Shoot the 2! A game theory strategy for half-court basketball

I used to be good at basketball. *

Something I’ve been thinking about recently: how does “winner’s outs” (make a basket and get the ball back) that is the common rule in a half court game affect the optimal shot taking strategy?  Scoring and earning another chance to score is a different outcome than scoring and having the other team get the ball (like in a regular full-court game).

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My New Gig: BetterLesson

7 years ago, I started my essay to graduate school with this sentence: “My career goal is to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities in educational technology.” Last month, I finally made good on that statement – leaving Microsoft after 4+ years to become the VP of Product with BetterLesson.

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Would you pay $1/year for spam-free email?

A few months back, my colleague, Matthew Hurst posted a link to a interesting infographic from the New Scientist that visualizes data from a spam-bot called “Storm.”:

(click the image the see the full-size graphic)

The visualization is interesting, but doesn’t explore what I think is the most interesting question with regards to spam: “what’s the marginal revenue per spam email sent?” Based on some of the numbers presented, here’s my math to back that number out:

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why i ride my bike to work: a manifesto. of sorts.

drive? or bike? hmm...

this is part of my route home.

I’m not a hard core bicyclist type. No tats of chain rings. I think fixed gear bikes are fun but kinda dumb, really. But I’ve been commuting by bike for about six years now…and it’s just so freakin’ sensible on so many levels, that I don’t understand why it’s not more adopted by the mainstream, and not more supported by various levels of government.  What follows is my case for why I ride.

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my best tweet of all time: