(Michael Chinen)

Probability is a hard thing for humans to think about. The debate between Bayesian and orthodox (frequentist) statistics around the relationship of event frequency and probability makes that clear. Setting that aside, there are a whole bunch of fields that care about log probability. Log probability is an elemental quantity of information theory. Entropy is […]

We accept that certain events that happened in the early course of our lives influence us with a permanence that lives on in our identity. For many people music will be one of those events. In the opening of High Fidelity the main character sarcastically warns about the dangers of music for kids. In this […]

This weekend I went back to basics and did some very tape-y music on the electro-acoustically traditional themes of traffic and water. That being said I left my usual mode of synthesis-based composition at the door: this is a memoir piece that I made in Audacity. I haven’t been making much music lately, so my […]

NPR, you are great. You have shows that cover literally everything, from debating whether AI will be become skynet or Her, to fixing my car while getting relationship advice (RIP Tommy). I spend 3 hours a day commuting like a real American, and most of that time goes to podcasts from NPR. Despite the title […]

“The world is watching: one cannot walk through a meadow or forest without a ripple of report spreading out from one’s passage. The thrush darts back, the jay squalls, a beetle scuttles under the grasses, and the signal is passed along. Every creature knows when a hawk is cruising or a human strolling. The information […]