I can see under trump laws like that being passed.
Hillary is more of a "stay the course" candidate than Trump.
If you are betting the odds then Hillary is more likely to pass those types of laws than Trump.
Trump realizes that we have to fix things, and he wouldn't push businesses out of the US over something as ineffective as this.
Say what you want about Trump, but he knows business and isn't easily swayed by political spin.
And this won't be the main issue in the election anyway. Stability in ones lifestyle (meaning: the ability to make a living) is the big issue, which in practical terms means the economy and job availability.
That's what everyone's worried about: whether they'll have a job next year.
Other considerations are secondary to this one issue.
About 20 years ago(*) we were told that globalism would result in a higher standard of living for the US.
People pointed out that salaries would stagnate, but economists told us that this was expected and would be more than compensated by the lowered cost of goods.
So effectively you would have the same salary, but the things you need would cost much less and overall everyone would come out ahead.
And here we have an honest, everyday, working person who invented something and made a lot of money who is complaining that their product is being made cheaper in China.
Get with the program!
People are overall *much* better off being able to purchase the cheap knockoffs from China!
It's the predicted outcome. Deal with it.
(*) Starting with NAFTA, and proceeding to the US free trade agreements with China and 20 other countries, as well as the rise of H1B visas and tele-commute outsourcing.
The currency has already crashed, the stock market lost 140 billion pounds, and many major companies are now preparing for partial or complete relocations in order to stay within the EU. The main thing holding companies back is the possibility that the UK might agree to remain bound by the EU's rules and thus stay within the EU common market, thus rendering relocation unnecessary - expect a further crash if the UK doesn't remain in the common market. S&P has already slashed their growth forecast for the UK, and the UK has lost its AAA credit status.
The pound is at a recent low, but that's not a bad thing. It means more people will purchase UK goods and services than they normally wood. The UK will have a more favorable trade deficit, possibly even a trade surplus, which means money will flow into the country from abroad.
If it *were* a bad thing, then you'd be complaining about how from 2 two years ago up to the brexit, the pound lost 20% of its value. Why is it that the pound losing it's value after the vote is catastrophic, in your view, while losing 20% over 2 years isn't?
Can you explain?
One way that Greece could have eased their troubles was by floating their currency. They *asked* the EU for permission to do this, and were denied.
Are you saying that the UK should be *prevented* from floating their currency if they deem it necessary? I don't see that as a bad thing.
Can you explain?
(So long as inflation is kept under control. South American dictatorships devalue their currency by printing extra money, which makes their currency value go to shit. I don't see the UK regulators being stupid enough or corrupt enough to do that.)
Companies relocating to the EU are European companies... yes? And those European companies employ mostly non-UK workers, yes? And pay taxes to their parent country, yes?
So I don't see *that* as a problem either.
Can you explain?
And note that the EU growth rate has been going down, overall, in the last few years (and not because of the recession either).
Are you saying that remaining a part of a declining or stagnant union is a *good* thing for the UK?
Please explain.
And also note that Iceland hammered out a trade treaty with China in about a year, while the EU has been working on a similar treaty for over 20 years.
I'm really unclear why you think all this is bad. It's bad for people who do arbitrage ("the pound has dropped"), it's bad for EU companies ("they're moving away"), and it's bad for the EU economy ("UK was the 2nd largest contributor").
Most people in the UK don't really want to leave the EU, but they wanted reforms on a few key points (as do people in many other european countries) and there was no way to get those reforms so the only option was to leave. If the key problems with the EU were addressed and another referendum held i'm sure the vast majority would vote to stay.
I agree with that viewpoint - I think it's likely a correct assessment of the situation.
Note that England has been grumbling about these points for awhile, and before the vote happened even went to the EU asking for reforms (and was denied, and insulted for asking).
Note also that now that the vote has happened, the rest of the EU won't let the UK back. They've been annoyed with the UK for awhile, and are glad to be rid of it.
So while I agree with your assessment of the situation, I have to file it under "academically interesting".
UK voters: We want to break up the European Union and crash our economy on a single, simple-majority vote!
UK government: Okay.
Crash (v):/kraSH/
1) To regain control of a country's internal affairs 2) To allow ones currency to float if needed 3) To negotiate better-than-average trade deals 4) To avoid membership fees 5) To control immigration in a manner advantageous to the citizenry
From this report (chart on page 7), a passenger car rollover (ie - not a light truck) begets a 16% chance of fatality.
This is not the first Tesla rollover crash I've read about, the other one would lead me to believe that Teslas are in fact safer than average. (Click the link and see for yourself, the crash was reportedly spectacular.)
