Monday, April 29, 2013
Obies in the news
Nice to see my fellow Oberlin College classmate with such a "progressive" view.. Ah and no shock...fellow Obie Michelle Malkin comes to his aid. It is always a sign that you said something stupid when Michelle Malkin is called in to defend you. How long will it take before Sarah Palin chimes in to defend his 1st Amendment rights?
big world
Someone asked me why I was so interested in Egypt. There are two reasons (1) they are attempting to prevent a run on a currency by engineering a controlled devaluation. That is a difficult task and it is still to be seen if they can do it. Latest update here (2) they are the big player in the Mid East and what happens there could have significant ripples.
Sometimes we forget how big a world it is. Below is a graph of the worlds 20 most populous countries
Now plot the nominal GDPs of those same 20 countries.
Finally plot the per capita GDPs of those same 20 most populace countries
The results are pretty stark. The US, Japan, and Germany stand out as the wealthy countries. There is a second group Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Turkey whose per capita GDPs all sit around 10,000 USD. One more tier down are China, Iran, and Thailand. Then there are the other ten countries all with per capita GDPs below 4,000 USD. India with a population over three times that of the US has a per capita income of approximately 5% of the US. Pakistan plus Bangladesh has a population equal to the US and yet their combined GDP barely register.
Sometimes we forget how big a world it is. Below is a graph of the worlds 20 most populous countries
Now plot the nominal GDPs of those same 20 countries.
Finally plot the per capita GDPs of those same 20 most populace countries
The results are pretty stark. The US, Japan, and Germany stand out as the wealthy countries. There is a second group Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Turkey whose per capita GDPs all sit around 10,000 USD. One more tier down are China, Iran, and Thailand. Then there are the other ten countries all with per capita GDPs below 4,000 USD. India with a population over three times that of the US has a per capita income of approximately 5% of the US. Pakistan plus Bangladesh has a population equal to the US and yet their combined GDP barely register.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
Is Jenny McCarthy Part of Your Social Network?
TIME: How Social Networks Influence Parents' Decision to Vaccinate
"At least 95% of parents in both groups indicated that they had consulted their “people network” for insight into making vaccination decisions. Parents reported they paid the most attention to their spouse or partner’s opinion. Pediatricians were next in line, followed by friends and relatives...The effect was overwhelming, particularly for parents whose network mostly recommended not following immunization guidelines; they were more than 1,500 times more likely to not adhere to the CDC’s vaccination schedules for their children than other parents. Even parents whose networks were more compliant about following immunization schedules (comprising 26% to 50% of people who advised against the guidelines) were 31 times more likely to not vaccinate as recommended. “Parents’ people networks matter a ton,” says Brunson, now an assistant professor of anthropology at Texas State University. “Having those conversations with your sister, with your parent, with your friends matter a lot more than we thought.”
also here
Why would you consult your social network as to whether you should vaccinate your child (unless someone in your social network has a background in epidemiology)?
"At least 95% of parents in both groups indicated that they had consulted their “people network” for insight into making vaccination decisions. Parents reported they paid the most attention to their spouse or partner’s opinion. Pediatricians were next in line, followed by friends and relatives...The effect was overwhelming, particularly for parents whose network mostly recommended not following immunization guidelines; they were more than 1,500 times more likely to not adhere to the CDC’s vaccination schedules for their children than other parents. Even parents whose networks were more compliant about following immunization schedules (comprising 26% to 50% of people who advised against the guidelines) were 31 times more likely to not vaccinate as recommended. “Parents’ people networks matter a ton,” says Brunson, now an assistant professor of anthropology at Texas State University. “Having those conversations with your sister, with your parent, with your friends matter a lot more than we thought.”
also here
Why would you consult your social network as to whether you should vaccinate your child (unless someone in your social network has a background in epidemiology)?
- Is it an example of the wisdom of crowds? I don't really see how pooling the opinions of persons with low information would lead to better information.
- Is it that a parent trusts people s/he knows more than s/he trusts anonymous experts - even if the people s/he knows are known to have no expertise in the topic.
- Is it that the experts are speaking at too high a level and that statistical results do not get internalized in the same ways that stories do. Jenny McCarthy's heartbreaking story tying her son's difficulty to immunizations (see here) elicits a physical response - whereas a CDC study which shows no link between antigen exposure and prevalence of autism does not elicit the same response (even if it has greater predictive value).
- Is it that the parent just wants the re-assurance that s/he is doing what other people s/he knows are doing ie if they are doing it it must be correct ie herd behavior?
Thursday, April 11, 2013
The Old Guy
After college I lived in Washington DC for a few years. One of my jobs there was working for ICF Consulting (ICF=Its a Consulting Firm!). My boss at ICF also had an appointment at the conservative think-tank the American Enterprise Institute. AEI was then and still is a mixed bag...it has a significant quota of nutty right wingers, some ex Republican politicians, and it has some real scholars who lean slightly right of center. Norman Ornstein is the maybe best example of the last group.
