April 10th, 2008
I haven't updated this page in a long long time. I wonder how long it will take me to update the other pages.
Plans and reality
To put things in context, I have no class Thursdays. Perfect time to get work done, right? Wrong!
To do list for today:
- Meet with professor to discuss data for a research project
- Do practice problems for Industrial Organization general
- Do practice problems for Public Finance general
- Read paper summaries for IO
- Work on PF take-home midterm
- Comment on charts and tables from paper
- Think of way to frame paper in the literature
- Review IO notes
- Review PF notes
- Go to taekwondo
Actual accomplishments:
- To be fair: 1, 4, and parts of 2, 3, and 5 did get done.
- Send a bunch of emails to friends and random people
- Buy three random books at Harvard bookstore
- Do online crossword puzzle
- Send one work-related email (it gets worse after this)
- Take puppy for a walk
- Buy paint to paint windowsill in the bathroom
- Talk on the phone
- Read Cosmo
- Play guitar
- Paint windowsill in the bathroom
- Drink glass of wine
- Post story about homeless man on the T on thisisby.us
- Look at shoes my sister is thinking of buying
- Make "To do" list for tomorrow
- Update webpage
Good night!!!
February 28th, 2008
I’ve been trying to update this page for a long time, but I found myself at a loss of what to write.
Lately, life has been composed mainly of working and avoiding work (which is not the same as not working, as I've realized).
Then I remembered the wonders of the internet and realized I could just put up a bunch of links to other sites (given the amount of crap that’s out there, I do think this is value added!)
These are pretty funny. I can't decide if my favorite is the facebook one or the exercise machine.
Facebook News Network
Wii Fit Parody
Exercise machine (the worst one I've ever seen!)
Richard Simmons on Dave Letterman
One other idea that I've been toying with is making a website where people can write about strange policies they've heard of. It's entertainment for one part of the population and a source of research ideas for another.
Basically, economists love "quasi-natural experiments" where state or county policymakers implement policies (preferably randomly applied). The idea is that you can then compare states/counties that implemented these policies to those that didn't or compare changes over time (with many many caveats, usually). Of course, to study the effects of policies, you have to know about them.
Finding out about these policies is an art; you either do it by talking to people, reading the news, or being really lucky.
I think it's time we have a single database of policies whose effects people can then study. The problem is, I can't really program an interactive webpage.
Anyone interested in working on this with me?
August 4th, 2008
Although I never looked forward to Mondays, they are usually my most productive days. I have the most motivation. It all goes downhill from there.
On top of being productive, I found some very entertaining sites using Stumble. By the way, if you don't procrastinate enough, install the StumbleUpon toolbar. It provides minutes/hours/days of wonderful entertainment!
The first site is Not Always Right. It's a hillarious collection of stories about customers and the funny/outrageous/dumb things they do. Sometimes it's hard to figure out if the customers are being serious or just joking, like the guy who called his credit card company to ask why they sent him a bill.
And for those who think too much, a fun time-wasting website can be found here. Don't be alarmed that there's nothing there. Click on the square. Read the instructions. And enjoy!
August 3rd, 2008
I've always been a (largely silent) critic of people who try to keep any personal information about themselves off the internet. I figured I wasn't important enough for anyone to bother with. After an unpleasant experience with someone I wanted to leave me alone, however, I decided to see just how hard it would be to find out where I live.
It took me about three minutes to find my own address online, not to mention my cell phone number.
So I decided to err on the side of paranoia and am now attempting to wipe out any personal information out there, except my name and email address. I still don't think I'm important enough for anyone to bother, but better be safe than sorry. Bye-bye, personal page!
By the way, did you know that "paranoia" is also a role-playing game? Read about it on Wikipedia.
And I leave you with another entertaining picture from failblog.org:
see more pwn and owned pictures
August 2nd, 2008
I learned about a drastic concept today - "freeganism". Basically, I think it involves trying to consume as little as possible. In addition, freegans try to work less (or not at all) and not participate in any part of the modern economy. You can read more about it on Wikipedia or on a freeganism info site.
I'm usually pretty tolerant of people with strange beliefs as long as they don't harm others,
but the sight of someone digging things out of garbage is frankly disturbing. Yes, I agree that we throw away too many things, and that's a problem.
But going after it to get it seems somewhat unhygenic.
August 1st, 2008
I've started reading blogs to get ideas about research projects. At the same time, I decided to post any interesting discoveries here.
