I understand the above quote completely. Life would be so much simpler if my work was just reviewed by my personal friends and by people whose careers are tied to mine. Sure, they’d point out problems, but they’d do it in a nice way, quietly. They’d understand that any mistakes I made would never have […]

Jon Baron read the recent article, “Presenting Characteristics, Comorbidities, and Outcomes Among 5700 Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 in the New York City Area,” and sent the following message to one of the authors: I read with interest your article in JAMA. I have been trying to follow this issue closely, if only because my wife […]

Back in the early days of this blog, we had frequent posts about the differences between Republican or Democratic voters and Republican or Democratic areas. This was something that confused lots of political journalists, most notably Michael Barone (see, for example, here) and Tucker Carlson (here), also academics such as psychologist Jonathan Haidt (here) and […]

Raghu Parthasarathy writes: I’ve been frustrated by Covid-19 pandemic models, for the opposite reason that I’m usually frustrated by models in science—they seem too simple, when the usual problem with models is over-complexity. Instead of doing more useful things, I wrote this up here. In his post, Parthasarathy writes: Perhaps the models we’re seeing are […]

The talk will be sometime the morning of Wed 6 May in this seminar. Title: Some statistical issues in the fight against coronavirus. Abstract: To be a good citizen, you sometimes have to be a bit of a scientist. To be a good scientist, you sometimes have to be a bit of a statistician. And […]

The other day I wrote about the challenge in addressing the pandemic—a worldwide science/engineering problem—using our existing science and engineering infrastructure, which is some mix of government labs and regulatory agencies, private mega-companies, smaller companies, university researchers, and media entities and rich people who can direct attention and resources. The current system might be the […]

Seth Flaxman et al. have an updated version of their model of coronavirus progression. Flaxman writes: Countries with successful control strategies (for example, Greece) never got above small numbers thanks to early, drastic action. Or put another way: if we did China and showed % of population infected (or death rate), we’d erroneously conclude that […]

Joseph Candelora in comments pointed to this updated report on the Santa Clara study we discussed last week. The new report is an improvement on the first version. Here’s what I noticed in a quick look: 1. The summary conclusion, “The estimated population prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in Santa Clara County implies that the infection […]

I’ve been reading a couple of old books of book reviews by Anthony Burgess. Lots of great stuff. He’s a sort of Chesterton with a conscience, for example in this appreciation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: As for Tom’s forgiving Christianity—‘O, Mas’r! don’t bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than […]

I originally gave this post the title, “Stigler: The Changing History of Robustness,” but then I was afraid nobody would read it. In the current environment of Move Fast and Break Things, not so many people care about robustness. Also, the widespread use of robustness checks to paper over brittle conclusions has given robustness a […]

tl;dr: Their 95% interval for the infection rate, given the data available, is [0.7%, 1.8%]. My Bayesian interval is [0.3%, 2.4%]. Most of what makes my interval wider is the possibility that the specificity and sensitivity of the tests can vary across labs. To get a narrower interval, you’d need additional assumptions regarding the specificity […]

We’ve had lots of discussions here and elsewhere online about fundamental flaws in statistics culture: the whole p-value thing, statistics used for confirmation rather than falsification, corruption of the pizzagate variety, soft corruption in which statistics is used in the service of country-club-style backslapping, junk science routinely getting the imprimatur of the National Academy of […]

Carlos Ungil writes: The IHME released an update to their model yesterday. Using now a better model and taking into account the relaxation of mitigation measures their forecast for US deaths has almost doubled to 134k (95% uncertainty range 95k-243k). My [Ungil’s] charts of the evolution of forecasts across time can be found here. I […]

What’s new? The new and shiny reduce_sum facility released with Stan 2.23 is far more user-friendly and makes it easier to scale Stan programs with more CPU cores than it was before. While Stan is awesome for writing models, as the size of the data or complexity of the model increases it can become impractical […]

The University of Washington in Seattle is a big place. It includes the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which has produced a widely-circulated and widely-criticized coronavirus model. As we’ve discussed, the IHME model is essentially a curve-fitting exercise that makes projections using the second derivative of the time trend on the log scale. […]

Part 1 Andrew Lilley, Gianluca Rinaldi, and Matthew Lilley write: You might be familiar with a recent paper by Correira, Luck, and Verner who argued that cities that enacted non-pharmaceutical interventions earlier / for longer during the Spanish Flu of 1918 had higher subsequent economic growth. The paper has had extensive media coverage – e.g. […]

David Rohde points us to this new seminar series that has the following description: Machine learning is changing the world we live in at a break neck pace. From image recognition and generation, to the deployment of recommender systems, it seems to be breaking new ground constantly and influencing almost every aspect of our lives. […]

After getting 80 zillion comments on that last post with all that political content, I wanted to share something that’s purely technical. It’s something Bob Carpenter wrote in a conversation regarding implementing algorithms in Stan: One thing we are doing is having the matrix library return more expression templates rather than copying on return as […]

Ivan Oransky points us to this amusing retraction of a meta-analysis. The problem: “Standard errors were used instead of standard deviations when using data from one of the studies”! Actually, I saw something similar happen in a consulting case once. The other side had a report with estimates and standard errors . . . the […]

After closing amid the coronavirus pandemic, the National Park Service is testing public access at several parks across the nation, including two in Utah, with limited offerings and services. Visitor centers and campgrounds remain largely shuttered at Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef, but visitors are welcome at some of the sites.

Bruising convention battle calls into question party unity behind the Peterson challenger.

As heads of state, local leaders, business owners and individual citizens weighed the costs of re-opening the global economy, fears of new outbreaks grew. A central question emerged: How much infection and loss of life will emerge amid the push to restart business?

It's the first Orioles game to be played there under a long-term partnership with the Naval Academy.

