this week i

attended r conference in the land of eusilc.  data anonymization for open science course focused on statistical disclosure control: synthpop, simpop, generative adversarial networks, k-anonyminity: if, for each combination of values of quasi-identifiers, at least k records exist in the dataset sharing that combination.  perturbation methods: noise masking (adding normally-distributed errors), microaggregation (grouping similar records, replacing w means or medians), record-swapping, rounding, resampling, pram (probabalistically altered categorical data).  puf techniques to thwart evildoers

longitudinal data are the hardest type to anonymize

the layout of hypercubes are codified in european legislation

preserve the correlation structure

simulated annealing

 

keynoted: cran reached 25th birthday with 80 submissions daily, r core commit stats log-scaled due to brian ripley, abhishek agreed to debug 2009-me

maybe the code is fine but the world changed 

r not zero indexed but you europeans and your 1st floor is the zero-th floor

r is reading your code as a parsed tree

"commit a bunch of files before lunch 🍝"

dislike unswingable chandeliers. "the square bracket method is just ginormous" "males have this accident bump btw 18-25 when they do stupid things"

 

thanked hadley wickham for session scraping forbes, useful to add 400 richest to scf.  i recognize your name from twotorials  (in-class notes below)

 

read would wealth taxation be sufficient?  evidence from a dynamic counterfactual historical simulation by asher dvir-djarassi.  referent france

scf + forbes 400

 

wealth tax rates are, respectively, 2.5 and 4.5% under the warren and sanders plans

 

read preferred reporting items for complex sample survey analysis (pricssa) by seidenberg, moser, & west.  every complex survey needs table one

we propose .. an itemized checklist

 

a review by briesacher et al. (2012) found that less than half of papers analyzing data from the medicare current beneficiary survey described appropriate weighting or variance estimation

 

read a history of inequality: top incomes in brazil, 1926-2015 by pedro h.g.f. souza

democracy is not a sufficient condition for redistribution

 

top income shares in brazil have followed a sine wave pattern

 

i tracked down data for 71 years between 1926 and 2015.  the tabulations are generally fine-grained, consistent, and comparable by international standards

 

the data comes from the decennial censuses.  figures for intercensal years were computed via cubic spline interpolation

 

brazilian tax law never defined the tax unit very clearly

 

international comparisons should always be interpreted cum grano salis

 

read the frequently asked questions section of metaculus.  demography ought to be bigger, featured tutorial obsolete points

we follow a few principles to elevate forecasting above simple guesswork

greater weight to predictions by forecasters with better track records

a good question will be unambiguously resolvable 

 

read income inequality in the united states: using tax data to measure long-term trends by gerald auten and david splinter.  valid critique of piketty but focused on surrogate outcome: income < consumption < wealth inequality.  dragon lair treasure mounds swell both by acquisition, appreciation

marriage rates on tax returns declined from 67 to 37 percent between 1960 and 2019.  however, marriage rates have remained high among the top one percent, decreasing only from 90 to 85 percent.  declining marriage rates outside the top of the income distribution increases income shares at the top of the distribution.  larrimore (2014) estimated that the differential decline of marriage rates explains 23 percent of the increase in household income gini coefficients between 1979 and 2007

 note that top wealth shares ranked by wealth are higher than when ranked by income

 

 

in the 1960s, only a tiny fraction of taxpayers actually paid the top tax rates (fewer than five hundred tax returns in 1962), in part due to tax avoidance behavior

the kakwani index of tax progressivity summarizes average tax rates over the entire income distribution.  while changing little between 1962 and 1985, this index increased dramatically from 0.07 to 0.29 between 1985 and 2019

the u.s. tax system is more progressive than in european countries, which rely more on regressive value-added and payroll taxes

our estimates for after-tax income indicate that the top one percent share increased only 1.4 percentage points since 1979 and only 0.2 percentage points since 1962 .. using only market income on tax returns, piketty and saez (2003) argued that the top one percent share of income more than doubled since 1962.  this analysis, however, did not include transfers and other income sources not reported on individual income tax returns, nor did it account for the effects of major tax reforms and changes in marriage rates.  thus, it gave a distorted view of income inequality levels and trends

7/25

this week i

updated estimates of drug coverage for elderly, disabled americans.  i also drew a cross-stitched tiger.  who's what now?  into kangaroo-free austria

