As an economist without formal training in epidemiology I have done my best to leave the modelling up to the experts. But, the world as shut down around me and my life is suddenly so much more complicated and I have to wonder, is this COVID thing as dangerous as ...

Francis Anscombe's seminal paper on "Graphs in Statistical" analysis (American Statistician, 1973) effectively makes the case that looking at summary statistics of data is insufficient to identify the relationship between variables. He demonstrates this by generating four different data sets (Anscombe's quartet) which have nearly identical summary statistics. His data have ...

Dr. Ford’s testimony alleging that Judge Kavanaugh attempted to rape her when she was 15 was extremely difficult to watch as she was and still is deeply traumatized by the event. Kavanaugh’s abrasive and highly rehearsed obstructionist response was even more difficult to watch. In response I decided to ...

Major caveat! I have no investment training or finance training and all of my calculations are back of the envelope calculations put together from what information I can gather online. In addition, given that investment planning usually spans decades, massive uncertainties exist in tax schemes and expected rate of returns. ...

With hurricane Florence bearing down with expected to be devastating force, it might be a good time to reflect on the history of Atlantic Hurricanes on the United States. As an easy if not full proof source for hurricane data I drew on public data collated through Wikipedia's list of ...

After spending a day the other week struggling to make sense of a federal data set shared in an archaic format (ASCII fixed format dat file). It is essential for the effective distribution and sharing of data that it use the minimum amount of disk space and be rapidly accessible ...

A number of large surveys have attempted to quantify consumer consumption from a limited period of time observed. This task can be fairly complex as it is fraught with potentially large difficulties directly observing who is consuming what. Rather than this expensive method some researchers have attempted to substitute more ...

A number of large surveys have attempted to quantify consumer consumption from a limited period of time observed. This task can be fairly complex as it is fraught with potentially large difficulties directly observing who is consuming what. Rather than this expensive method some researchers have attempted to substitute more ...

The blatant distortions of reality put forth by the Clinton campaign are so offensive as to be laughable at times. In the victory speech of Hillary Clinton in South Carolina she spent a significant portion of it talking about how her campaign is financed by "grassroots".Well, looking at the ...

The FEC just released the most recent campaign contributor data and the results show a strong continued widespread growth in support for Bernie Sanders across the country.Figure 1: A map of what counties and states support Bernie Sanders relative to th...

Recently, I wrote an little post that got a lot of attention and some criticism, As First Lady, Popularity of Babies Named "Hillary" Dropped by an Unprecedented 90%.The attention was likely due to the large number of people who are attempting to evaluate Hillary Clinton as a viable general election ...

Big business, lawyers, and the financial sector are the largest campaign backers of Hillary Clinton. Collectively they represent 35.5 million dollars donated to her campaign, 38% of total itemized funds donated to the Clinton campaign in 2015. Bernie Sanders on the other hand is largely backed by a diverse collection of individuals: engineers, ...

You are running for class president against a pimpled-nosed, blond barbarian. You have given your best speech and your obnoxious opponent has given his best speech. The teacher is about to call on the class to vote! The time of reckoning is upon you...

You are running for class president against a pimpled-nosed, blond barbarian. You have given your best speech and your obnoxious opponent has given his best speech. The teacher is about to call on the class to vote! The time of reckoning is upon you...

The most recent three polls coming out of Nevada have surprised many by indicating that Sanders is tied with Clinton for the primary vote in that state. This news is shocking to many because the previous five polls done in that state indicated Clinton ...

Sanders has way more backers across the United States (with the possible exception of the South). Hillary Clinton might be doing well at the polls. However, the shocking fact of polling is that only 8-9% of those asked to participate in polls combined ...

This article examines FEC data in depth and finds what most people already know. Hillary Clinton's presidential bid is financed largely through a relatively small quantity of big donors while Bernie Sanders' presidential bid is funded by numerous small donors.In order to do our analysis, we look at four ...