Tag Archives: economics

Items of some interest…

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These are my recent Pinboard.in links:

  • [1112.6209] Building high-level features using large scale unsupervised learning

    We consider the problem of building detectors for high-level concepts using only unsupervised feature learning. For example, we would like to understand if it is possible to learn a face detector using only unlabeled images downloaded from the internet. To answer this question, we trained a simple feature learning algorithm on a large dataset of images (10 million images, each image is 200×200). The simulation is performed on a cluster of 1000 machines with fast network hardware for one week. Extensive experimental results reveal surprising evidence that such high-level concepts can indeed be learned using only unlabeled data and a simple learning algorithm.

    image-analysis image-segmentation unsupervised-learning learning-by-doing feature-extraction nudge-targets

  • [1105.0158] Detecting emergent processes in cellular automata with excess information

    Many natural processes occur over characteristic spatial and temporal scales. This paper presents tools for (i) flexibly and scalably coarse-graining cellular automata and (ii) identifying which coarse-grainings express an automaton's dynamics well, and which express its dynamics badly. We apply the tools to investigate a range of examples in Conway's Game of Life and Hopfield networks and demonstrate that they capture some basic intuitions about emergent processes. Finally, we formalize the notion that a process is emergent if it is better expressed at a coarser granularity.

    emergence complexology cellular-automata signal-processing nudge-targets

  • [1008.0901] Convergence to global consensus in opinion dynamics under a nonlinear voter model

    We propose a nonlinear voter model to study the emergence of global consensus in opinion dynamics. In our model, agent $i$ agrees with one of binary opinions with the probability that is a power function of the number of agents holding this opinion among agent $i$ and its nearest neighbors, where an adjustable parameter $alpha$ controls the effect of herd behavior on consensus. We find that there exists an optimal value of $alpha$ leading to the fastest consensus for lattices, random graphs, small-world networks and scale-free networks. Qualitative insights are obtained by examining the spatiotemporal evolution of the opinion clusters.

    agent-based social-dynamics network-theory complexology nudge-targets

  • [1110.4876] REBOUND: An open-source multi-purpose N-body code for collisional dynamics

    REBOUND is a new multi-purpose N-body code which is freely available under an open-source license. It was designed for collisional dynamics such as planetary rings but can also solve the classical N-body problem. It is highly modular and can be customized easily to work on a wide variety of different problems in astrophysics and beyond.

    simulation computational-science astrophysics numerical-methods simulator library open-source nudge-targets

  • [1112.5908] Query Answering under Matching Dependencies for Data Cleaning: Complexity and Algorithms

    Matching dependencies (MDs) have been recently introduced as declarative rules for entity resolution (ER), i.e. for identifying and resolving duplicates in relational instance $D$. A set of MDs can be used as the basis for a possibly non-deterministic mechanism that computes a duplicate-free instance from $D$. The possible results of this process are the clean, "minimally resolved instances" (MRIs). There might be several MRIs for $D$, and the "resolved answers" to a query are those that are shared by all the MRIs. We investigate the problem of computing resolved answers. We look at various sets of MDs, developing syntactic criteria for determining (in)tractability of the resolved answer problem, including a dichotomy result. For some tractable classes of MDs and conjunctive queries, we present a query rewriting methodology that can be used to retrieve the resolved answers. We also investigate connections with "consistent query answering", deriving further tractability results for MD-based ER.

    databases graph-theory algorithms nudge-targets

  • The Washroom Game by Jan Heufer :: SSRN

    This article analyses a game where players sequentially choose either to become insiders and pick one of finitely many locations or to remain outsiders. They will only become insiders if a minimum distance to the next player can be assured; their secondary objective is to maximize the minimal distance to other players. This is illustrated by considering the strategic behavior of men choosing from a set of urinals in a public lavatory. However, besides very similar situations (e.g. settling of residents in a newly developed area, the selection of food patches by foraging animals, choosing seats in waiting rooms or lines in a swimming pool), the game might also relevant to the problem of placing billboards attempting to catch the attention of passers-by or similar economic situations. In the non-cooperative equilibrium, all insiders behave as if they cooperated with each other and minimized the total number of insiders. It is shown that strategic behavior leads to an equilibrium with substantial under utilization of available locations. Increasing the number of locations tends to decrease utilization. The removal of some locations which leads to gaps can not only increase relative utilization but even absolute maximum capacity.

    game-theory agent-based complexology economics nudge-targets

  • [1109.0777] Efficient and Correct Stencil Computation via Pattern Matching and Static Typing