“We received an automated alert from this vehicle on July 1 indicating airbag deployment, but logs containing detailed information on the state of the vehicle controls at the time of the collision were never received. This is consistent with damage of the severity reported in the press, which can cause the antenna to fail. As we do with all crash events, we immediately reached out to the customer to confirm they were ok and offer support but were unable to reach him. We have since attempted to contact the customer three times by phone without success. Based on the information we have now, we have no reason to believe that Autopilot had anything to do with this accident.”
The owner *claims* that the car was in autopilot, but we don't really know yet.
Also of note, the following (from same link):
[...] As reported yesterday, the police investigator on the case, Dale Vukovich, said that he is likely to charge Scaglione after his investigation without specifying the charges.
I'm going to wait a couple of days before making any judgements on this specific incident.
At the worst, it *may be* that autopilot mode isn't appropriate for human drivers simply due to the chance of it being misused. If too many people are relying on it when they shouldn't, then it likely should be taken off the market.
But that's an entirely different situation from Tesla being negligent, or unsafe, or unpromising.
I had a university level Statistics "professor" once tell me that I didn't need to know how my calculator created a box plot, etc etc because I could just use someone else's statistics library instead of writing my own. While in general I agree that there is no point in reinventing the wheel, I felt like I ought to learn how such things work.
I do a *ton* of statistical work in my day job, and if I were to write a book or teach a class, I would recommend two things:
1) Always look at the data 2) Always write your own functions
The reason for this has to do with the basic nature of statistics. If you make a mistake in normal software, the error is usually patently visible or benign. Often times the software works fine and does its job and the results are correct, even if it has bugs.
In statistics however, if you make a mistake the results get closer to "random". Statistics is fundamentally an attempt to extract information from data, and if you make a misstep then you get less information, which is equivalent to the data being closer to random. There is no way to tell whether the output is correct - it doesn't crash, it doesn't show an obvious flaw, it just didn't give you any information.
The second thing is to always look at the data.
Many, many, *MANY* theories and research papers make simple assumptions about the data which simply aren't true, and if you can look at the data (in an appropriate visualization), you can avoid some of these pitfalls.
Researchers do linear regression, when a quick glimpse of the data would tell them that it's a curve. Economists assume that if a tiny piece of a function looks linear, the entire function is linear. People do Principle Component Analysis on data that has multiple loci of causes. People use Expectation Maximization and "guess" the number and position of causes. People reverse the conditional.
The list is endless.
You can use someone else's library for mundane things which can be checked. Using a library for a box plot is fine - if it crashes or if the output doesn't *look* right, then use a different library.
For doing actual statistical work, you should *first* code your own functions. You'll get a marvellous hands-on insight and a little intuition about what the results should be.
Once you've done that, you can look at (ie - plot) the data and use your human brain to make a judgement.
Then use the big library. If it doesn't look right, you can investigate further.
They're still not putting their panels on my roof and charging me money for the electricity they generate. They can lease the space from me, but if they retain full ownership interest in the panels, I'm not giving them anything for free, much less paying them for the privilege.
Solar city came around and handed out brochures, and I got an estimate from them.
Of their 3 plans in the estimate, none "charge me" for the electricity they produce. The three plans are three tiers representing the amount I pay up front, and the amount my electricity bill is reduced going forward.
So in other words, I could buy the panels outright ('sorta) and get a big reduction on my electricity consumption, or I could pay nothing and get a small reduction.
All of which was surveyed to my house, which accounted for the latitude, number of sunny days, estimated cost of electricity, and my average usage.
Putting up solar cells is a project that a lot of people don't have the skills or ambition for (especially older folks) - this is basically a turn-key solution. "Pay nothing, get a (small) decrease in electricity costs, and we'll maintain the system for 20 years".
But even more seriously, folks, I think we need to rethink our entire philosophy of reproduction. There are evolutionary reasons that we are strongly driven to have as many children as possible.
Yeah, but who wants to spend time raising kids when you could be doing interesting things in VR?
Also, last I checked, US fertility was right at the replacement rate, but since then it has dropped off a cliff, largely due to the economy: people cannot afford to have children any more.
When can the west follow suit? Speaking of, why do we even go to news sites anymore when all they do is post screenshots of someone's tweet?
I've often wondered whether someone could "prank" the news media or the police by posting a false twitter feed or video or something.
For example, we see police arresting people for video'ing themselves drunk driving. I wonder if someone could post a video of this, let the police arrest them, then show that it was done on a stage and show a video of the scene being taped. YouTube videos are not evidence by themselves.
Or another example, suppose someone ran a half-dozen twitter accounts with mundane posts generated from bots - simple stuff like "let's go for dinner" and so on. Have them follow each other as if they were friends.
