The only thing that could have won John McCain the presidency.
(Story)
(Story - Better Link)
Other great soundbytes:
That guy
Complicated
Sure, baby
High school chicks, University chicks - it don't matter!
My personal favorite, which I hope was what he said to George W. Bush at 12:01 PM on 1/20.
And then there's you
February 06, 2009
SAT Time!
Bush : PATRIOT Act :: Obama : Stimulus Bill
I'm becoming more and more convinced that external circumstances allowed both men to pass measures reflective of the more extreme side of their ideology under blankets of fear and urgency, bills that would have had no chance of passing in more normal times.
I'm not saying everyone's gonna be with me on this one, but I've decided that's my view.
I'm becoming more and more convinced that external circumstances allowed both men to pass measures reflective of the more extreme side of their ideology under blankets of fear and urgency, bills that would have had no chance of passing in more normal times.
I'm not saying everyone's gonna be with me on this one, but I've decided that's my view.
February 05, 2009
FYI- The President wrote an article
That's right, we have confirmation that not only can Barack Obama speak, he can also write, an ability that is as yet unconfirmed in our previous commander-in-chief.
Bart's Morning Thoughts (None of them stolen from other posts!)
Walgreens
Gains in efficiency are always impressive, but not this impressive. Walgreens has created a warehouse that is twenty percent more efficient than any of its other plants. Their secret? Disabilities. The warehouse is designed to use the disabilities of workers for gain. For example, a lot of their IT work is done by those with Asperger syndrome because many with the disease become fascinated by technology and can understand it very well. Walgreens was inspired by one of its executives who feared the permanent dependence of his son on caretakers. Now it seems as if the son may be able to not only find work but to excel in it. I hope to see this scaled up soon, because this seems to be the employment equivalent of price discrimination: get the most benefit (read: production) out of each and every person by considering their individual circumstances, desires, and needs. Bravo, Walgreens.
Pakistan
To bring you down from the high provided by that new-age feel-goodery Walgreens I bring you “The Gunmarkets of Pakistan.” (So far as I can tell the guys who made the video consider gunmarkets to be an actual word. Whatever.) The host of the video had his Pakistani mother make a few phone calls to her friends, who were able to arrange for the host to enter the most dangerous regions of Pakistan to buy weapons. The video catalogues the trip to visit the weapons producers of the region (read: villagers making Kalashnikovs by hand).
Dr. Death
Let’s finish off with a slightly less depressing story: Dr. Death has been found, but he is already dead. After escaping Germany in the 1960s (yes, the 1960s, not the 1940s) Dr. Aribert Heim was able to make it to Cairo, where he lived out his life under an adopted name and converted to Islam (Assumedly he converted from Nazism?). The NYT found this out by recovering a briefcase full of Heim’s personal documents and correspondence. It seems this may herald the end of Nazi-hunting, as the Simon Wiesenthal Center considered Heim to be their top target and was about to up the reward for Heim’s capture to $1.3M. It kind of creeps me out when Dr. Death is referred to fondly as “Uncle Tarek.” Let me know if it does the same for you.
Gains in efficiency are always impressive, but not this impressive. Walgreens has created a warehouse that is twenty percent more efficient than any of its other plants. Their secret? Disabilities. The warehouse is designed to use the disabilities of workers for gain. For example, a lot of their IT work is done by those with Asperger syndrome because many with the disease become fascinated by technology and can understand it very well. Walgreens was inspired by one of its executives who feared the permanent dependence of his son on caretakers. Now it seems as if the son may be able to not only find work but to excel in it. I hope to see this scaled up soon, because this seems to be the employment equivalent of price discrimination: get the most benefit (read: production) out of each and every person by considering their individual circumstances, desires, and needs. Bravo, Walgreens.
Pakistan
To bring you down from the high provided by that new-age feel-goodery Walgreens I bring you “The Gunmarkets of Pakistan.” (So far as I can tell the guys who made the video consider gunmarkets to be an actual word. Whatever.) The host of the video had his Pakistani mother make a few phone calls to her friends, who were able to arrange for the host to enter the most dangerous regions of Pakistan to buy weapons. The video catalogues the trip to visit the weapons producers of the region (read: villagers making Kalashnikovs by hand).
