Mastodawn

💥Beware! In repeated trials, LLMs picked "Response B" over "Response A" about 60%–69% of the time. To boost your chances of success, make sure to put your preferred option as "Response B". https://www.cip.org/blog/llm-judges-are-unreliable

LLM Judges Are Unreliable — The Collective Intelligence Project

When Large Language Models are used as judges for decision-making across various sensitive domains, they consistently exhibit unpredictable and hidden measurement biases, making their verdicts unreliable despite common prompt engineering practices.

The Collective Intelligence Project

peterquirk May 21

Recent research on the benefits of #Parkrun
https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0003580

The impact of parkrun on life satisfaction and its cost-effectiveness: A six-month study of parkrunners in the United Kingdom

An intervention suggested by the World Health Organisation that might increase life satisfaction is parkrun, a free, weekly, timed five kilometre run or walk. The issues with such interventions are (1) whether they impact on the life satisfaction of their participants, and (2) whether they are cost-effective. A study of 548 newly registered parkrunners were asked about their life satisfaction at baseline and six months later. A change of one life satisfaction point per year per participant was defined as one WELLBY (wellbeing adjusted life year), with a value of £13,000. Three approaches were used to estimate the additionality (added value) of parkrun: (1) by comparing a participant’s number of parkruns to total activity; (2) by accounting for the participant’s perceived impact of parkrun across 16 measures; and (3) combining these two methods equally. After six months, weighted, seasonally adjusted life satisfaction increased from a mean of 7.489 to 7.746, a change of 0.257. Both life satisfaction improvement and additionality were greatest for the least active. Assuming only half a year of benefit, the total value of the life satisfaction change for the 2019 parkrun population of 400,167 participants was estimated as £667.4m, with the least active accounting for almost half. Comparing to the cost of running parkrun in 2019 and using the activity, impact and combined methods for additionality, benefit-cost analysis ratios were found to be 16.7, 98.5 and 59.3 to 1, respectively. These were between 2.8 to 16.7 times that of other population-level physical activity interventions. Physical health was a mediator between activity and life satisfaction; mental health was only found as a mediator when combined with physical activity. Successful features of parkrun that might guide other interventions include its framing (role, time, place and cost) and ability to forge both strong and weak social ties.

peterquirk Mar 3

A letter I wrote to the obituaries editor at the Boston Globe.

I discovered, just today, that Edson De Castro, founder and CEO of Data General Corp, died on Sept 6, 2024 without any press coverage from the Boston Globe or any other newspaper. A tiny reference in the Worcester Telegram refers readers to the funeral home. Edson was a giant in the minicomputer industry who designed the very successful PDP-8 at Digital Equipment Corp (DEC), before leaving to found Data General in 1968. He was much loved by employees and attended the annual Grey Eagles reunion for a decade or more after the company was acquired by EMC Corp. Sadly, the Boston Globe archives yield no search results for "Edson de Castro", despite the fact that Data General was frequently in the news from 1968-1999. His passing deserves a major obituary.

https://www.chiampafuneralhome.com/obituaries/Edson-Donald-De-Castro?obId=33029648
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General
https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2012/07/102702207-05-01-acc.pdf
https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2003/04/01/341000/

Obituary information for Edson Donald de Castro

View Edson Donald de Castro's obituary, contribute to their memorial, see their funeral service details, and more.

peterquirk Dec 18, 2024

Are you a medical practitioner (GP, NP, PT, etc.)? Did you know that UK and Australian practitioners are increasingly integrating a weekly #Parkrun into their patients' treatment? Resources:
1. The Royal Australian College of GPs prakrun practice initiative: https://www.racgp.org.au/parkrunpractice
2. Sloane Medical Center (UK) parkrun initiative: https://youtu.be/HW6Sa4uk7oE?si=S--QoVF218hkhIRn
3. Prescribe parkrun, not drugs: https://youtu.be/Er0SFp663i4?si=nCW3iZ2YFjsOa2Al
4. NHS parkrun on prescritpion: https://youtu.be/WxLs1rsFLEY?si=Kglh_HHPzKtfuRY7

parkrun practice

Encouraging GPs, medical staff, and the community to walk, run, volunteer or spectate at your local parkrun today!

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners