An Important 'First'

There are lots of rewarding things about this job - the short hours, the long vacations every summer, the wonderful pay,.....................(yeah, right!)

But right up there among the very best things is when a grad. student gets their first publication acceptance! It's a really special day when that happens - and not just for the student.

Yesterday, I was thrilled that one of my grad. students, Ryan Godwin, achieved this important milestone, with a paper accepted for publication in Communications in Statistics - Theory & Methods.

One of the impressive things on this occasion is that the paper in question is not even part of Ryan's Ph.D. research. Extra frosting on the cake!

I'm sure that all of us can remember that first acceptance letter - or email, as it usually is these days. Here's to many more to come, Ryan!

© 2011, David E. Giles

Private Market for Personal Identity Data

Apparently, the British Government is planning to create a private data market for personal identity data. There's an interesting item abut this in Computer Weekly. 

You don't need to have a subscription to see the draft discussion document, "Identity Assurance (IDA) - Technical Infrastructure Services". Currently, it's accessible here.

One interesting thing that I learned is that "shared secrets" are apparently aka "memorable information" (see p.7 of the draft report).

Great timing, given the recent security breaches at Sony, Sega, and the like!

© 2011, David E. Giles

RStudio

If you're a user of the R statistical software environment (and you should be - if you're not, it's the best free lunch in town), then the (fairly) recently released RStudio user interface will undoubtedly interest you. Here's a quote from the description on their website, to give you the flavour:

• "RStudio brings together everything you need to be productive with R in a single, customizable environment. Its intuitive interface and powerful coding tools help you get work done faster.
• RStudio is available for all major platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It can even run alongside R on a server, enabling multiple users to access the RStudio IDE using a web browser.
• Like R, RStudio is available under a free software license that guarantees the freedom to share and change the software, and to make sure it remains free software for all its users. "

RStudio has been getting quite of a bit of attention - positive attention - especially in places that matter, such as R-Bloggers.

Anyway, I'd encourage you to check it out. If you're not already an R user, this interface might persuade you to take the leap. Just make sure that you update your installation of R to (at least) 2.11.1 before trying to use RStudio.

© 2011, David E. Giles

Invisible Econometrics

Welcome to The Museum of Non-Visible Art (MONA). Yes, you read that correctly. So what is this all about? Here's an extract from their site:

"The Non-Visible Museum is an extravaganza of imagination, a museum that reminds us that we live in two worlds: the physical world of sight and the non-visible world of thought. Composed entirely of ideas, the Non-Visible Museum redefines the concept of what is real. Although the artworks themselves are not visible, the descriptions open our eyes to a parallel world built of images and words."

You can buy (the ownership rights to) an imaginary piece of art that doesn't physically exist. For example, pledge $20 or more to the cause and you will receive:

On the Correlation Between Crime and Punishment

In two previous posts (here and here) I've taken a look at the OECD's 50^th anniversary present to all of us - their "Better Life Index" (BLI). One of the eleven components of that Index is titled "Safety" - and according to the OECD this component

"...... largely reflects the risks of people being physically assaulted or falling victim to other types of crime. Crime may lead to loss of life and property, as well as physical pain, post-traumatic stress and anxiety. The biggest impact of crime on people’s well-being appears to be through the feeling of vulnerability that it causes."

The BLI site also notes that

"Across the OECD, one person in six reported falling victim to a conventional crime, with physical assault accounting for nearly a quarter of all conventional crime. In terms of perceived safety, one out of four people in the OECD report feeling unsafe on the street after dark."

In addition, the average homicide rate across the OECD countries is 2.2 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

An interesting question that arises is whether or not the relative safety level matches the relative incarceration rate.

Obesity, Driving, & Unbalanced Regressions

The Economist magazine's daily chart of 15 June 2011 was to do with a recent study on the relationship between obesity and amount of driving. This study is reported in a paper by Jacobson et al. (2011), which is "in press" at the journal, Transport Policy. This paper will bring tears to all econometric eyes! Not tears of joy, either.

There are so many things that one could say about it that it's really difficult to know where to start - but I'll try!