Dr. Death
Let’s finish off with a slightly less depressing story: Dr. Death has been found, but he is already dead. After escaping Germany in the 1960s (yes, the 1960s, not the 1940s) Dr. Aribert Heim was able to make it to Cairo, where he lived out his life under an adopted name and converted to Islam (Assumedly he converted from Nazism?). The NYT found this out by recovering a briefcase full of Heim’s personal documents and correspondence. It seems this may herald the end of Nazi-hunting, as the Simon Wiesenthal Center considered Heim to be their top target and was about to up the reward for Heim’s capture to $1.3M. It kind of creeps me out when Dr. Death is referred to fondly as “Uncle Tarek.” Let me know if it does the same for you.
Morning Thoughts
I strongly disagree with the President's decision to cap executive pay at $500K for (some) bailout recipients. I certainly think he has the right - you want our money, we make the rules - but I think something like $5 million would have been fine. Like it or not, some of these "executives" are not actually spawn of Satan and some of them are very talented. Why would they work for $500K if they could get $10M elsewhere? Especially if they, say, have taken out a mortgage based on future expectations of salary. And I'll just say it - if you're a powerful, wealthy person living in New York City, $500K is not a lot of money.
So, it's clearly written from the perspective of a whiner, but this article about Obama capping total compensation at $500K when his total compensation is quite a bit higher was actually worth reading.
Glenn Beck is willing to go all-in on Obama being a Communist. The last 15 seconds are classic.
Tim Geithner did know he owed the other half of the Social Security and Medicare taxes (if you don't know, US employers pay half of these taxes and you pay the other half. Americans working for int'l organizations are still on the hook for the whole thing even though their employer won't pay it. Geither claims that missing this was the mistake in question). How do we know he knew? He applied - and received - reimbursement for the taxes from the IMF. He later acknowledged a failure to pay the taxes, but didn't actually pay them until his nomination was dicussed. It's all right here in this brochure. (For the record, I don't put a lot into the "rough estimate of $600B" that the article mentions.)
PS - As I was labeling this post, it just made me realize - I want to make it clear that I know I've switched from using "bailout" to using "stimulus", even though the media's switch was arbitrary/socialist.
PPS - I know I've been a little overboard about this recently, but I stand by my "incorrect" ordering of quotation marks and commas above. I used to refer to the "Government Bailout" but I've never referred to the "Stimulus, Package" so I see no reason to put the comma inside the quotation mark.
PPPS - In the first paragraph I said $500K isn't a lot of money for wealthy, powerful New Yorkers. But it's really not a whole lot of money for anyone. Think of it this way, New Yorkers - the proportion of my income that goes to rent is 5.5% before taxes and 7.4% after taxes. Divide your rent by those numbers to see what your income would be if your rent was the same as it is now but it only took the same amount of your income as mine does. My figures do not include utilities.
So, it's clearly written from the perspective of a whiner, but this article about Obama capping total compensation at $500K when his total compensation is quite a bit higher was actually worth reading.
Glenn Beck is willing to go all-in on Obama being a Communist. The last 15 seconds are classic.
Tim Geithner did know he owed the other half of the Social Security and Medicare taxes (if you don't know, US employers pay half of these taxes and you pay the other half. Americans working for int'l organizations are still on the hook for the whole thing even though their employer won't pay it. Geither claims that missing this was the mistake in question). How do we know he knew? He applied - and received - reimbursement for the taxes from the IMF. He later acknowledged a failure to pay the taxes, but didn't actually pay them until his nomination was dicussed. It's all right here in this brochure. (For the record, I don't put a lot into the "rough estimate of $600B" that the article mentions.)
PS - As I was labeling this post, it just made me realize - I want to make it clear that I know I've switched from using "bailout" to using "stimulus", even though the media's switch was arbitrary/socialist.
PPS - I know I've been a little overboard about this recently, but I stand by my "incorrect" ordering of quotation marks and commas above. I used to refer to the "Government Bailout" but I've never referred to the "Stimulus, Package" so I see no reason to put the comma inside the quotation mark.
PPPS - In the first paragraph I said $500K isn't a lot of money for wealthy, powerful New Yorkers. But it's really not a whole lot of money for anyone. Think of it this way, New Yorkers - the proportion of my income that goes to rent is 5.5% before taxes and 7.4% after taxes. Divide your rent by those numbers to see what your income would be if your rent was the same as it is now but it only took the same amount of your income as mine does. My figures do not include utilities.
