Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Double entendre Oxymoron

“Practice makes a man perfect”, so goes the saying. So what makes a woman perfect? Perhaps she already is. Alright, that was lame. But that’s not the point of this post.

Consider the sentence: “No practice makes a man perfect”. Does it mean that not doing any practice makes a man perfect (and practice ruins perfection), or that, no amount of practice will make a man perfect? Is there any grammatical mistake in this sentence or does it convey two contrasting but legitimate meanings? Does this phenomenon has a linguistic definition? What are other examples of such kind?

Breaking the Bias – Lessons from Bayesian Statistical Perspective

Equitable and fair institutions are the foundation of modern democracies. Bias, as referring to “inclination or prejudice against one perso...