James Randi -- magician, escapist, author and skeptic extraordinaire -- will give three lectures in Sweden next week under the auspices of the Swedish Skeptics Society. Everyone is welcome: entry fee 50 kronor. Be there before the doors open! Among my duties is the task of buying homeopathic sleeping pills on which our guest can OD.
Tue 15 June. Stockholm, Roslagstullsbacken 21, Oskar Klein Auditorium. Doors open 18:00. Talk begins 19:00.
Wed 16 June. Gothenburg, Sven Hultins gata 4, RunAn. Doors open 18:30. Talk begins 19:00.
Thu 17 June. Lund, Lundagård, Palaestra et Odeum. Doors open 17:00. Talk begins 18:00.
More like this
Here is an interesting variation on the Monty Hall problem. For now I will simply present it cold, without indicating the context of where I saw it. Feel free to leave your proposed solutions in the comments. Everything from vague intuitions to hard-core Bayesian analysis is welcome.
Sorry for the sporadic blogging. For the past week I've been working on the Progressive Monty Hall problem, and it has proven to be considerably more complicated than I at first realized. I had expected to polish it off with a few hours work.
Speaking of the Monty Hall problem, I recently came across this terrific essay (PDF format), by Jeffrey Rosenthal, a professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Toronto.
Here's an entirely hypothetical scenario.
You're in a room with two exits, marked Door A and Door B. By each is a guardian, Guardian A and Guardian B. You need to go through one of the doors.
Do they even stock Calms Forté in Sweden?
Better make sure you don't get any stuff with active ingredients in it by mistake ;)
I wonder if Professor of Parapsychology Etzel Cardena will attend James Randi's lecture at Lund. May be interesting to see!