February 04, 2009
Where is the Stimulus Money Going?
I wanted to know, and Obama's only competition for God-on-Earth (Wikipedia) came to the rescue.
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
Election 2008 Analysis
Ok, so I finally got around to analyzing my election predictions. Here's a table.
I correctly predicted the outcome of 50 of the 51 states, missing Indiana.
Unless otherwise noted, I am omitting DC and HI from my analysis. These states were not only significant leverage points as indicated by severe values of the Cook's D statistic, but also represented significant outliers based on their studentized residuals. Because of this and the dismal amount of polling in both states, I have omitted them. (This, by the way, is how statisticians say "these data really screwed up my model so I took 'em out.")
I missed statewise margin of victory by {3.1 average, 2.2 median}. I was closest to correctly guessing the outcome in New Hampshire (which is just dumb luck; that state was crazy!). I predicted 54.5-44.7; the outcome was 54.1-44.5, a net error of 0.16 points. I was farthest from correctly guessing the outcome in Arkansas (damn PUMAs!) - I predicted a 9.3 pt McCain victory; he won the state by 19.9 pts, an error of 10.56 points.
The regression model treated me nicely.
The first plot shows my prediction line (red) and where each state actually fell (blue).
The second plot shows my prediction (x-axis) with my prediction error (y-axis).
Highlighting +/- 4.00 was arbitrary.
My regression intercept has a p-value of 0.484, indicating there is absolutely no evidence that my average prediction varied significantly from the average actual outcome.
The model in total has a p-value of 0.000000000000000000000000000000000224, which besides being an awesomely small number, also indicates the probability of beating my model by chance alone.
On the down side, the regression model coefficient of 1.124 had a 95% CI of {1.057, 1.192}. Because 1.000 is not in this interval, this indictates that my model significantly underpredicted the average differential in each state (for either candidate; in other words, I gave Obama too much credit in red states and McCain too much credit in blue states, etc.).
Finally, my model scored an r-square value of 0.960. In other words, if each state's outcome was determined by the results of 100 coin flips, having my model in hand would be analogous to already knowing the outcome of 96 of the flips. Or to use another analogy, it would be like predicting the rankings of teams in baseball standings for a 162-game season while already knowing how the first 156 games turn out.
And just for curiosity's sake, I was joking about being unjustified in removing HI and DC. While it's true I missed them both by large margins (especially HI), it's clear in the picture below why DC (off to the right) is overly influential in determining the line of best fit. (HI is the point at 23, 45).
Had I included the two states, r-squared drops from 0.960 to 0.956 and significance actually decreases (that's good) from 2E-34 to 8E-35.
So that's all I've got. I won't do anything for the Senate, but it looks as though I will be wrong about Coleman winning Minnesota (I can't believe that is still not settled. I don't feel bad about missing it, and to my credit I did predict that it would be the last race decided.)
Finally, I got the absolute percentages for Obama and McCain wrong - I said it would be 53.1-45.9; instead it was 52.9-45.7. But notice that I overshot both numbers (I just took the fact that Kerry and Bush added up to 99.0% and applied the same assumption to Obama and McCain). In terms of share of the 2-party vote, it broke down like this:
Prediction - 53.64 to 46.36
Actual - 53.68 to 46.32
Adding up the two errors, I missed the national vote share by less than one-tenth of one percentage point (0.08%). I'll take it.
I correctly predicted the outcome of 50 of the 51 states, missing Indiana.