Then, 6 months later, post a video of a burning factory, and have tweets such as "OMG, the police just came to my door, they're evacuating everyone!". Maybe post a fake newscast video which shows the local TV station reporting about a massive fire in a factory that might release toxic chemical gasses or whatnot.
Is it possible is it to prank the major news outlets and get national coverage for an event that doesn't exist?
Is it possible to prank the police to get a trial for an event that didn't exist?
Is it possible to get legislation passed to address an issue that doesn't exist?
A recent slashdot reply caught my eye, because it succinctly sums up the situation in the UK.
In her department, which requires high-end medically-skilled professionals, her boss posted after Brexit. The basic gist was "Don't worry, everyone, your cancer diagnosis will still be safe in the hands of our department consisting almost entirely of Spanish, Italian, German, French, Polish, Greek,...... personnel for the time being".
The important part of this post is that the jobs in this lab are denied to UK citizens due to globalism.
Of course, proponents of globalism will tell us that the UK citizens can easily move to Greece and get an equivalent job.
It could happen - right?
Globalism was sold to us as a way to increase our standard of living. It was well known that salaries would stagnate, but (we were told) the lower prices on imported goods would more than make up for the difference.
Globalism is good for a handful few people, while it has driven half the workforce to the brink of poverty.
The economic rationale says that the economy is doing great (which it is, actually) and ignores the dissatisfaction of millions of citizens as valueless.
Why should *any* country sacrifice the welfare of its citizens for the benefit of people in other countries?
If want to argue globalism, please include the analysis that indicates why having 75 million households on the brink of poverty and 10% unemployment is a good thing.
It's the difference between a rationalization and actual evidence.
How good are you with comparative statics? Protectionism in all forms results in suboptimal allocation of resources; an import tariff or quota, etc. all result in dead-weight losses.
Why is optimal allocation of resources more important than citizen well-being?
Which comparative statistics contrast protectionism with armed revolt?
Your defence of protectionism is economic, and ignores reality.
If enough people are dissatisfied then your economic analysis is worthless.
Let's go back to the time when the welfare of our citizens were valued over the welfare of other people!
Sadly Its not that easy to move around, if you are young and with no commitments is somewhat easier, but if you have a family, mortgage to pay, and been working for years in a factory, going to another country where they speak a different language and with little money in the bank, leaving your family ties and friends back is a very difficult proposition, the only way i could see people in that situation to move to another country would be if they were in a situation like Iraq
The OP also assumes that there are jobs in other EU countries he could get.
By and large, if you're in an industrialized country you find your jobs are taken by immigrants from a pastoral country, but be unable to find equivalent jobs in those other countries.
To take a specific example, one slashdot commentator noted the tech workers at a cancer testing facility in the UK were Spanish, Italian, German, French, Polish, and Greek.
How likely would it be for a qualified UK worker to find a job in Greece, Poland, or Spain?
This is one of the lies of globalism, that you can go to other countries to find jobs.
The economic "theory" of globalism is founded on a rationalisation.
Protectionism doesn't work. The world is competing now, and running away to avoid that just makes you into East Germany, and the Berlin wall is falling.
Protectionism doesn't work because of rationalization.
Globalism doesn't work because of evidence.
But I'll give you a chance to explain. What changes should we make to prevent the American people from being driven into poverty?
To put things in perspective, consider some numbers:
My town's population is about 10,000.
My town's labor force is about half that (5,000)
The "250 unemployed" represents more than 4.999% of the workforce.
If a headhunter can't find people in the town and has to import, my question is this: is globalism bad for my town?
Globalism is taught as the one-true-religion in economics circles right now, but I'm wondering if this is a dodge. While globalism has made a handful of companies richer, it drives the people into poverty.
Is it possible that we have too much globalism?
Sound stupid, yet? Btw, your begging the question with "it drives the people into poverty". The evidence is that it stagnates wages in developed country while boosting the wages substantially in developing and undeveloped countries. The real issue is that "a headhunter can't find people" is often itself a dodge. As others point out, companies want fully trained employees and will basically hire someone less skilled outside the area for a pittance as a "compromise". Often this occurs even when people in the area will work for a pittance.
There's just a heavy presumption: local people will leave if the job sucks (or they're lazy) but foreigners will basically commit no matter what (which makes all those "lazy illegals" stories such crap). It's a shitty approach to getting "loyal" employees. Just as the idea of waving more money is no sort of answer. But the real difficult task of getting good managers to actually, you know, spot and hire good employees is too much.
Hmmm...
Using the Mensa standard of 2%, those 250 unemployed people should have about 5 geniuses. It doesn't take much imagination to see that perhaps 50 of those 250 should be trainable in any real sense.
The evidence is that it stagnates wages in developed country while boosting the wages substantially in developing and undeveloped countries.
Let's tell the whole story here, shall we?
In the US, wages have stagnated andunemployment has gone upand inflation has averaged about 2%. That's a net loss for US citizens.
In the US we've about doubled our per capita GDP since we started globalization, and since wages have stagnated this means that a select few people became rich, all the while everyone else has had a net loss.
And finally, and most importantly, why should the US citizens sacrifice their well being and accept being driven into poverty for people in other countries?
I mean really - I see this argument all the time. "Our people are miserable, but just look st all the 3rd-world people we're helping!"
The evidence is that it stagnates wages in developed country while boosting the wages substantially in developing and undeveloped countries.
To put things in perspective, consider some numbers:
Spain's population is about 47 million
Spain's labor force is about half that (23 million)
The "5 million unemployed" represents more than 20% of the workforce.
If a headhunter can't find people in the country and has to import, my question is this: is globalism bad for Spain?
Globalism is taught as the one-true-religion in economics circles right now, but I'm wondering if this is a dodge. While globalism has made a handful of companies richer, it drives the people into poverty.
The video uses the NRA logo and [what appears to be] the Smith and Wesson logo, and there's absolutely no clue that it's a parody. It seems completely legit, as if those two organizations made a serious promo video.
I'm a big fan of fair use in all it's varied forms, but I think this is a really good case of "impersonation", and is easily viewed as slanderous or libellous.
On a related note, before everyone posts the cherry-picked, not-the-whole-story statistics, does anyone have any good studies and/or statistics about gun ownership?
A good statistic would be one that relates chance of death by all causes to gun ownership, and compares to similar areas with similar social structure.
In other words, saying "owning guns increases your chance of an accidental shooting" might still be statistically good if it lowers your chance of dying from all causes (like not having money for medicine because you got robbed), or comparing America with the UK (because the UK has good health care while the US has almost none).
Anyone have any, you know, actually good statistics?
(We're the smart people in the room. People expect us to distil the good info from the bad.)
Recall that about 6 months after the Oklahoma City bombing, train tracks were sabotaged in this country, which derailed and crashed a train. The perpetrators left a note at the scene, but AFAICT were never caught.
And note that we're currently putting the fire out in a train crash somewhere in the Texas Panhandle, but the cause hasn't yet been determined. (Meaning: we should keep an eye on this, it might be a terrorist attack.)
Lots of US infrastructure is wide open and vulnerable to terrorist attack, yet we spend enormous effort on security theatre at the airports. Our governments implement a massive spying apparatus with the excuse that it combats terrorism, but they don't bother to infiltrate groups that are likely to do it.
And the people they manage to catch with surveillance are sad losers who couldn't manage to pull off the attack without FBI urging and guidance.
In the future, if you were to wrap that in a sentence or two with the link as one of the words, and drop the childish name calling, you'd probably get voted up.
If you don't respond to it, then people browsing at >=1 will never know it exists. That is the good thing about this mod system. Plus, I don't think porch monkey is a racist term. My grandmother used to call me and my sister porch monkeys all the time.
Yeah - In that definition I'm probably a porch monkey as well. Similar to "couch potato".
I think a lot of people are responding "don't respond" as a reflex action from political correctness. That's fine, and we shouldn't respond, but...
It also prevents us from talking about it. I've noticed these in a *lot* of posts, they always seem to get first post, and they're blatantly garbage.
It doesn't hurt to start a discussion once-in-a-while, and I'm not promoting his view by quoting and asking "WTF?".
We have a lot of smart people on this forum, many of which know a fair bit about psychology (armchair or otherwise).
I'd be very interested to hear an [serious] analysis of the person that posts these things.
Slashdot Mirror
That's an insightful post.
You should have been modded up.
Here's a radical idea.
Hey google - why don't you train 2 million Americans?
Will apple pullout if forced to unlock phones?
I can see under trump laws like that being passed.
Hillary is more of a "stay the course" candidate than Trump.
If you are betting the odds then Hillary is more likely to pass those types of laws than Trump.
Trump realizes that we have to fix things, and he wouldn't push businesses out of the US over something as ineffective as this.
Say what you want about Trump, but he knows business and isn't easily swayed by political spin.
And this won't be the main issue in the election anyway. Stability in ones lifestyle (meaning: the ability to make a living) is the big issue, which in practical terms means the economy and job availability.
That's what everyone's worried about: whether they'll have a job next year.
Other considerations are secondary to this one issue.
It's all about intent as far as the court is concerned. It's illegal to sell fake weed or crack, even if you know it's fake.
So if I'm not selling drugs, but I *believe* that's what I'm doing, I can be put in jail.
If I put classified information on an unsecured server, but I don't *believe* that I'm doing anything wrong, I won't be charged.
And here I was, thinking that evidence of a crime is what you went to jail for.
Silly me...
About 20 years ago(*) we were told that globalism would result in a higher standard of living for the US.
People pointed out that salaries would stagnate, but economists told us that this was expected and would be more than compensated by the lowered cost of goods.
So effectively you would have the same salary, but the things you need would cost much less and overall everyone would come out ahead.
And here we have an honest, everyday, working person who invented something and made a lot of money who is complaining that their product is being made cheaper in China.
Get with the program!
People are overall *much* better off being able to purchase the cheap knockoffs from China!
It's the predicted outcome. Deal with it.
(*) Starting with NAFTA, and proceeding to the US free trade agreements with China and 20 other countries, as well as the rise of H1B visas and tele-commute outsourcing.
The currency has already crashed, the stock market lost 140 billion pounds, and many major companies are now preparing for partial or complete relocations in order to stay within the EU. The main thing holding companies back is the possibility that the UK might agree to remain bound by the EU's rules and thus stay within the EU common market, thus rendering relocation unnecessary - expect a further crash if the UK doesn't remain in the common market. S&P has already slashed their growth forecast for the UK, and the UK has lost its AAA credit status.
The pound is at a recent low, but that's not a bad thing. It means more people will purchase UK goods and services than they normally wood. The UK will have a more favorable trade deficit, possibly even a trade surplus, which means money will flow into the country from abroad.
If it *were* a bad thing, then you'd be complaining about how from 2 two years ago up to the brexit, the pound lost 20% of its value. Why is it that the pound losing it's value after the vote is catastrophic, in your view, while losing 20% over 2 years isn't?
Can you explain?
One way that Greece could have eased their troubles was by floating their currency. They *asked* the EU for permission to do this, and were denied.
Are you saying that the UK should be *prevented* from floating their currency if they deem it necessary? I don't see that as a bad thing.
Can you explain?
(So long as inflation is kept under control. South American dictatorships devalue their currency by printing extra money, which makes their currency value go to shit. I don't see the UK regulators being stupid enough or corrupt enough to do that.)
Companies relocating to the EU are European companies... yes? And those European companies employ mostly non-UK workers, yes? And pay taxes to their parent country, yes?
So I don't see *that* as a problem either.
Can you explain?
And note that the EU growth rate has been going down, overall, in the last few years (and not because of the recession either).
Are you saying that remaining a part of a declining or stagnant union is a *good* thing for the UK?
Please explain.
And also note that Iceland hammered out a trade treaty with China in about a year, while the EU has been working on a similar treaty for over 20 years.
I'm really unclear why you think all this is bad. It's bad for people who do arbitrage ("the pound has dropped"), it's bad for EU companies ("they're moving away"), and it's bad for the EU economy ("UK was the 2nd largest contributor").
But I don't see it as bad for the UK people.
Care to explain?
Most people in the UK don't really want to leave the EU, but they wanted reforms on a few key points (as do people in many other european countries) and there was no way to get those reforms so the only option was to leave. If the key problems with the EU were addressed and another referendum held i'm sure the vast majority would vote to stay.
I agree with that viewpoint - I think it's likely a correct assessment of the situation.
Note that England has been grumbling about these points for awhile, and before the vote happened even went to the EU asking for reforms (and was denied, and insulted for asking).
Note also that now that the vote has happened, the rest of the EU won't let the UK back. They've been annoyed with the UK for awhile, and are glad to be rid of it.
So while I agree with your assessment of the situation, I have to file it under "academically interesting".
UK voters: We want to give a boat a silly name!
UK government: No.
UK voters: We want to break up the European Union and crash our economy on a single, simple-majority vote!
UK government: Okay.
Crash (v): /kraSH/
1) To regain control of a country's internal affairs
2) To allow ones currency to float if needed
3) To negotiate better-than-average trade deals
4) To avoid membership fees
5) To control immigration in a manner advantageous to the citizenry
I would imagine so. Not that there's too much wrong with that. Except an abomination upon the eyes of our Lord and saviour, Jesus Christ!
The apostle Paul was gay.
Please explain how our saviour could find gayness an abomination, yet still accept him as an apostle.
From this report (chart on page 7), a passenger car rollover (ie - not a light truck) begets a 16% chance of fatality.