 

cycle: sans umbrella / lest i be / mary poppins / et e.t. (fin)  dam or skate park?  that's one alp, ig.  social media free?  finally: win back penelope

 

read invisible child: poverty, survival and hope in new york city by andrea elliott

the girls from the projects who know where she lives..the homeless are the lowest caste

the scratching of mice.  it makes no difference that the family lays out traps or hangs food from the ceiling in a plastic bag

"how can i pull up any straps with no boots?"

chanel might refuse to buy her children timberland boots, but she stuffs their mouths with ring pops and twizzlers, bubble gum and hershey's kisses.  candy is a trick.  it distracts them from all that is missing.  "it's a blinding thing," she says

dasani's grandmother was born..in the maternity ward of cumberland hospital..another thirty years would pass before the hospital closed, becoming auburn, the city-run homeless shelter where dasani came to live

moses had little regard for the poor and a particularly loathing for black people, whom he considered "inherently 'dirty,'" according to interviews conducted by his biographer, robert caro.  of the 255 playgrounds moses built in new york city in the 1930s, only two were in black neighborhoods

money was so tight that the following year, in 1994, chanel agreed to have some teeth pulled.  a dentist in east new york was offering a subway token, worth $1.25, for each tooth.  working from a dingy office on pennsylvania avenue, he billed medicaid for this scam.  none of that mattered to chanel, roach, margo, or joanie, all of whom had teeth pulled.  chanel remembers her body thrashing in pain as strangers held her down in the chair.  the dental office charged medicaid $235 for pulling four of chanel's teeth.  she left with a few subway tokens

"how long have you known the deceased?" read the last question on the form.
in careful script, chanel wrote three words.
"all my life"

her fifth school in five years

at the bravo supermarket for values..where polaroids of thieves fill the store's "wall of shame."  wearing naked expressions, they are forced to pose with their stolen items - things like goya beans and kraft cheese.  a woman named mary holds a can of tuna in a photograph titled "catch of the day"

"it takes a lot of courage to be different..sometimes you have to be alone..i don't regret it for one second"

the 1787 preamble to the constitution.."to promote the general welfare"

"homeless kid of the year"

avianna has settled into her desk and is now staring at the teacher, unaware that they are both homeless

"we could have a mansion and they'd all wind up in one room"

they snore with their limbs tangled, one child's foot in another's face.  lee-lee can only fall asleep while holding dasani's right earlobe.  no one tries to fool the baby.  the ear must belong to dasani

if we get lost, i enlist the gps, which has the whitest voice of all.  chanel supplants it with her own improvised gps, reengineering each set of directions into phrases like, "yo, bitch, i said hang a right on roosevelt" or "ah shit, you missed it again, now we gotta reroute this motherfucker."  she wants to launch an app called hood gps, to spare drivers from the robotic white voices in their cars

"it's a sin for a man to die rich"

over half of all black children in america are subjected to at least one child protection probe before turning eighteen

"i will kill you if you don't buy these paper towels"

"at least you're not sleeping on the ferry, right?"

living in a shelter so dangerous that she hides a razor in her hair

"you know, you know, you know - y'all hurting my heart, right?"

"you see how quick they come and take the kids? .. that's how quick they should have had them people come and fix the hot water and gas"

she keeps repeating the same four words, against all available evidence.  "it's gonna be okay"

a constellation of crisis

the care of chanel and supreme's children is costing more than $33,000 per month

"you understand? didn't nobody else get this opportunity like you.  you are blessed.  i'm tellin' you.  and use your blessings.  use them wisely.  and it doesn't seem like it's gonna pay off now.  but at the end, baby girl, it's gonna pay off.  and you gotta be so glad that you did it.  you gonna kiss my wrinkly-ass toes"

one might assume that nana is homeless.  but to foster care veterans, the trash bag gives her away.  very few foster children have a suitcase

almost nothing counts more than the person who shows up

 