    Stencil computations, involving operations over the elements of an array, are a common programming pattern in scientific computing, games, and image processing. As a programming pattern, stencil computations are highly regular and amenable to optimisation and parallelisation. However, general-purpose languages obscure this regular pattern from the compiler, and even the programmer, preventing optimisation and obfuscating (in)correctness. This paper furthers our work on the Ypnos domain-specific language for stencil computations embedded in Haskell. Ypnos allows declarative, abstract specification of stencil computations, exposing the structure of a problem to the compiler and to the programmer via specialised syntax. In this paper we show the decidable safety guarantee that well-formed, well-typed Ypnos programs cannot index outside of array boundaries. Thus indexing in Ypnos is safe and run-time bounds checking can be eliminated. Program information is encoded as types, using the advanced type-system features of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler, with the safe-indexing invariant enforced at compile time via type checking.

    domain-specific-language algorithms grid-computing nudge-targets

  • What’s Challenging About Paul? : Lawyers, Guns & Money

    It’s wrong to think of Ron Paul’s racism and his libertarianism as two distinct parts of his political persona, when in fact they are deeply tied together. White supremacists understand what Glenn, apparently, does not; the absence of Federal authority makes it easier for private actors and local governments to repress the civil and political rights of minorities. Paul’s libertarianism emerged in a regional and cultural context that was deeply hostile to Federal efforts at integration. The newsletters give strong indication that none of this is lost on Ron Paul. A notional President Paul is just as likely to use the powers of the office to gut Federal enforcement of a wide range of civil liberties protections as he is to do any of the things that Glenn would like him to do.

    politics libertarianism racism conservatism populism

Items of some interest…

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These are my recent Pinboard.in links:

  • Hebrew Typography

    beautiful lettering

    typography hebrew graphic-design calligraphy lettering

  • [1110.5376] A Quantitative Test of Population Genetics Using Spatio-Genetic Patterns in Bacterial Colonies

    "It is widely accepted that population genetics theory is the cornerstone of evolutionary analyses. Empirical tests of the theory, however, are challenging because of the complex relationships between space, dispersal, and evolution. Critically, we lack quantitative validation of the spatial models of population genetics. Here we combine analytics, on and off-lattice simulations, and experiments with bacteria to perform quantitative tests of the theory. We study two bacterial species, the gut microbe Escherichia coli and the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and show that spatio-genetic patterns in colony biofilms of both species are accurately described by an extension of the one-dimensional stepping-stone model. We use one empirical measure, genetic diversity at the colony periphery, to parameterize our models and show that we can then accurately predict another key variable: the degree of short-range cell migration along an edge. Moreover, the model allows us to estimate other key parameters including effective population size (density) at the expansion frontier. While our experimental system is a simplification of natural microbial community, we argue it is a proof of principle that the spatial models of population genetics can quantitatively capture organismal evolution."

    bacterial-genetics evolution microbiology experiment cute

  • NDFD Database Contents

    "You can access NDFD elements via file transfer protocol (ftp), http, eXtensible Markup Language (XML), or web browser. Links to the data, supporting information and software are listed below:…"

    weather data raw-data-now government2.0 nudge-targets reference forecasts

  • The Performativity of Networks – Kieran Healy

    "The “performativity thesis” is the claim that parts of contemporary economics and finance, when carried out into the world by professionals and popularizers, reformat and reorganize the phenomena they purport to describe, in ways that bring the world into line with theory. Practical technologies, calculative devices and portable algorithms give actors tools to implement particular models of action. I argue that social network analysis is performative in the same sense as the cases studied in this literature. Social network analysis and finance theory are similar in key aspects of their development and effects. For the case of economics, evidence for weaker versions of the performativity thesis in quite good, and the strong formulation is circumstantially supported. Network theory easily meets the evidential threshold for the weaker versions; I offer empirical examples that support the strong (or “Barnesian”) formulation. Whether these parallels are a mark in favor of the thesis or a strike against it is an open question. I argue that the social network technologies and models now being “performed” build out systems of generalized reciprocity, connectivity, and commons-based production. This is in contrast both to an earlier network imagery that emphasized self-interest and entrepreneurial exploitation of structural opportunities, and to the model of action typically considered to be performed by economic technologies."

    network-theory network-culture economics cultural-dynamics theory-and-practice-sitting-in-a-tree

Items of some interest…

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These are my recent Pinboard.in links:

  • Odlyzko

    "Gullibility is the principal cause of bubbles. Investors and the general public get snared by a “beautiful illusion” and throw caution to the wind. Attempts to identify and control bubbles are complicated by the fact that the authorities who might naturally be expected to take action have often (especially in recent years) been among the most gullible, and were cheerleaders for the exuberant behavior. Hence what is needed is an objective measure of gullibility."

    bubble economic-crisis economics social-dynamics pragmatism-it-ain't

Items of some interest…

Posted on by

These are my recent Pinboard.in links:

  • Recounting the Dead – NYTimes.com

    "So what? Above a certain count, do the numbers even matter? Well, yes. The difference between the two estimates is large enough to change the way we look at the war. The new estimate suggests that more men died as a result of the Civil War than from all other American wars combined. Approximately 1 in 10 white men of military age in 1860 died from the conflict, a substantial increase from the 1 in 13 implied by the traditional estimate. The death toll is also one of our most important measures of the war’s social and economic costs. A higher death toll, for example, implies that more women were widowed and more children were orphaned as a result of the war than has long been suspected.

