Seed Phrases and Entropy

Warning: This post has KaTeX enabled, so if you want to view the rendered math formulas, you’ll have to unfortunately enable JavaScript. In this post, let’s dive into a topic that is very important for anyone who uses the internet: passwords. We’ll cover what the hell is Entropy, good password practices, and how it relates to Bitcoin “seed phrases”1. ...

February 11, 2024 · 9 min · Jose Storopoli

Lindley's Paradox, or The consistency of Bayesian Thinking

Warning: This post has KaTeX enabled, so if you want to view the rendered math formulas, you’ll have to unfortunately enable JavaScript. Dennis Lindley, one of my many heroes, was an English statistician, decision theorist and leading advocate of Bayesian statistics. He published a pivotal book, Understanding Uncertainty, that changed my view on what is and how to handle uncertainty in a coherent1 way. He is responsible for one of my favorites quotes: “Inside every non-Bayesian there is a Bayesian struggling to get out”; and one of my favorite heuristics around prior probabilities: Cromwell’s Rule2. Lindley predicted in 1975 that “Bayesian methods will indeed become pervasive, enabled by the development of powerful computing facilities” (Lindley, 1975). You can find more about all of Lindley’s achievements in his obituary. ...

November 22, 2023 · 10 min · Jose Storopoli