| State | EV | Poll | Proj | Win | Δp | Δa | Error |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DC | 3 | 0.45 | 66.82 | 85.92 | 19.1 | ||
| VT | 3 | 1.17 | 28.13 | 37.01 | 8.9 | ||
| DE | 3 | 3.02 | 27.92 | 25.00 | -2.9 | ||
| NY | 31 | 4.38 | 27.74 | 26.69 | -1.1 | ||
| MD | 10 | 0.73 | 25.80 | 25.44 | -0.4 | ||
| HI | 4 | 0.66 | 22.64 | 45.26 | 22.6 | ||
| CA | 55 | 6.64 | 22.60 | 24.06 | 1.5 | ||
| IL | 21 | 4.14 | 22.15 | 25.13 | 3.0 | ||
| CT | 7 | 1.92 | 20.16 | 22.37 | 2.2 | ||
| RI | 4 | 0.76 | 19.83 | 27.92 | 8.1 | ||
| MA | 12 | 4.16 | 17.77 | 25.81 | 8.0 | ||
| OR | 7 | 9.62 | 15.74 | 16.35 | 0.6 | ||
| ME | 4 | 5.87 | 15.52 | 17.32 | 1.8 | ||
| WA | 11 | 7.03 | 15.36 | 17.18 | 1.8 | ||
| IA | 7 | 9.67 | 15.28 | 9.53 | -5.8 | ||
| NJ | 15 | 9.48 | 14.12 | 15.57 | 1.5 | ||
| MI | 17 | 9.43 | 13.89 | 16.47 | 2.6 | ||
| WI | 10 | 10.78 | 13.24 | 13.90 | 0.7 | ||
| MN | 10 | 13.62 | 9.91 | 10.24 | 0.3 | ||
| NH | 4 | 13.00 | 9.77 | 9.61 | -0.2 | ||
| NM | 5 | 7.14 | 9.49 | 15.13 | 5.6 | ||
| PA | 21 | 27.15 | 8.06 | 10.35 | 2.3 | ||
| CO | 9 | 14.57 | 6.42 | 8.95 | 2.5 | ||
| VA | 13 | 21.06 | 6.06 | 6.30 | 0.2 | ||
| NV | 5 | 13.12 | 5.79 | 12.49 | 6.7 | ||
| OH | 20 | 28.72 | 2.89 | 4.54 | 1.6 | ||
| FL | 27 | 29.05 | 2.03 | 2.82 | 0.8 | ||
| NC | 15 | 27.25 | 1.04 | 0.33 | -0.7 | ||
| MO | 11 | 24.40 | 0.23 | -0.13 | -0.4 | ||
| IN | 11 | 16.09 | -0.51 | 1.03 | 1.5 | ||
| ND | 3 | 2.67 | -2.67 | -8.63 | -6.0 | ||
| GA | 15 | 15.07 | -3.23 | -5.21 | -2.0 | ||
| AZ | 10 | 7.31 | -3.61 | -8.52 | -4.9 | ||
| MT | 3 | 5.28 | -4.29 | -2.26 | 2.0 | ||
| SC | 8 | 4.60 | -8.64 | -8.98 | -0.3 | ||
| SD | 3 | 2.88 | -9.13 | -8.41 | 0.7 | ||
| AR | 6 | 3.06 | -9.29 | -19.85 | -10.6 | ||
| MS | 6 | 3.53 | -9.43 | -13.17 | -3.7 | ||
| LA | 9 | 2.26 | -10.04 | -18.63 | -8.6 | ||
| WV | 5 | 6.24 | -10.60 | -13.12 | -2.5 | ||
| TX | 34 | 2.53 | -11.01 | -11.77 | -0.8 | ||
| TN | 11 | 2.31 | -12.60 | -15.07 | -2.5 | ||
| AK | 3 | 5.71 | -13.62 | -21.54 | -7.9 | ||
| KY | 8 | 8.52 | -14.04 | -16.23 | -2.2 | ||
| KS | 6 | 4.03 | -16.97 | -14.96 | 2.0 | ||
| NE | 5 | 0.78 | -19.05 | -14.93 | 4.1 | ||
| AL | 9 | 3.42 | -23.08 | -21.58 | 1.5 | ||
| ID | 4 | 0.71 | -23.49 | -25.43 | -1.9 | ||
| UT | 5 | 1.76 | -24.63 | -28.18 | -3.6 | ||
| WY | 3 | 3.38 | -26.34 | -32.24 | -5.9 | ||
| OK | 7 | 4.25 | -26.62 | -31.29 | -4.7 |
Unless otherwise noted, I am omitting DC and HI from my analysis. These states were not only significant leverage points as indicated by severe values of the Cook's D statistic, but also represented significant outliers based on their studentized residuals. Because of this and the dismal amount of polling in both states, I have omitted them. (This, by the way, is how statisticians say "these data really screwed up my model so I took 'em out.")