Before we start, though, a word about the charts in the 15 June chart blog in The Economist. There are two of them - look at the one on the left. Are they really plotting the correlation between the two variables in question? I don't think so.  Anyway, that's not my real gripe. My problem is with the paper that's being published by Transport Policy (TP). And judging by the nature of the comments on The Economist's blog, I'm not alone.

From its website, I see that TP has an impact factor of 1.024. This just goes to show how misleading impact factors can be - it's quite possible to get the impact factor above unity simply by publishing material that infuriates people so much that everyone has to cite it in order to take issue with it! Nice trick if you can get away with it!

Google Correlate

There's an interesting piece in the latest issue of The Royal Statistical Society's newsletter, RSSNews. It's about one of Google's new data analysis tools, called Google Correlate. If you haven't come across this, it's worth a look.

You can upload your own time-series data (from a .csv file, say) and then use Google's search history to find what other data your series correlates highly with.

Just keep in mind that "correlation" and "causation" are not the same thing! More on the latter in future posts.

© 2011, David E. Giles

Testing for OPEC-Causality

Last Friday, the OPEC meeting being held in Vienna broke up in what has been widely described as "disarray". A group of OPEC members, led by Iran and Venezuela, vetoed plans for an increase in the world production of oil. Think of the words "supply", "demand", and "elasticity". and you can guess what they were thinking.

Saudi Arabia then announced that it would step up to the plate and increase its production to meet world demand. It'll no doubt be assisted by some of its Gulf allies.

OPEC was founded in September 1960, with 5 member countries. Today, this cartel has 12 members - Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. Yes, make no mistake about it - OPEC is literally a cartel. It determines the supply and price of crude oil. Let's take a closer look.

Type I Errors in Economics Publishing

"Economists are peculiar social scientists not least because they attach enormous value to the publication of articles in the refereed journals and virtually no value to the publication of books. It is difficult for economists to have a coffee break without a conversation which quickly turns to questions like: "Why was my article refereed by so-and-so journal? Why did the anonymous referees say what they did? Where shall I send my next paper?" In short, the publication process merits a hideous fascination if only because it governs the pecuniary and non-pecuniary rewards of the economics profession."

Sound familiar?

This quote is taken from the blurb (product description) for the book, Publishing Economics: Analyses of the Academic Journal Market in Economics, edited about a decade ago by Joshua Gans. This book contains fifteen great articles that still highly relevant, and should be required reading for all young econometricians.

Joshua, and his former Stanford class-mate, George Shepherd, wrote a great article (Gans and Shepherd, 1994) providing us with tales of rejection from many eminent economists. Econometricians can take heart from the fact that the list includes James Tobin's unsuccessful attempts to get his work on the Tobit model published in Journal of the American Statistical Association (the statisticians' equivalent to the AER.)

The material gathered in preparing this paper was subsequently edited by George into the book, Rejected: Leading Economists Ponder the Publication Process. Again, an except from the product description does a better job than I could:

"Many people know that Robert Merton and Myron Scholes won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Economics for their now famous 1973 paper on options pricing. A lucky few are aware that this options paper was rejected by several leading journals before the Journal of Political Economy finally accepted it. This book compiles tales of rejection from more than 70 leading economists, including 20 Nobel winners."

The tales herein are a great read. Especially if you've recently received a rejection letter!


Note: The link to the following reference will be helpful only if your computer's IP address gives you access to the electronic versions of the publications in question. That's why a written Reference section is provided.

Reference

Gans, J. S. and G. B. Shepherd (1994). How are the mighty fallen: Rejected classic articles by leading economists. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 8, 165-179.

© 2011, David E. Giles

Feeling Rejected?

Earlier this week I had a request to become a "contact" for a particular person on LinkedIn. As this didn't appear to be someone I knew, I was about to press the "Delete" button when I had this strange feeling that the name was just slightly familiar, after all. And then I remembered.

As Editor, or Associate Editor, of an academic journal, you occasionally get to see the darnedest things - and I don't just mean the things that are submitted! I'm referring to the dark underbelly of academia. That place where your supervisor should have warned you never to go. I have a number of editorial responsibilities right now, including being joint Editor of The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development. This year alone I've been saved on two occasions from making a bad mistake (and possibly getting our publisher involved in a lawsuit), only as a result of eagle-eyed referees. Hopefully, there aren't even more cases that I'm unaware of!