This is not the first Tesla rollover crash I've read about, the other one would lead me to believe that Teslas are in fact safer than average. (Click the link and see for yourself, the crash was reportedly spectacular.)
Of the crash in question, Tesla had this to say:
“We received an automated alert from this vehicle on July 1 indicating airbag deployment, but logs containing detailed information on the state of the vehicle controls at the time of the collision were never received. This is consistent with damage of the severity reported in the press, which can cause the antenna to fail. As we do with all crash events, we immediately reached out to the customer to confirm they were ok and offer support but were unable to reach him. We have since attempted to contact the customer three times by phone without success. Based on the information we have now, we have no reason to believe that Autopilot had anything to do with this accident.”
The owner *claims* that the car was in autopilot, but we don't really know yet.
Also of note, the following (from same link):
[...] As reported yesterday, the police investigator on the case, Dale Vukovich, said that he is likely to charge Scaglione after his investigation without specifying the charges.
I'm going to wait a couple of days before making any judgements on this specific incident.
At the worst, it *may be* that autopilot mode isn't appropriate for human drivers simply due to the chance of it being misused. If too many people are relying on it when they shouldn't, then it likely should be taken off the market.
But that's an entirely different situation from Tesla being negligent, or unsafe, or unpromising.
I had a university level Statistics "professor" once tell me that I didn't need to know how my calculator created a box plot, etc etc because I could just use someone else's statistics library instead of writing my own. While in general I agree that there is no point in reinventing the wheel, I felt like I ought to learn how such things work.
I do a *ton* of statistical work in my day job, and if I were to write a book or teach a class, I would recommend two things:
1) Always look at the data
2) Always write your own functions
The reason for this has to do with the basic nature of statistics. If you make a mistake in normal software, the error is usually patently visible or benign. Often times the software works fine and does its job and the results are correct, even if it has bugs.
In statistics however, if you make a mistake the results get closer to "random". Statistics is fundamentally an attempt to extract information from data, and if you make a misstep then you get less information, which is equivalent to the data being closer to random. There is no way to tell whether the output is correct - it doesn't crash, it doesn't show an obvious flaw, it just didn't give you any information.
The second thing is to always look at the data.
Many, many, *MANY* theories and research papers make simple assumptions about the data which simply aren't true, and if you can look at the data (in an appropriate visualization), you can avoid some of these pitfalls.
Researchers do linear regression, when a quick glimpse of the data would tell them that it's a curve. Economists assume that if a tiny piece of a function looks linear, the entire function is linear. People do Principle Component Analysis on data that has multiple loci of causes. People use Expectation Maximization and "guess" the number and position of causes. People reverse the conditional.
The list is endless.
You can use someone else's library for mundane things which can be checked. Using a library for a box plot is fine - if it crashes or if the output doesn't *look* right, then use a different library.
For doing actual statistical work, you should *first* code your own functions. You'll get a marvellous hands-on insight and a little intuition about what the results should be.
Once you've done that, you can look at (ie - plot) the data and use your human brain to make a judgement.
Then use the big library. If it doesn't look right, you can investigate further.
Good for Solar City.
They're still not putting their panels on my roof and charging me money for the electricity they generate. They can lease the space from me, but if they retain full ownership interest in the panels, I'm not giving them anything for free, much less paying them for the privilege.
Solar city came around and handed out brochures, and I got an estimate from them.
Of their 3 plans in the estimate, none "charge me" for the electricity they produce. The three plans are three tiers representing the amount I pay up front, and the amount my electricity bill is reduced going forward.
So in other words, I could buy the panels outright ('sorta) and get a big reduction on my electricity consumption, or I could pay nothing and get a small reduction.
All of which was surveyed to my house, which accounted for the latitude, number of sunny days, estimated cost of electricity, and my average usage.
Putting up solar cells is a project that a lot of people don't have the skills or ambition for (especially older folks) - this is basically a turn-key solution. "Pay nothing, get a (small) decrease in electricity costs, and we'll maintain the system for 20 years".
For a lot of people, it's a good deal.
It's even simpler than that. How can any company, that has only existed for 9 years, have any proof their product lasts 35 years let alone even 10?
By using math.
But even more seriously, folks, I think we need to rethink our entire philosophy of reproduction. There are evolutionary reasons that we are strongly driven to have as many children as possible.
Yeah, but who wants to spend time raising kids when you could be doing interesting things in VR?
Note that Japanese Fertility Rate is waaaay under the replacement rate.
Also, last I checked, US fertility was right at the replacement rate, but since then it has dropped off a cliff, largely due to the economy: people cannot afford to have children any more.
When can the west follow suit? Speaking of, why do we even go to news sites anymore when all they do is post screenshots of someone's tweet?