The winner is TreeHugger's guide on making your sex life more environmentally friendly. Curious? So was I. Check it out here. It covers everything, from sex toys and underwear to meeting other environmentally-minded people.
Here's a pretty ridiculous ad:
Over and out.
July 31st, 2008
More on things that people get wrong
I stumbled on a page about the ineffectiveness of Twelve Step groups, which are basically self-help groups for people with addictions. For more info, see Wikipedia page on the Twelve Steps. The person was citing 95% failure rates, saying that this was no different from spontaneous remission. Arguments along these lines have been applied to depression drugs (which some claim causes teenagers to become more suicidal), among other things.
The problem here is self-selection. No one is randomly assigned into Alcoholic Anonymous. Really bad drunk drivers get sent there. And you have to be pretty damn desperate to decide to come into a room where strange people introduce themselves by saying they’re an alcoholic, talk about God, and hold hands at the end of the meeting. You cannot really determine what their remission rate would have been had they not come to AA (or NA or OA or something equivalent). If it was 2.5% before, then the program doubles their chances of recovery. And that’s pretty damn good.
Sometimes self-selection is good when there is the possibility for self-selection. Suppose you’re testing a cancer drug. You run a controlled experiment and find that the recovery rate is 10% in both the control and treatment group. Bummer, right?
Then you look closely at the data and realize that the recovery rate for men was 15% in the treatment group and only 5% in the control group (statistically significant!). On the other hand, your drug seemed to have hurt the women, lowering their chances of recovery from 15% to 5% (also statistically significant!).
On average, it seems to have done nothing. But given the more detailed analysis, what you should do now is prescribe this drug to men. Of course, this would be pretty easy to spot in cases where the effect differed by gender, race, or age, but there are situations where it’s not as transparent.
The moral of the story is to be careful when you claim something doesn’t work on average. Among the many things that could be going on are self-selection and heterogeneous effects (which is what’s described in the previous paragraph).
July 30th, 2008
On health claims
I’m often surprised by intelligent scientists/people drawing completely unwarranted conclusions from lab experiments which look at the health effects of some substance.
When it comes to health experiments, using humans as subjects is often unethical and/or infeasible. So naturally, scientists resort to animals, usually rats or mice. To give a concrete example, studies of whether aspartame/saccharine is bad for you essentially relied on feeding it to animals (there were observational studies with nurses, but conclusions from those are problematic for many reasons).
What is often observed is that when X is fed to or injected into the animals, something bad happens – cancer, heart attacks, early deaths, etc. The first objection people raise is that if you translate the quantities fed to these animals into human doses, it is almost inconceivable that any human could consume that much of it (e.g. the saccharine amounts fed to rats were extreme).
Then people will say, “But it can’t be good for you.” And this is where the fundamental mistake is. Not only can it be not bad for you, it can be good! There are very easy examples to give: iron, Vitamins A, B, E, K, and any other fat-soluble vitamin. Your body needs them to function normally and they are good for you. But take too many and bad things will happen – you will get iron poisoning, your skin will turn yellow, you’ll get diarrhea or nausea. If you want more side effects, look it up. The mistake that people make is thinking that the relationship is monotonic, always bad or always good. There are lots of cases when that’s just not true.
The same thing can happen with studying things that are good for you in large quantities, although it’s harder to imagine how they can be bad for you if consumed in small quantities.
To be fair, I don’t actually think saccharine is good for you in small doses. But that’s just my opinion that’s not based on any scientific evidence. Scientists should know better than to make such unwarranted claims and do better experiments instead.
July 28th, 2008
I have to be honest. I'm terrified of this research process which I'm now supposed to be engaged in. I can tell myself that everything is going to be ok, that I'll make mistakes, but I'll also learn and grow. In the end, however, I'll still be panicking about the lack of self-discipline and the lack of results.
I think this stage of grad school can really suck the joy out of your life. Case in point: over the past week, I've played tennis, went out to dinner and lunch, went to a meditation workshop and a Red Sox game, spent time with my sister and my friends... sounds fun, right? But all this time (except for the Red Sox game) this soft voice has been saying in the background, "You haven't been doing research; you don't know what you results mean; you've been slacking off..." And what you thought would be fun turns into an episode of schizophrenia.
I have to admit something else. I'm actually a closet optimist. I complain and whine and worry, but if you press me to tell the complete truth, I do believe that things will turn out well no matter what. This is partly thanks to my friend Heidi who would drive me crazy with her line of "What's the worst that could happen?" Here's how it would go:
Me (in college): "I'm worried about my math test"
Heidi: "Well, what's the worst that could happen?"