I missed statewise margin of victory by {3.1 average, 2.2 median}. I was closest to correctly guessing the outcome in New Hampshire (which is just dumb luck; that state was crazy!). I predicted 54.5-44.7; the outcome was 54.1-44.5, a net error of 0.16 points. I was farthest from correctly guessing the outcome in Arkansas (damn PUMAs!) - I predicted a 9.3 pt McCain victory; he won the state by 19.9 pts, an error of 10.56 points.
The regression model treated me nicely.
The first plot shows my prediction line (red) and where each state actually fell (blue).
The second plot shows my prediction (x-axis) with my prediction error (y-axis).
Highlighting +/- 4.00 was arbitrary.
My regression intercept has a p-value of 0.484, indicating there is absolutely no evidence that my average prediction varied significantly from the average actual outcome.
The model in total has a p-value of 0.000000000000000000000000000000000224, which besides being an awesomely small number, also indicates the probability of beating my model by chance alone.
On the down side, the regression model coefficient of 1.124 had a 95% CI of {1.057, 1.192}. Because 1.000 is not in this interval, this indictates that my model significantly underpredicted the average differential in each state (for either candidate; in other words, I gave Obama too much credit in red states and McCain too much credit in blue states, etc.).
Finally, my model scored an r-square value of 0.960. In other words, if each state's outcome was determined by the results of 100 coin flips, having my model in hand would be analogous to already knowing the outcome of 96 of the flips. Or to use another analogy, it would be like predicting the rankings of teams in baseball standings for a 162-game season while already knowing how the first 156 games turn out.
And just for curiosity's sake, I was joking about being unjustified in removing HI and DC. While it's true I missed them both by large margins (especially HI), it's clear in the picture below why DC (off to the right) is overly influential in determining the line of best fit. (HI is the point at 23, 45).
Had I included the two states, r-squared drops from 0.960 to 0.956 and significance actually decreases (that's good) from 2E-34 to 8E-35.
So that's all I've got. I won't do anything for the Senate, but it looks as though I will be wrong about Coleman winning Minnesota (I can't believe that is still not settled. I don't feel bad about missing it, and to my credit I did predict that it would be the last race decided.)
Finally, I got the absolute percentages for Obama and McCain wrong - I said it would be 53.1-45.9; instead it was 52.9-45.7. But notice that I overshot both numbers (I just took the fact that Kerry and Bush added up to 99.0% and applied the same assumption to Obama and McCain). In terms of share of the 2-party vote, it broke down like this:
Prediction - 53.64 to 46.36
Actual - 53.68 to 46.32
Adding up the two errors, I missed the national vote share by less than one-tenth of one percentage point (0.08%). I'll take it.
Champion of Swimming Games Ignored by SEC
Sorry for the terrible joke, but some dude named Markopolos has been trying to warn the SEC about some $50B fraud for like a decade.
Missouri Reddening?
Robin Carnahan has announced she will run for the Senate seat Kit Bond will be vacating in 2010. A victory would make her Missouri's second-most-attractive senator, behind Cruella Deville.
Missouri is reddening faster than almost any other state. WTF is going on here? In 2004 the Democratic governor was so weak he couldn't even win the primary, ousted by Claire McCaskill. McCaskill, though, still couldn't win the general election.
Two years later Missouri elected McCaskill to the Senate, and two years after that they put a Democrat back in the governor's mansion. With Nate Silver ranking Missouri as the senate seat most likely to flip in 2010, the state could go from 2 Republican senators and a Republican governor just before the 2006 election to having all those seats filled by Democrats after the 2010 election.
That said, President Obama should not focus too much energy on Missouri in his 2012 reelection campaign.
Missouri is reddening faster than almost any other state. WTF is going on here? In 2004 the Democratic governor was so weak he couldn't even win the primary, ousted by Claire McCaskill. McCaskill, though, still couldn't win the general election.
Two years later Missouri elected McCaskill to the Senate, and two years after that they put a Democrat back in the governor's mansion. With Nate Silver ranking Missouri as the senate seat most likely to flip in 2010, the state could go from 2 Republican senators and a Republican governor just before the 2006 election to having all those seats filled by Democrats after the 2010 election.
That said, President Obama should not focus too much energy on Missouri in his 2012 reelection campaign.
Woman deems absurdly large breasts "not racist enough"
OK, so that's not true, but you've got to read this article.