I've often wondered whether someone could "prank" the news media or the police by posting a false twitter feed or video or something.
For example, we see police arresting people for video'ing themselves drunk driving. I wonder if someone could post a video of this, let the police arrest them, then show that it was done on a stage and show a video of the scene being taped. YouTube videos are not evidence by themselves.
Or another example, suppose someone ran a half-dozen twitter accounts with mundane posts generated from bots - simple stuff like "let's go for dinner" and so on. Have them follow each other as if they were friends.
Then, 6 months later, post a video of a burning factory, and have tweets such as "OMG, the police just came to my door, they're evacuating everyone!". Maybe post a fake newscast video which shows the local TV station reporting about a massive fire in a factory that might release toxic chemical gasses or whatnot.
Is it possible is it to prank the major news outlets and get national coverage for an event that doesn't exist?
Is it possible to prank the police to get a trial for an event that didn't exist?
Is it possible to get legislation passed to address an issue that doesn't exist?
(That last one almost happened.)
A recent slashdot reply caught my eye, because it succinctly sums up the situation in the UK.
In her department, which requires high-end medically-skilled professionals, her boss posted after Brexit. The basic gist was "Don't worry, everyone, your cancer diagnosis will still be safe in the hands of our department consisting almost entirely of Spanish, Italian, German, French, Polish, Greek, ...... personnel for the time being".
The important part of this post is that the jobs in this lab are denied to UK citizens due to globalism.
Of course, proponents of globalism will tell us that the UK citizens can easily move to Greece and get an equivalent job.
It could happen - right?
Globalism was sold to us as a way to increase our standard of living. It was well known that salaries would stagnate, but (we were told) the lower prices on imported goods would more than make up for the difference.
In hindsight, we see that salaries did stagnate, and also unemployment went up while per-capita gdp about doubled.
Globalism is good for a handful few people, while it has driven half the workforce to the brink of poverty.
The economic rationale says that the economy is doing great (which it is, actually) and ignores the dissatisfaction of millions of citizens as valueless.
Why should *any* country sacrifice the welfare of its citizens for the benefit of people in other countries?
If want to argue globalism, please include the analysis that indicates why having 75 million households on the brink of poverty and 10% unemployment is a good thing.
It's the difference between a rationalization and actual evidence.
How good are you with comparative statics? Protectionism in all forms results in suboptimal allocation of resources; an import tariff or quota, etc. all result in dead-weight losses.
Why is optimal allocation of resources more important than citizen well-being?
Which comparative statistics contrast protectionism with armed revolt?
Your defence of protectionism is economic, and ignores reality.
If enough people are dissatisfied then your economic analysis is worthless.
Let's go back to the time when the welfare of our citizens were valued over the welfare of other people!
Sadly
Its not that easy to move around, if you are young and with no commitments is somewhat easier, but if you have a family, mortgage to pay, and been working for years in a factory, going to another country where they speak a different language and with little money in the bank, leaving your family ties and friends back is a very difficult proposition, the only way i could see people in that situation to move to another country would be if they were in a situation like Iraq
The OP also assumes that there are jobs in other EU countries he could get.
By and large, if you're in an industrialized country you find your jobs are taken by immigrants from a pastoral country, but be unable to find equivalent jobs in those other countries.
To take a specific example, one slashdot commentator noted the tech workers at a cancer testing facility in the UK were Spanish, Italian, German, French, Polish, and Greek.
How likely would it be for a qualified UK worker to find a job in Greece, Poland, or Spain?
This is one of the lies of globalism, that you can go to other countries to find jobs.
The economic "theory" of globalism is founded on a rationalisation.
Protectionism doesn't work. The world is competing now, and running away to avoid that just makes you into East Germany, and the Berlin wall is falling.
Protectionism doesn't work because of rationalization.
Globalism doesn't work because of evidence.
But I'll give you a chance to explain. What changes should we make to prevent the American people from being driven into poverty?
To put things in perspective, consider some numbers:
My town's population is about 10,000.
My town's labor force is about half that (5,000)
The "250 unemployed" represents more than 4.999% of the workforce.
If a headhunter can't find people in the town and has to import, my question is this: is globalism bad for my town?
Globalism is taught as the one-true-religion in economics circles right now, but I'm wondering if this is a dodge. While globalism has made a handful of companies richer, it drives the people into poverty.
Is it possible that we have too much globalism?
Sound stupid, yet? Btw, your begging the question with "it drives the people into poverty". The evidence is that it stagnates wages in developed country while boosting the wages substantially in developing and undeveloped countries. The real issue is that "a headhunter can't find people" is often itself a dodge. As others point out, companies want fully trained employees and will basically hire someone less skilled outside the area for a pittance as a "compromise". Often this occurs even when people in the area will work for a pittance.