The commissioner's office said clubs remain committed to playing "as many games as possible" when the season begins.

Hattaway, Jr., Charles Jan 2, 1942 - Apr 29, 2020 Charles Leon Hattaway, Jr., 78 years old, passed away April 29, 2020, in Arden, .....

Drake, Kathleen M. L. May 3, 2020 Kathleen (Jill) Marjorie Lambert Drake passed gently away Sunday, May 3, 2020. She was surrounded by her .....

Slater Appleby, Marion Mar 9, 1923 - Apr 29, 2020 Marion S. Appleby, 97 of Venice, formally of Waterford, CT passed peacefully in the .....

The post Year of the Rat appeared first on Coloring Pages » Surfnetkids.

Saturday's 14-race Florida Derby Day card gets under way at 11:30 a.m. from Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Fla., and the Grade 1 Derby will feature a full field of 3-year-olds competing for $750,000 and 170 qualifying points for the Kentucky Derby, now scheduled for Sept. 5 (100 points to the winner, 40 to second, […]

The post Triple Crown News Minute Presented By Kentucky Equine Research: Closer Look At Florida Derby Contenders appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

The team at I am Horse Racing would like to introduce our newest endeavor, a series entitled “Vet's Corner.” This new arm of our video and social media installments will focus on delving into many of the most common ailments, issues, and physical aspects associated with horses, sport horses, and racehorses. We will gather the nation's top minds to speak […]

The post I Am Horse Racing Helps Answer The Common Question: What Is Colic? appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

The inbox was flooded with questions after the first Ask Ray video feature was published, and this week – unlike his maiden voyage – Ray has come up with actual answers to questions from Paulick Report readers (all without the assistance of Google…well, mostly). Several questions were related to the starting gate, including the new 20-stall […]

The post Ask Ray: Starting Gate Questions And Camel Races? appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

In this edition of the Triple Crown News Minute, Paulick Report publisher Ray Paulick takes a look at the first division of Saturday's Grade 1 Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn in Hot Springs, Ark. The Arkansas Derby is an official points race on the road to the Kentucky Derby that offers a total of 170 points […]

The post Triple Crown News Minute Presented By Kentucky Equine Research: Can Anyone Beat Charlatan? appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

In the latest installment of Ask Ray, Paulick Report publisher Ray Paulick answers questions from readers on several topics, and it's apparent from his responses that he's a little edgy after being in isolation since mid-March. A question about why California workouts are almost all designated as “handily” while the rest of the country's workouts […]

The post Ask Ray: Workout Designations, DRF Mystery, Arizona ADW And Edgar Prado appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Grand Canyon National Park is closed.

Information about rescheduling backcountry permit reservations can be obtained by emailing grca_bic@nps.gov

Due to the closure of Grand Canyon National Park, backcountry permits are not being issued, and staff are instructed to deny any permit requests they receive. Please wait to submit new backcountry permit requests until the park re-opens (we do not know when that might be). Thank you for your patience and understanding!

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Starting November 1 the University of Michigan Library has access to the new version of chemistry database SciFinder — SciFinder-n. In fact, both will be accessible to our users with the same login and password information.

Join us on Monday, Feb. 24th at noon in the Materials Collection (AAEL 2nd Floor) to hear about the research of Prof. Brian Love (MSE). He will speak about his research on extracting fibrous plant residues from agricultural biomasses, such as coffee, to make other continuous fibers.

On Saturday, March 28, 2009, Grand Canyon National Park will host Archeology Day in honor of "Arizona Archaeology and Heritage Awareness Month".  https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/2009-03-17_arch_day.htm

Tim Jarrell, a 32 year veteran of the National Park Service, was recently named Chief of the Facilities Management Division at Grand Canyon National Park. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/3009-03-19-jarrell.htm

On Saturday, April 25, 2009, Grand Canyon National Park will celebrate National Junior Ranger Day with kid-friendly activities and programs for the entire family. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/news-njrd-03-09.htm

https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/grand-canyon-national-park-launches-new-youth-program-with-new-partners.htm

Starting in May the National Park Service (NPS) will begin the reconstruction of Grand Canyon National Park’s popular South Kaibab Trail. The project will significantly improve the condition of the trail for both hikers and mule users alike. The project is expected to take anywhere from two to four years and will include resurfacing of the trail; stabilization and preventative maintenance to existing retaining walls; replacing retaining walls that have been lost to floods, slides, or erosion; repairing and aligning existing water diversion features; etc. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/nps-to-begin-trail-reconstruction-project-on-south-kaibab-trail-within-grand-canyon-np.htm

Each year in the spring (April – June), an increase in the turbidity of drinking (potable) water occurs at Grand Canyon National Park. Turbidity has no health effects.  https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/info-2009-04-01-turbid.htm

https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/nps-to-offer-pilot-shuttle-bus-service-from-grca-to-tusayan-again-this-year.htm

Grand Canyon National Park was once again invited to display its contracted MD 900 Explorer helicopter at the recent "Thunder in the Desert" Open House and Air Show at Luke Air Force Base on March 21 and 22 in Glendale, Arizona.  https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/news-2009-04-02-luke.htm

The National Park Service (NPS) is now accepting public comments on the construction of a new Science and Resource Management Facility within Grand Canyon National Park. The NPS proposes to design and construct a facility for use by the Division of Science and Resource Management (SRM). In addition to providing necessary office and storage space, the SRM building will invite visiting scientists, students, and others to utilize classrooms and laboratories, offer training sessions, and have some exhibits and opportunities for experiential learning. This cutting edge facility will utilize alternative energy sources and water conservation technology. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/national-park-service-seeking-comments-on-construction-of-new-science-and-resource-management-facility-within-grand-canyon-national-park.htm