April 2008
6 posts
Marriage and matching theory
A great friend of mine, Shri Mahesh, posted recently on the topic of choosing a spouse. The two points of discussion: The merits of “settling” (or, as Shri prefers, compromising) when choosing a mate The apparent surplus of “high-quality single women” in their thirties, versus high-quality men of the same age My figurative ears perked up at the post because it reflected...
Yahoo, Microsoft, and true value
This post from Valleywag echoes something I’ve been thinking about for the last few days: “Yahoo’s current stock price doesn’t reflect its underlying business performance, good, bad, or indifferent; it’s a reflection of Wall Street oddsmaking on whether a Microsoft buy will go through, and at what price.” I generally believe pretty strongly in efficient markets,...
Game Season
For me, April is a transitional month, with pros & cons on several dimensions. The natural world: days get longer, but my hay fever reaches an unpleasant peak. My bank account: heating bills plummet, but the double whammy of property and income taxes hits in the middle of the month. Most of all, though, April marks the transition between basketball season and Game season. For college...
Good research, bad interpretations
In another life, I might have been a scientist instead of a business guy. I was convinced I was going to be a physicist through most of junior high and high school; I loved Feynman’s books and Real Genius and did various geeky Science Olympics things; and I was preparing to go to MIT right up until the moment I visited Princeton’s campus a couple of weeks before I had to choose a...
Ratings, markets, and filling out your NCAA...
So the men’s NCAA championship is tonight, and I’ll be watching nervously, not because I have any long-standing emotional stake in either team, but because I’ll win a relatively large NCAA pool if Kansas beats Memphis. (I’ll actually win both 1st and 2nd if Kansas wins - I’ve got four entries in the bracket - and 2nd if Memphis wins, but glory goes to the winner,...
Go Cardinal!
Late March/early April is one of my favorite times of year. There are a few reasons for this, including more sunshine and the beginning of Game season (which I’ll talk about more in a later post), but the biggest one, by far, is the NCAA basketball tournament. Make that tournaments: I’m a big basketball fan, and I watch both the men’s and women’s games. My first...