7/18

this week i

flew airport codes gla ams to camp on coziest waterway that i know (as cosmic clock struck summer solstice).  after battle with bowl of cherries, natalie noted child looked like one who'd recently taken down a prey animal with only their teeth (quiet dinosaur).  neighbors re-wrote persig (for mariners), celebrated soccer with fireworks just outside porthole nearest my pillow (an empty city during regulation).  hannes turntabled german techno (the kids listen to this nowadays), grilled until one kernel on the cob popped (bavarians are german stereotype-weird, swabians are cuckoo clock-weird).  he's bus stop advertising (logo's palette matches stuttgart's flag), he passed my star count an año or so ago (tho our principal arena of competition: discontinued trackball mice on ebay), his project boasts now twenty thou (still contributor runner-up on mine).  but. i. am. most. fascinated. that: dude lives, nay, raises a family in a modest (1980s) home that floats.  can god build an encryption system so strong he himself could not decipher it?  and what if all the random number generation algorithms on the surface of the earth malfunctioned in just the same way at just the same time?  two views of optometrist's shroud (½-full), and one from mobile picnic with said admiral (seconds prior to pointing out chez rembrandt) -

interoffice memo'd (to brag).  david retorted we've superior ducks here, marcie clarified: it's security duck (a brick inside).  dutch ducks kwak, cmtsu

 

read m.c. escher: the graphic work, written by maurits cornelis and published by taschen.  i visited his palace too.  god's eye tower of babel depicts construction screeching to halt at moment multiple languages were born.  neither another world ii nor dragon violates four limbs as tetrapodal limit

a side-grained block of wood, usually pear

although i am absolutely innocent of training or knowledge in the exact sciences, i often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists

1. tower of babel, woodcut, 1928, 62 x 38.5 cm (24 1/2 x 15 1/4 in.) .. the work is at a standstill because they are no longer able to understand each other

 

ii. the regular division of a plane 8-35 .. the richest source of inspiration that i have ever struck; nor has it yet dried up .. how a surface can be regularly divided into, or filled up with, similar-shaped figures which are contiguous to one another, without leaving any open spaces.
the moors were past masters of this.  they decorated walls and floors, particularly in the alhambra in spain, by placing congruent, multi-colored pieces of majolica together without leaving any spaces between.  what a pity it is that islam did not permit them to make "graven images".  they always restricted themselves, in their massed tiles, to designs of an abstract geometrical type.  not one single moorish artist, to the best of my knowledge, ever made so bold (or maybe the idea never occurred to him) as to use concrete, recognizable, naturalistically conceived figures of fish, birds, reptiles or human beings as elements in their surface coverage

have become enmeshed

the birds emerge

they attain their greatest size on reaching the equator and thereafter they become smaller and disappear into the other, invisible pole on the far side of the sphere

dependent on four factors: 1. the quality of his wood-block, 2. the sharpness of the instrument that he is using, 3. the steadiness of his hand and, 4. his optical ability (good eyesight, plenty of light and a powerful magnifying lens).  in this particular case, the halving of the figures is carried through ad absurdum

only one wood-block is used for both colors, these having been printed one after the other on the same sheet of paper, and turned 180 degrees in reflection to each other.  the two prints fill up each other's open spaces 

a static method of illustrating a dynamic fact

lying flat and rigid amongst his fellows..wrenches himself free and launches out into real life.  he climbs up the back of a book on zoology and works his laborious way up the slippery slope of a set square to the highest point of his existence.  then after a quick snort, tired but fulfilled, he goes downhill again

three diamonds which give the impression of a cube 

the only reason for their existence is one's enjoyment of this difficult game, without any ulterior motive

34. mosaic i, mezzotint

36. depth, wood-engraving printed from three blocks, 1955 .. space is divided up cubically.  each fish is found at the intersection of three lines of fish, all of which cross each other at right-angles

three vanishing points

nine red ants crawl after each other..the strip has only one surface 

a combination of three diamond-shapes can make a cube.  yet it still remains an open question as to whether we are looking at this cube from within or without.  the mental reversal, this inward or outward turning, this inversion of a shape, is the game that is played

a stellar dodecahedron..a tailless monster with a long neck and four legs

 

the two-dimensional is every bit as fictitious as the four-dimensional, for nothing is flat, not even the most finely polished mirror

in the lower left foreground there lies a piece of paper on which the edges of a cube are drawn.  two small circles mark the places where edges cross each other

 

7/11

this week i

joined the international conference on establishment statistics v7.0.  notes to self: add 'unclassified' to presentation slides, map almanac phenomena

a handful pulled out due to the u.k. ban on public speaking during election season

there is no overarching methodology for business surveys -ger snijkers 

companies have customer relationship management (crm) so it's valued and tangible

spatially balanced sampling .. voronoi polytopes

for most people, official statistics is what statistics is all about -danny pfeffermann

 but i need to get to my analogy [next powerpoint slide a rollercoaster] which is a rollercoaster -ronda k. britt

is the economy creating or destroying jobs?