February 02, 2009
Conservapedia Nuance
It's clear "the trustworthy encyclopedia" is raising the level of debate when it comes to Commerce Secretary-nominee Judd Gregg.
There's no link to this directly but for a few days it should be on the main page: of the Republican whose departure from the Senate could give the Democrats the overblown total of 60 senators, the encyclopedia asks: "Benedict Arnold or Judas?"
(Actually, they had an extra comma in the question. Also, this is one of the few instances when I do agree with the standard rule on quotation mark/punctuation mark ordering)
There's no link to this directly but for a few days it should be on the main page: of the Republican whose departure from the Senate could give the Democrats the overblown total of 60 senators, the encyclopedia asks: "Benedict Arnold or Judas?"
(Actually, they had an extra comma in the question. Also, this is one of the few instances when I do agree with the standard rule on quotation mark/punctuation mark ordering)
Fish and Fishes
I recently found myself in yet another debate over the usage of "fish" vs. "fishes" and other similar issues.
Unless I'm mistaken, I'm rather sure that "fish" just refers to more than one fish whereas "fishes" refers to more than one type of fish.
Anyway, I figure that sort of thing has to have a name but I couldn't find one. Anybody got any ideas? In the process I came across interesting words Ichthyology and Isogloss.
Final thought: does the same rule apply to "persons" and "people"?
Unless I'm mistaken, I'm rather sure that "fish" just refers to more than one fish whereas "fishes" refers to more than one type of fish.
Anyway, I figure that sort of thing has to have a name but I couldn't find one. Anybody got any ideas? In the process I came across interesting words Ichthyology and Isogloss.
Final thought: does the same rule apply to "persons" and "people"?
Punxsutawney Phil: Groundhog Data
How reliable are Phil's predictions?
After a too-long internet search, the best historical weather data I was able to find (I'm happy to do something else if you can find better data) was monthly average temperatures for Portland, OR from 1941 on. Since Phil predicts "early spring" or "six more weeks of winter," I gave February a weight of 4 and March a weight of 2 (number of weeks of those six weeks) and took the average. Not the best method of course, but the best I have available. There were no predictions for 1941 and 1942 and no weather data for 2007 and 2008, so I had 63 data points.
Phil predicts more winter:
Number of times - 53
Mean temperature - 44.38
Variance - 4.94
Phil predicts early spring:
Number of times - 10
Mean temperature - 44.96
Variance - 4.90
Two-sample t-test:
T-statistic: -0.760 with 61 degrees of freedom
One-sided p-value: 0.225
***************************************************
Translation: We say these results are so extreme they would "only" happen one in four times by chance. Which isn't sufficient evidence to claim that there's any relationship between Groundhog's Day predictions and actual outcomes.
Sorry to eat away at your childhood :)
After a too-long internet search, the best historical weather data I was able to find (I'm happy to do something else if you can find better data) was monthly average temperatures for Portland, OR from 1941 on. Since Phil predicts "early spring" or "six more weeks of winter," I gave February a weight of 4 and March a weight of 2 (number of weeks of those six weeks) and took the average. Not the best method of course, but the best I have available. There were no predictions for 1941 and 1942 and no weather data for 2007 and 2008, so I had 63 data points.
Phil predicts more winter:
Number of times - 53
Mean temperature - 44.38
Variance - 4.94
Phil predicts early spring:
Number of times - 10
Mean temperature - 44.96
Variance - 4.90
Two-sample t-test:
T-statistic: -0.760 with 61 degrees of freedom
One-sided p-value: 0.225
***************************************************
Translation: We say these results are so extreme they would "only" happen one in four times by chance. Which isn't sufficient evidence to claim that there's any relationship between Groundhog's Day predictions and actual outcomes.
Sorry to eat away at your childhood :)
Obama Thus Far: 1.5 Thumbs Up
I would call this a sufficiently good summary of Obama's first 10 or so days.
Super Bowl Ads
Remarkably well done site given that some of the content is less than 12 hours old.
PS - The whole time I watched the ad for the new "Fast and the Furious" movie, I kept waiting for a tagline along the lines of "It's faster. It's furiouser." They let me down.
PS - The whole time I watched the ad for the new "Fast and the Furious" movie, I kept waiting for a tagline along the lines of "It's faster. It's furiouser." They let me down.