Me: "I fail my math test!"
Heidi: "OK, what's the worst that could happen if you do fail your math test?"
Me: "I fail the class."
Heidi: "And then what?"
Me: "I don't get into a good graduate school." (I didn't actually think failing a class would prevent me from graduating college)
Heidi: "And then what?"
Me: "And then I'd have to look for a job I actually like."
Heidi: "And then what?"
Me: "Umm, I would probably find a job and take it from there."
Heidi: "Yeah, or you could get hit by a bus tomorrow."
It might sound silly, but going through this chain of reasoning made me realize that the worst thing that can happen IS being hit by a bus (at least in my life). All that other stuff is just a nuisance that I can survive...
July 26th, 2008
I usually listen to my iPod when I ride the T. Helps the time pass. But once in a while, I'll hear pieces of an interesting conversation through the music. Of course, it would be weird to take my headphones off and start listening. So what I do is turn my iPod off stealthily and eavesdrop. Yes, it's a little creepy, but I'm just curious.
What caught my attention today was a guy writing something down in a small notebook. I saw columns with dates, times, some numbers, and the words "In"/"Out". The whole notebook was filled with these entries, one per line. He was asking his friends something. At this point, I turned off the iPod and started listening while pretending to be staring blankly ahead of me. Yes, creepy, got it...
In any case, it turned out that this guy writes down the number of every green line T car he takes, along with the time, date, line (B, C, D, E) and direction (In/Out). Why?
That I did not find out. I doubt there could be a useful explanation. I guess everyone needs hobbies. And it was more entertaining than listening to "Maroon 5" for the hundredth time.
And to finish this off, here's a random thought... "Perseverance" is a dangerous word, as I've learned. At first glance, what can be wrong with trying until you succeed?
To counteract that wisdom, there's the quote "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results." That's what blind perseverance can do.
You keep doing what you've always been doing even though if you stop and think about it, you'd have no reason to expect "it" to work. The right kind of perseverance is thoughful perseverance.
Sometimes the right thing to do is give up and try something else.
July 18th, 2008
Continued....
I was supposed to go to a very nice housewarming party tonight. I even bought beer and everything. My sister came home and went to walk the dog, after which we were supposed to leave for the party.
Upon returning, she found the bottom lock locked. We always use the top lock - we never even got keys to the bottom one. The best thing is that the bottom lock doesn't open from the inside - only from the outside.
We called maintenance, and they told us to wait. During the next half hour we tried to unscrew the doorknob, from both sides, and take the door off the hinges (unsuccessfully). Several minutes ago (an hour after lockout), maintenance showed up. The noise on the other side of the door got louder, but the result is unchanged - the door is locked. I've exhausted all the door-opening resources I had on my side, gave up on making that party, and am now sitting here writing this and playing online poker.
Update: the maintenance guy gave up and called a locksmith, who will be here in about an hour. Midnight poker, here I come!!!
July 18th, 2008
I did a Google search for "fun quotes" to find one to put up here. This is what I found. I thought that was pretty funny.
Then I did a search for "inspirational quotes economist" and was quite depressed by what I found. Apparently, people don't think much of economists. To make myself feel better, I did a search for lawyer quotes.
In other news, it's nice to remember what it feels like to have a life. And after two years of brutality, I'm finally reaping the benefits of a non-standard schedule. I've been gladly working on the weekends in exchange for going to play tennis on the weekdays. Now I finally remember why I wanted to go into this profession.
Last night, I watched "American Beauty" for only the second time. It really is a great movie. The first time I watched it (around 2000 or 2001 when I was 16 or 17), I didn't like it. I found it too disturbing. Now I don't find it so disturbing anymore. Isn't that disturbing?
I also want to recommend the Boston Public Library for borrowing DVDs of older movies and TV shows. They have a pretty big collection, it's free, and you get the videos for 7 days. I borrowed "Police Academy: Mission to Moscow", "Sophie's Choice", a "Simpson's" season, "MASH", and some other movie I didn't get around to watching. "Sophie's Choice" was very good, and I highly recommend it (how can you go wrong with Meryl Streep?). "MASH" was decent, but a little disturbing (hopefully you'll know what I'm talking about if you watch the movie). Don't watch "Mission to Moscow" unless you're drunk. Really drunk.
And, finally, here's another entertaining link.
June 29th, 2008
It's always "fascinating" (and humbling) to observe one's own procrastination. It seems that doing research was easier when I did it to avoid homework. Now that there's no homework to avoid and research is what I'm supposed to be doing, it's much harder to make myself sit down and just do it.