the beveridge curve

and most importantly, to train the respondents

quarterly census of employment and wages (qcew) .. for a census, it's extremely high frequency

detroit's employment was 20x more concentrated in auto manufacturing in 2022

nevada's employment was 10x more concentrated in casinos in 2022

antitrust has ignored labor markets until about two years ago

hhi ranges from zero to ten thousand

traditional statistics .. rejects black-box approaches -changbao wu

in the state of tennessee, you can burglarize a motor vehicle -cynthia barnett-ryan 

would you answer a few more questions for us?

 

 

 

read a tale of two cities by dickens.  citizeness, never flitting, still is knitting, still is knitting/as wine barrel busts in paris, just outside defarge's door

say that my answer was, recalled to life

gracious creator of day!  to be buried alive for eighteen years

if monsieur manette had not died; if he had suddenly and silently disappeared; if he had been spirited away

year of our lord as anna dominoes

the faith of his solemn asseveration

hastily written on the paper was the word "acquitted" .. and a loud buzz swept into the street as if the baffled blueflies were dispersing in search of other carrion

he knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart; so rendered and so free from any mercenary taint

"pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine," said the marquis throwing him another gold coin .. without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, monsieur the marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally broken some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for it; when his ease was suddenly distributed by a coin flying into his carriage, and ringing on its floor

the tradesman hurriedly shut up their shops; for a crowd in those times stopped at nothing, and was a monster much dreaded

of all these cries, and ten thousand incoherencies, "the prisoners!" was the cry most taken up by the sea that rushed in, as if there were an eternity of people, as well as of time and space

the remorseless sea

and in the years so long after the breaking of the cask at defarge's wine-shop door, they are not easily purified when once stained red

foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass.  foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when i had no bread to give him.  foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want .. rend foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow from him

i send my desolate cry across the sea, hoping it may perhaps reach your ears through the great bank of tilson known at paris

in the name of that sharp female newly-born, and called la guillotine, why did you come to france?

liberty, equality, fraternity, or death

who kissed la guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack.  it was the sign of the regeneration of the human race.  it superseded the cross.  models of it were worn on breasts from which the cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the cross was denied

i, alexandre manette, unfortunate physician, native of beauvais and afterward resident in paris, write this melancholy paper in my doleful cell in the bastille, during the last month of the year 1767.  i write it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty.  i design to secrete it in the wall of the chimney, where i have slowly and laboriously made a place of concealment for it.  some pitying hand may find it there, when i and my sorrows are dust

we seldom have a child there.  it is a pretty sight

each spoke in her own language; neither understood the other's words; both were very watchful, and intent to deduce from look and manner, what the unintelligible words meant

as the smoke cleared, leaving an awful stillness, it passed out on the air, like the soul of the furious woman whose body lay lifeless on the ground

 

7/4

this week i

ate great before der blaue reiter at the tate, greenwich maritime, both courtald's van goghs.  napoleon's horse's bones, i saw those alone

read ft's interview with lloyd's of london chief john neal.  how long until we call the uninsured the self-insured?  and how's my peppermint cobra?

a pretty easy going person for someone whose job depends on calculating the probability of disaster

we discuss the bizarre fact that multimillion-dollar condos continue to be built and bought in the middle of miami flood zones

"you'll never find an insurer saying, 'i don't believe in climate change'"

 

want to experience zero gravity, but not an astronaut by profession?  go for a swim!  lwt s11e14: and i know i talk a lot on this show about the bad stuff that ronald reagan did, so to balance that out i do want to mention something positive he did for the planet, and this is true: in 2004, he died

 

visited national gallery for caravaggio's martyrdom of saint ursula but since here happy to re-see rembrandt's belshazzar's feast, rubens' samson and delilah.  despite polite exchange with curator eighteen months back, skull still not viewable obliquely without setting off rope-crosser museum alarm

 

 

passed baton to erin, kelly at marylebone's venice's relay.  in town for horse races & all things swift, we dined on steak & fries, sticky toffee pudding

6/27