrating 30 Years of the Internet [Infographic]

    "The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow" – Bill Gates

    We take the internet for granted.  Honestly, we take a lot for granted.

    Do you remember a time before cell phones, before the internet, before all these science fiction realities.  Even when the internet started … do you remember dial-up … or when you needed dial-up for each individual site?

    In March of 1989, Tim Berners-Lee published “Information Management: A Proposal” which outlined his vision for what would soon become the World Wide Web. March 12th is the official anniversary.

    In celebration of 30 years of the internet, here’s an infographic on the timeline. Click to see the full thing. 

     

    Edit_AppInstitute-30yearsofwww-infographic
     via AppInstitute

    Think of the impact of that one paper has on so many aspects of our life. 

     

    Information Gathering 

    I remember being in law school, going to the library and scanning through microfiche (or actual books) to study or do research.

    I remember reading encyclopedias (and photocopying relevant articles). 

    I remember paying for newsletters that were mailed to me (or paying extra for fax delivery).

    Having access to more data or faster delivery was a huge advantage.

    Today, you have all the information you could ever ask for at the tip of your fingers … Google and Wikipedia are just the tip of the iceberg.

    There is almost too much information now.  It is hard to separate the signal from the noise.  It seems like anyone can find justification for almost anything.  The result is lots of data, but too little knowledge.

    Part of what is needed is a way to help people make better decisions about what to trust, what it means, and what to use.

     

    Social Interaction

    People record every moment, every intimate detail of their lives online, contrasted by a fear of strangers and letting children roam. 

    While riding around the neighborhood on your bike to see if your friends could come out to play is by no means outlawed – it does seem passé. 

    Chat rooms, Facebook, Online multi-player … many people's key friendships are born and kept online. 

    I remember my son, 13 years old at the time,  sending 10,000+ texts a month and thinking it was a phase. I was wrong. 

    The internet has radically changed the structure of relationships – for better, or often worse. 

     

    Privacy ( … or the lack of it)

    One of the biggest changes is that we as individuals have become productized. We take advantage of all these free resources at the cost of being pixeled and cookied into oblivion. We've chosen convenience over safety. 

    Remember, if you’re not paying for a product – you are the product.

    Little bits of our private information, demographics, and psychographics are sold to advertisers to create smarter ads, new offers, and realistically we have very little control over that.

    It’s been proven time and time again that these giants like Google and Facebook will find ways to sneak your data to advertisers even when it’s “illegal” with a slap on the wrist.

    Data protection is a massive issue not only for corporations but for individuals. While many companies are trying to manage your privacy while still monetizing your data, there are just as many companies who couldn’t care less.

    The GPDR – while frustrating for many – is a step towards protecting individuals.

    Every action has a reaction, and every benefit has a cost. The internet is an amazing tool – but it can also be a weapon. 

     

    What will the next 30 years of the internet hold?

    "The Internet will disappear. There will be so many IP addresses, so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with, that you won't even sense it. It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room." — Eric Schmidt

    It has been 30 years since inception, and there's radical growth. 

    We’ve gone from bit speeds to megabyte speeds. We’ve gone from crappy-quality video taking hours to download to streaming HD quality video live.

    How do imagine that the internet will evolve?

    What influence do you think the Internet of Things will have?

    It’s hard to foresee how innovation and regulation will change the internet, but it’s clear there will be change.

    We live in exciting times!

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – March 17th, 2019

    The US grounded the Boeing 737 Max after similarities between two crashes. It's good they did, safety first, but it definitely caused some headaches coming back from Saskatchewan.  There's an interesting thought experiment here to understand the complexities that the airlines had to solve.

    Imagine a 737 holds 200 people and does 4 or 5 flights a day. American has 24 737s in its fleet. That means each day ~24,000 people are displaced on American Airlines alone. They're replacing those planes with smaller regional jets – meaning more flights, more small airports, and more delays. The logistical/supply chain dynamics are a nightmare. 

     

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    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

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  • Avoiding Death By Snowmobile: Part II

    Last year, I recounted my humbling via snowmobile. 

    I traveled to Saskatchewan, Canada and "sledded" with people who had been doing it since birth. 

    When I got there, everyone was in great spirits. Apparently, this is a sport done with day drinking, lots of laughter, and semi-reckless abandon.

    We split into groups: Insane, Merely Crazy, and the Turtles. I figured I was relatively safe with the Turtles … I was wrong. 

     

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    The machines are capable of gliding over the snow at speeds exceeding 120 miles per hour.  I wasn't going nearly that fast … but the beasts were harder to tame than I expected. 

    Despite crashing numerous times, totaling a sled, and being sore for weeks … I had so much fun on year one that I brought my son with me on year two. 

     

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    Last year, I recognized 2 things: 

    1. Humans are deletion creatures. That means they can hold seven things (plus or minus two) in their memory. While they were focused on fun, I was focused on how to stay on the sled
    2. You're supposed to stay on the sled, and leaning into the turn helps you do that … who'd've thunk it? 

    This year I learned a couple more: 

    1. People don't forget. Everyone remembered my less than skillful sledding. 
    2. Youth is wasted on the young. My son picked it up fast and was speeding as if he'd been on a sled his whole life (despite falls that would cause people with skulls that no longer have soft spots to proceed with caution). 
    3. When you find the right group of people, the fun gets more fun, and struggles seem less challenging. 

     

    While sledding is fun, it's the people that make the trip. 

    Likewise, it's the people you take with you through life that makes it so worth it. 

    Oh, and I did suck less this time … Progress!

     

  • Happy Ten Year Anniversary to the Bull Market!

    On March 6th of 2009 the S&P 500 bottomed out at 676.53 points. We've seen several ups and downs since then, but the Bull market has remained strong.  The S&P has risen by approximately 309%. 

    Here's a video from CNBC on that fateful day in 2009 … it's an interesting look into the past. You'll recognize a lot of the faces, but not a lot of the prices. 

     

    Cy McCaffrey via Reddit 

    As people struggle with fear & future uncertainty, this video feels oddly apropos. The Great Recession seems so far removed, but this video calls forth that same feeling.

    Ultimately, human nature remains a constant.

    Meanwhile, the bull market has been remarkably resilient through a variety of shocks, fearmongering, divisive politics, and volatility. Despite vulnerability & large drops at the end of 2018, the bulls managed to barely weather the storm. 

    Currently, the economy is strong and the Federal Reserve is pausing interest rate increases. Yet, predictions of the economy slowing, earnings decreasing, and global trade uncertainties have many afraid.

    Are those an omen of a recession, more fake news, or just part of the playing field?  Time will tell.

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – March 10th, 2019

    I was in Toronto this week – and it was COLD!

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    Daylight Savings Time just springed forward … and here in Texas, it is getting warmer.  Perhaps winter is over?

    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

     

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