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I was debriefing myself from the Behavioral Summer Institute this morning. One of the interesting things that came up during the camp was Dean Karlan's new company, Stickk. It's a website that allows you to create a commitment device to accomplish whatever goal you want, in theory.
Here's how it works: you register, choose a goal for yourself, pick the stakes you want, if you want (you can put money or your "reputation" on the line).
Then you choose someone to monitor you and others to cheer you on (again, if you want). Hmm, I might think of a research-oriented goal. Anyway, check it out!
June 28th, 2008
I just got back from the Behavioral Summer Institute in Trento. It was an awesome experience - a perfect mix of positive and normative, work and play. Now it's back to (mostly) work.
I managed to read a few books while I was there. First, I want to highly recommend Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational". It's a (well-written) collection of evidence about systematic deviations from what economists (and most people) would consider rational. He describes experimental evidence on how people treat things that are free radically differently from things that are (extremely) low-priced, how an expensive placebo works even better than a cheap placebo, and how people's behavior changes when they're sexually aroused, among other things. It's a pretty easy and entertaining read. If you do read it, let me know what you think!
Second, I want to dis-recommend Bryan Caplan's "Myth of the Rational Voter". I was really looking forward to reading it. I only read about a third of the book because I have better things to do with my time.
Caplan's main claim is that voters are systematically wrong about policy and in general irrational. His conclusion is that democracy should be replaced by markets. Now if people are irrational, how are markets supposed to be better than voting? Markets, just like voting, need agents to be rational, in most cases.
Now it's probably true that voters have systematic biases. However, Caplan's technique for showing this is absolutely terrible. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here, but he basically compares the opinions of the public with opinions of PhD economists. He constructs the beliefs of what he calls the "Enlightened Public", by assuming they have more education and a PhD in economics, while keeping their other demographic characteristics constant. First of all, there's an obvious selection issue - people who enter economics grad schools may already have different views on many policies, which invalidates his statistical technique. Second, while I'm flattered that my opinion may one day be called "correct", I don't see why asking an applied microeconomist about trade or taxes and labor supply would magically produce anything remotely close to the "right" opinion.
In short, I just didn't see how this book could redeem itself, so I didn't even finish reading it.
June 10th, 2008
I found a very cute and very dorky cartoon this morning.
By the way, I find a lot of entertaining and cool things through StumbleUpon. This is a "best of the net" kind of application.
Basically, you join, install a browser toolbar, click on the "Stumble" button, and get a website that's highly rated by other users and fits your indicated interests.
Not all of them are great, but the beauty is that you can just push the button again. You can look at videos, news, cartoons, blogs, personal sites, etc.
Don't do this if you have serious self-control problems though - it can get pretty addictive.
June 9th, 2008
I have finally come out from what felt like a long period of isolation from humanity, aka studying for generals. In the end, it was not such a bad experience, but I could not justify a luxury such as writing something on a website.
I've also found some interesting things on the internet, such as PoochIQ . Apparently, you can test how smart your dog is with this do-it-yourself kit. I'm not going to comment on what I think the IQ of the dog's owner who orders this kit would be. I determined my puppy's IQ a while back. It's pretty high: he knows how to shake, sit, lie down, get up on his hind legs, and wave his front paws. But he's not going to do any of this unless there's a treat involved, which is the real sign of intelligence. By the way, the website is also testing "The Lonely Pooch Club", where you can dial your dog into a conference call with...other dogs! Your dog can stay on the line all day while you're at work. And right now it's FREE! Personally, I'd rather get a dog walker. Or a wind-up toy. Or a rag. Seriously, do they think dogs will "chat" on the phone?
Another interesting website is How I Spent My Stimulus . This one is actually pretty cool - I saw posts about buying a kitten, an engagement ring ($600?), and booze for a party. Check it out! BTW, I just got my check today. Too bad my estimated taxes for the quarter are $596 (federal) and $330 (Massachusetts). Thanks, Uncle Sam! That money is coming right back to you.
Finally, a practical website: online restaurant reservations. This link is to Boston restaurants, but there are other cities as well. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks pretty legitimate. Plus, they post special offers and events.
Yes, I have been spending a lot of time online. No, I don't regret it. As you can see, I've also grown a little bitter inside my pre-generals cave. I hope that goes away soon.
P.S. In case anyone is wondering, I HAVE been working on research. Honestly. I have regressions and everything.