I used to stop bye periodically to pick up my bosses mail and help coordinate meetings conferences etc... On the same floor as my bosses office was a large office in which there was a somewhat elderly looking man. Whenever I walked past he was busily writing or engrossed in reading academic papers. On a sofa on the opposing wall there usually was a man reading a popular magazine (People, Us, Sports Illustrated) who may have been a nurse? I rode the elevator a few times with the old guy and he always was always quite cordial. I thought of him just as "the Old Guy". "Boy" I thought to myself "he looks terrible. I hope when I'm 65 I don't look like that."
Then one day I picked up the AEI newsletter and on the back page was a picture of "The Old Guy" with a blurb something like "Paul Samuelson congratulates his former professor Gottfried Haberler on his 90th birthday." 90? That guy is 90? I hope that someday I am just like "The Old Guy". Gottfried Haberler.
I used to stop bye periodically to pick up my bosses mail and help coordinate meetings conferences etc... On the same floor as my bosses office was a large office in which there was a somewhat elderly looking man. Whenever I walked past he was busily writing or engrossed in reading academic papers. On a sofa on the opposing wall there usually was a man reading a popular magazine (People, Us, Sports Illustrated) who may have been a nurse? I rode the elevator a few times with the old guy and he always was always quite cordial. I thought of him just as "the Old Guy". "Boy" I thought to myself "he looks terrible. I hope when I'm 65 I don't look like that."
Then one day I picked up the AEI newsletter and on the back page was a picture of "The Old Guy" with a blurb something like "Paul Samuelson congratulates his former professor Gottfried Haberler on his 90th birthday." 90? That guy is 90? I hope that someday I am just like "The Old Guy". Gottfried Haberler.
Nice to see continued interest in the classics...
Today I was sitting at Starbucks reading Gottfried Haberler's Prosperity and Depression. Although now outdated this book is probably the best summary of where business cycle research stood prior to the Keynesian Revolution. (I actually have a funny story about my meeting Haberler in the early 1990s). Some of the ideas of the Keynesian revolution actually draw heavily on pre-Keynesian ideas (see here) so it still has more than historical significance. Today however I was somewhat surprised by this exchange.
Woman at the Starbucks Counter: where did you get that book?
Me: which?
WATSC: that book you were reading. Where did you get it?
Me: why?
WATSC: it looks good.
Me: really?....umm I got it umm on Amazon.
WATSC: oh ok it looks really interesting.
Me : really? Why are you interested?
WATSC: why do you want to know?
Me: its just unusual. Why are you interested?
WATSC: why?
Me: I just want to know. Its a really old book from the 1930s...and I just wanted to know why you are interested in it.
WATSC: well I'm just interested in all sorts of stuff.
Me: really...well why this?
WATSC: well sometimes I suffer from bouts of depression and I thought
Me: no it's depression as in recession, depression, expansion, unemployment...not that kind of depression.
WATSC: oh (confused look)
Me: its an old book. Kind of outdated...
Woman at the Starbucks Counter: where did you get that book?
Me: which?
WATSC: that book you were reading. Where did you get it?
Me: why?
WATSC: it looks good.
Me: really?....umm I got it umm on Amazon.
WATSC: oh ok it looks really interesting.
Me : really? Why are you interested?
WATSC: why do you want to know?
Me: its just unusual. Why are you interested?
WATSC: why?
Me: I just want to know. Its a really old book from the 1930s...and I just wanted to know why you are interested in it.
WATSC: well I'm just interested in all sorts of stuff.
Me: really...well why this?
WATSC: well sometimes I suffer from bouts of depression and I thought
Me: no it's depression as in recession, depression, expansion, unemployment...not that kind of depression.
WATSC: oh (confused look)
Me: its an old book. Kind of outdated...
no Dinos in our future
DISCOVERY: Early Dinosaur Embryos Found in China
As for retrieving DNA, Reisz said, “You never know about what we may be able to find in the fossil record. We are continually breaking new ground.” “However, resurrecting a dinosaur is out of the question,” he added, reminding that living birds are dinosaurs. Bringing a Jurassic animal into the present could therefore be a disaster, probably worse than what some movies have fictionally predicted. At the very least, such an animal -- if it wound up in the wild -- could wreck havoc on the existing ecosystem."
As for retrieving DNA, Reisz said, “You never know about what we may be able to find in the fossil record. We are continually breaking new ground.” “However, resurrecting a dinosaur is out of the question,” he added, reminding that living birds are dinosaurs. Bringing a Jurassic animal into the present could therefore be a disaster, probably worse than what some movies have fictionally predicted. At the very least, such an animal -- if it wound up in the wild -- could wreck havoc on the existing ecosystem."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)