There's just a heavy presumption: local people will leave if the job sucks (or they're lazy) but foreigners will basically commit no matter what (which makes all those "lazy illegals" stories such crap). It's a shitty approach to getting "loyal" employees. Just as the idea of waving more money is no sort of answer. But the real difficult task of getting good managers to actually, you know, spot and hire good employees is too much.
Hmmm...
Using the Mensa standard of 2%, those 250 unemployed people should have about 5 geniuses. It doesn't take much imagination to see that perhaps 50 of those 250 should be trainable in any real sense.
The evidence is that it stagnates wages in developed country while boosting the wages substantially in developing and undeveloped countries.
Let's tell the whole story here, shall we?
In the US, wages have stagnated and unemployment has gone up and inflation has averaged about 2%. That's a net loss for US citizens.
In the US we've about doubled our per capita GDP since we started globalization, and since wages have stagnated this means that a select few people became rich, all the while everyone else has had a net loss.
And finally, and most importantly, why should the US citizens sacrifice their well being and accept being driven into poverty for people in other countries?
I mean really - I see this argument all the time. "Our people are miserable, but just look st all the 3rd-world people we're helping!"
The evidence is that it stagnates wages in developed country while boosting the wages substantially in developing and undeveloped countries.
Really... that's what sounds stupid!
To put things in perspective, consider some numbers:
Spain's population is about 47 million
Spain's labor force is about half that (23 million)
The "5 million unemployed" represents more than 20% of the workforce.
If a headhunter can't find people in the country and has to import, my question is this: is globalism bad for Spain?
Globalism is taught as the one-true-religion in economics circles right now, but I'm wondering if this is a dodge. While globalism has made a handful of companies richer, it drives the people into poverty.
Is it possible that we have too much globalism?
You can find the parody video here.
The video uses the NRA logo and [what appears to be] the Smith and Wesson logo, and there's absolutely no clue that it's a parody. It seems completely legit, as if those two organizations made a serious promo video.
I'm a big fan of fair use in all it's varied forms, but I think this is a really good case of "impersonation", and is easily viewed as slanderous or libellous.
On a related note, before everyone posts the cherry-picked, not-the-whole-story statistics, does anyone have any good studies and/or statistics about gun ownership?
A good statistic would be one that relates chance of death by all causes to gun ownership, and compares to similar areas with similar social structure.
In other words, saying "owning guns increases your chance of an accidental shooting" might still be statistically good if it lowers your chance of dying from all causes (like not having money for medicine because you got robbed), or comparing America with the UK (because the UK has good health care while the US has almost none).
Anyone have any, you know, actually good statistics?
(We're the smart people in the room. People expect us to distil the good info from the bad.)
Recall that about 6 months after the Oklahoma City bombing, train tracks were sabotaged in this country, which derailed and crashed a train. The perpetrators left a note at the scene, but AFAICT were never caught.
And note that we're currently putting the fire out in a train crash somewhere in the Texas Panhandle, but the cause hasn't yet been determined. (Meaning: we should keep an eye on this, it might be a terrorist attack.)
Lots of US infrastructure is wide open and vulnerable to terrorist attack, yet we spend enormous effort on security theatre at the airports. Our governments implement a massive spying apparatus with the excuse that it combats terrorism, but they don't bother to infiltrate groups that are likely to do it.
And the people they manage to catch with surveillance are sad losers who couldn't manage to pull off the attack without FBI urging and guidance.
We do security theatre very well in this country.
Just 'sayin.
That's actually a fair point.
In the future, if you were to wrap that in a sentence or two with the link as one of the words, and drop the childish name calling, you'd probably get voted up.
If you don't respond to it, then people browsing at >=1 will never know it exists. That is the good thing about this mod system. Plus, I don't think porch monkey is a racist term. My grandmother used to call me and my sister porch monkeys all the time.
Yeah - In that definition I'm probably a porch monkey as well. Similar to "couch potato".
I think a lot of people are responding "don't respond" as a reflex action from political correctness. That's fine, and we shouldn't respond, but...
It also prevents us from talking about it. I've noticed these in a *lot* of posts, they always seem to get first post, and they're blatantly garbage.
It doesn't hurt to start a discussion once-in-a-while, and I'm not promoting his view by quoting and asking "WTF?".
We have a lot of smart people on this forum, many of which know a fair bit about psychology (armchair or otherwise).
I'd be very interested to hear an [serious] analysis of the person that posts these things.