Facebook “shadow profile” is an industry term for personal data amassed by Facebook from multiple sources: info you provide, plus information shared by your friends (via the sharing of their contact lists, for example), and online tracking pixels. Because the […]

The post What is a Facebook Shadow Profile? appeared first on Tech Tips » Surfnetkids.

Home is in same row as F. Scott Fitzgerald's former home

Gardeners create backyard oasis with pond and waterfall.

Teens were photographed fishing at the Rum River Dam in Anoka and at Coon Rapids Dam Regional Park in Coon Rapids Wednesday afternoon and evening, May 6, 2020.

Flavio Bartmann writes: Over the last few days, as COVID-19 posed some serious issues for policy makers who, both in the US and elsewhere, have employed statistical models to develop mitigation strategies, a number of non-statisticians have criticized the use of such models as useless or worse. A typical example is this article by Victor […]

I’d still go with this article by Ed Yong, which covers biology, epidemiology, medicine, and politics. Here’s one bit: In 2018, when writing about whether the U.S. was ready for the next pandemic, I [Yong] noted that the country was trapped in a cycle of panic and neglect. It rises to meet each new disease, […]

Uros Seljak writes: You may be interested in our Gaussian Process counterfactual analysis of Italy mortality data that we just posted. Our results are in a strong disagreement with the Stanford seropositive paper that appeared on Friday. Their work was all over the news, but is completely misleading and needs to be countered: they claim […]

The above line is not a joke. It’s from Buzzfeed. Really. Stephanie Lee interviewed a bunch of people, including me, for this Buzzfeed article, “Two Big Studies Say There Are Way More Coronavirus Infections Than We Think. Scientists Think They’re Wrong.” I liked the article. My favorite part is a quote (not from me) that […]

So, there’s this new study doing the rounds. Some economists decided to study the twitter followers of prominent coronavirus skeptics and fearmongers, and it seems that followers of Nassim Taleb were more likely to shelter in place, and less like to die of coronavirus, than followers of Richard Epstein or Cass Sunstein. And the differences […]

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 […]

The following came in the email: I’m a reporter for **, and am looking for comment on the stats Gov Cuomo just released. Would you be available for a 10-minute phone conversation? Please let me know. Thanks so much, and here’s the info: Here is the relevant part: In New York City, about 21 percent, […]

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 […]

Simas Kucinskas writes: I would like to share some recent research (pdf here). In this paper, I develop a new method for estimating R in real time, and apply it to track the dynamics of COVID-19. The method is based on standard epidemiological theory, but the approach itself is heavily inspired by time-series statistics. I […]

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 […]

Someone who wishes to remain anonymous writes: Here’s a joke we used to tell about someone in econ grad school, a few decades ago. Two economists were walking down the street. The first one says: “Isn’t that a $20 bill?” The second one says: “Can’t be. If it were, somebody would have picked it up […]

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 […]

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 […]

Anthony Fowler wrote a wonderful op-ed. You have to read the whole thing, but let me start with his most important point, about “the temptation to overclaim” in social science: One study estimated the economic value of the people spared through social-distancing efforts. Essentially, the authors took estimates from epidemiologists about the number of lives […]

The other day we posted some Stan models of coronavirus infection rate from the Stanford study in Santa Clara county. The Bayesian setup worked well because it allowed us to directly incorporate uncertainty in the specificity, sensitivity, and underlying infection rate. Mitzi Morris put all this in a Google Collab notebook so you can run […]

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 […]

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. […]

Robin Lee writes: To check for linearity and homoscedasticity, we are taught to plot residuals against y fitted value in many statistics classes. However, plotting residuals against y fitted value has always been a confusing practice that I know that I should use but can’t quite explain why. It is not until this week I […]

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 […]

Proposal to temporarily loosen restrictions on on-site sales faces uncertain prospect in session's final days.

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

The decision to shelve detailed advice from the nation's top disease control experts for reopening communities during the coronavirus pandemic came from the highest levels of the White House, according to internal government e-mails.

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?

Bank runs should not be a concern, thanks to the system that protects your deposits.

After snapping up more than $500 billion in emergency loans in just three weeks, small-business owners have lost interest in the federal Paycheck Protection Program. Minnesota business owners are among those who may give back a chunk of their forgivable loans.

Declining state and local government spending really can make an economic downturn worse. And this recession is bad enough already.

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.

Major League Baseball's teams have pledged $30 million for ballpark workers who will lose income because of the delay to the season caused by the novel...

Roberts, Mark G Mar 30, 1952 - Feb 19, 2020 Mark G Roberts, 67, of North Port, Florida, died on Feb 19, 2020. Funeral .....

Reed, Bertha Ann Dec 15, 1921 - May 4, 2020 Bertha Ann Reed, 98, of Punta Gorda, Florida, died on May 4, 2020. Funeral .....

Phillips, William "Bill" May 18, 1928 - May 6, 2020 William "Bill" Phillips (age 91) passed away peacefully to be with his Lord and .....

Leber Jr., Kenneth Miles Oct 29, 1922 - May 3, 2020 Kenneth Miles Leber, Jr., of Sarasota, Florida, peacefully passed away on Sunday May .....

Hunt, Barbara Nov 5, 1959 - Apr 26, 2020 Barbara Hunt, 60, of Bradenton, FL, died on Apr 26, 2020. Funeral arrangements by: Shannon .....

Douberly, Harold Feb 12, 1930 - May 3, 2020 Harold L. Douberly, age 90, of Bradenton, Florida passed away on Sunday May 3, 2020. .....

Sabol Donegan , Barbara M. Jan 4, 1934 - May 5, 2020 Barbara M. Sabol Donegan , 86, of Sarasota, Florida, died on May .....

Corbett, Sr., Randall Joseph May 1, 1943 - May 7, 2020 Randall Joseph Corbett, Sr., 77, of Plymouth, Massachusetts and Venice, Florida, died on .....

Cabott, Dorothy W. Jan 5, 1936 - May 5, 2020 Dorothy W. Cabott, 84, of Port Charlotte, FL, died on May 5, 2020. Funeral .....