Category: Society

Posts about economic and political topics

Can Money Really Buy Happiness? Or How to Lie with Statistics in Science


It’s a widely accepted notion that money influences happiness, a concept famously associated with Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, who purportedly demonstrated that emotional wellbeing increases with income but plateaus beyond an annual threshold of about $75,000.

This idea has permeated both academic circles and popular media, reinforcing the belief that there’s a direct correlation between financial prosperity and happiness. But how accurate is this belief when we scrutinize the data more closely? To find out read on!
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Artificial Intelligence in Academic Theses: An Opportunity, Not a Threat


In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly permeating various aspects of our lives, the academic world is also faced with the challenge of dealing with this rapid technological development. This is particularly true regarding final theses and term papers, raising the question of how we, as educational institutions, should handle the use of foundation models like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and other language-based models (LLMs).
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Reversion to the Mean: Unraveling a Pervasive Misconception in Business and Beyond


In the realm of business and leadership, one statistical phenomenon often goes unrecognized yet significantly influences our understanding of performance and success. This is the concept of reversion to the mean (also called regression to the mean). This seemingly simple statistical occurrence can profoundly impact how we perceive management strategies, leadership effectiveness, and even the fate of those gracing the covers of prominent magazines. To understand what is going on, read on!
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The Forgotten Factor in the Middle East Conflict | Youth Bulge Theory


The geopolitics of the Middle East has always been complex, with its share of conflicts and political unrest. Numerous theories have been proposed to dissect the underpinnings of the region’s political instability.

One such theory, known as the Youth Bulge Theory, asserts that a high proportion of young people within a population can lead to political instability and even violence. This theory could provide an illuminating perspective on the dynamics of the Middle East conflicts.

If you want to understand this most important ingredient of the ongoing conflict, read on!
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Confidence Intervals in Election Polling: Understanding the Uncertainty of Political Forecasting


Election polls play a crucial role in predicting the outcome of elections and shaping public opinion. However, it’s important to understand that the results of any single poll should be taken with a grain of salt.

Many polls only ask about 1,000 people about their political preferences, which is quite small in comparison to the often millions of voters. So, how reliable are those results? Or in other words, how confident can we be in the results? To understand some of these intricacies, read on!
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Is this still Weather or is it already Climate? Decoding Chaos!


Weather and climate are words often used interchangeably in casual conversations. But when a chilly summer breeze sweeps through in July, or when unexpected rains dampen our winter holidays, the age-old debate resurfaces: “Is climate change even real?”

If you want to dive deep into the fascinating realm of chaotic systems to unravel this enigma and distinguish between weather and climate, read on!
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Can a Simple Multi-Agent Model Replicate Complex Stock Market Behaviour?


The stock market is one of the most complex systems we know about. Millions of intelligent, highly competitive people (and increasingly AIs) try to outwit each other to earn as much money as possible.

In this post we build a simulation where little agents employ different trading strategies on an artificial stock market to replicate key stylized facts of real financial markets, so read on!
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Polycrisis: When Will the World End? Professor Gott’s Equation Gives an Answer! (Also as a Video!)


The 21st century has been marked by a series of global crises – from environmental degradation and pandemics to economic instability and political unrest.

As we hurtle forward towards the future, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the challenges we face as a species are numerous and interlinked, the word “polycrisis” is making the rounds.

These pressing issues raise the question: will humanity survive in the long term, or are we facing extinction – and if so, when? If you want to learn about a method to predict doomsday, read on!
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Which Gender is associated with this Name? R to the R-escue!


When addressing somebody unknown to you with an uncommon name e.g. in an email you might not know whether this person is male or female. In this post, we make it a little fun project to let R help us with that, so read on!
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