Beef stock
Prediction is difficult 鈥� especially about the future, as Niels Bohr might have said (but apparently it is just as difficult to predict who invented well-used aphorisms in the past). As such, we can safely assume that anyone who earns lots of money by investing in stocks that go up in value must be very clever indeed. Or can we? A neat experiment performed on a Norwegian television show and related by the Financial Times illustrates flaws in this line of reasoning.
The programme challenged two stockbrokers to an investing contest. Their competition? An astrologist, two beauty bloggers and a herd of cows. The cows chose their stocks by placing deposits (of the biological variety) on a grid where each square was assigned to a different company.
After three months, the stockbrokers achieved a return of 7.28 per cent, marginally ahead of the cows, which managed 7.26 per cent. The winners, however, were the beauty bloggers, whose portfolio went up by more than 10 per cent.
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The presenters then sprang a surprise, revealing that they had their own portfolio, which gained almost 24 per cent. However, they had actually chosen 20 different combinations, and ditched the worst ones. Fund managers can use a similar strategy to inflate their performance, shutting down funds that do badly in their early years so that the remainder show more impressive results.
What鈥檚 an investor to do? Well, bovine-assisted stock selection appears to be as good a strategy as any, but only in a bull market.
In a bear market, head to the woods.
Religious text
There are some questions that science can鈥檛 answer. But there are others that only science can, 74 of which are answered in the 快猫短视频 book, Why Do Boys Have Nipples? And 73 other weird questions that only science can answer.
Not the pithiest of titles, we admit, but at least it has the virtue of making it very plain what sort of book it is. Or so we thought, until we discovered that e-commerce behemoth Amazon had placed the book in the 鈥渞eligion鈥� category.
How did it end up there? Was it the product of random chance, or intelligent design? This, unfortunately, is not one of those questions science can help with.
A puzzle puzzle
Our attention was drawn this week to regular reader and puzzle solver extraordinaire Jim Randall. Jim has set himself a goal of solving 快猫短视频鈥榮 entire back catalogue of puzzles, and has been recording progress on his website ().
Not only has he solved all of the puzzles in our current series, but he has also tackled many of our much-loved Enigma puzzles, which ran from 1979 to 2013. Helping him in this endeavour is a mastery of the Python programming language, which has allowed him to code his way to easy and elegant solutions.
Feedback is inherently suspicious of this level of skill, and has begun to wonder whether we might not in fact be dealing with a hyperintelligent neural network masquerading as a man named Jim.
To get to the bottom of this, we might have to ask the 快猫短视频 puzzle editor to set a riddle no machine would ever be able to solve. Any suggestions for what such a fiendish conundrum could look like would be gratefully received.
Circular argument
Solecism of the week award goes to Circle Economy, a non-profit organisation. In a recent report highlighting the dire state of global recycling infrastructure, it lamented the low percentage of goods which could be said to be part of a truly circular economy. A worthy message, we are sure you would agree. It was just a shame that they chose to phrase it with the words: 鈥淭he world is now only 8.6 per cent circular.鈥� Still, at least it cheered up some flat-Earthers.
Joy of the rovers
If we are ever visited by travellers from another world, we will learn much about them by the name of the ship they arrive in. If it is called Vision or Clarity, we can conclude that their civilisation, like ours, is ruled by branding consultants.
Nomenclature is a tricky business, especially for people more versed in science than art, as the astronomers behind the Very Large Telescope will attest. Inviting suggestions from the public can be helpful, but these days administrators are careful to keep a tight grip on the process, fearful of allowing the likes of Boaty McBoatface a route to victory.
To name its next Mars rover, NASA is holding a competition open to students from kindergarten through to 12th grade. Nine finalists were chosen from the submissions, and a public vote will be only one factor in deciding the winner.
The final nine include a great variety of highly imaginative names, if your idea of imaginative names is restricted to abstract nouns representing admirable personality traits. The list looks like a flip chart you might find in a conference room after a group of middle managers have been asked to list their company鈥檚 brand values at an office away day.
From Feedback鈥榮 viewpoint, Ingenuity, Fortitude and Courage serve only to highlight what is missing from the choices on offer. You might call it a huge missed Opportunity.
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Send it to 快猫短视频, 25 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ES or you can email us at feedback@newscientist.com