    In other words, the war touched more lives and communities more deeply than we thought, and thus shaped the course of the ensuing decades of American history in ways we have not yet fully grasped. True, the war was terrible in either case. But just how terrible, and just how extensive its consequences, can only be known when we have a better count of the Civil War dead."

    history Civil-War morbidity-and-mortality counting

  • Scientific American Blog Network

    'While Adam Smith may be known as the philosopher who first promoted the idea that “greed is good,” his earlier work suggests we are not condemned to exploit others for the benefit of a few. In his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments, written in 1759, Smith proposed that sympathy for the plight of those who suffer is an inherent part of human nature.

    “When we see one man oppressed or injured by another,” he wrote, “the sympathy which we feel with the distress of the sufferer seems to serve only to animate our fellow-feeling with his resentment against the offender.”

    With the current occupation of Wall Street and the international condemnation of an economic model that would take advantage of those most in need, we are witnessing Smith’s prediction in action. It is only when the reality of people’s suffering is hidden that greed is allowed to dictate policy. While our current system has chosen the greed of the few over the needs of the many, the intellectual founder of modern capitalism suggests it doesn’t need to be this way. “When we think of the anguish of the sufferers, we take part with them more earnestly against their oppressors.”'

    economics economic-crisis complexology cultural-dynamics

  • Guyot’s speciman sheet | The Collation

    "So who was responsible and when is it from? Since the sheet is neither signed nor dated, we can only make this assertion thanks to the sleuthing done by earlier scholars, most importantly by John Dreyfus for his collection of type specimen facsimiles, and the source of much of the information I give here.1 This sheet can be connected to its type caster thanks to the detailed records kept by the Dutch printer Christophe Plantin and the remarkable longevity of his press, now the home of the Plantin-Moretus Museum. Plantin’s 1575 inventory of fonts includes the double pica italic typeface shown on this sheet (it’s the largest size of the italic face, on the right-hand column), with a note on the facing page identifying it as “Ascendonica Cursive de Guiot.” François Guyot was a type caster in Antwerp who worked from the 1540s until his death in 1570, and who was the main caster for Plantin from 1555 onwards; he also seems to have worked briefly for John Day in London."

    nanohistory typography type-design early-modern

  • Thought You Should See This – Disrupting the Conference Business

    In other words, a standard Open Space:

    "Essentially, it’ll be Wurman and 100 of his pals (and as he so eloquently put it, “I know fucking everybody”) talking about a particular topic for a certain amount of time. The “intellectual jazz” will be filmed in black and white, and then later released as an interactive app. ”I’m terrified,” said a coy Wurman, looking absolutely nothing of the sort. ”I don’t know if I can pull it off.” And while a gathering of 100 bigwigs in some ways sounds like the worst kind of elitist horror show, I actually found myself rooting for him. I mean, the world needs contrarians, and Wurman sure is one of them."

    conference non-fake-Wurman TED meeting ideas

  • nthmost » Blog Archive » Why The Interstate Battery Warranty is Worthless

    "We Can’t Afford to Just Be Consumers Anymore

    In the classical model of economics, a self-interested consumer like Josh would readily accept Interstate’s offer, seeing no downside.

    But Josh is part of a new class of consumers who understand the idea of “voting with your dollar”, and it goes well beyond which brand of toilet paper you bring to the checkout line. There are several immediate downsides to the “resolution” Interstate brought to the table:

    Firestone would be rewarded for their ridiculous 2-hour-minimum policy to change the battery.

    Interstate would continue to be unable to enforce their warranty.

    The customer (Josh) would have no reason to believe he’d be able to get a new battery in the future without all of the nonsense implied by the resolution — namely, paying for the 2 hours of labor himself and then securing reimbursement from Interstate.
    Josh looked at the options and decided not to enable the vendors in their bullying of Interstate, and not to encourage Interstate to bend over for them. And he realized his time in chasing down his due was worth more than the value of the product in question."

    economics consumer-activism lawyers warranty object-lessons-in-contract-law

Items of some interest…

Posted on by

These are my recent Pinboard.in links:

  • David Graeber: On the Invention of Money – Notes on Sex, Adventure, Monomaniacal Sociopathy and the True Function of Economics « naked capitalism

    "At this point, it’s easier to understand why economists feel so defensive about challenges to the Myth of Barter, and why they keep telling the same old story even though most of them know it isn’t true. If what they are really describing is not how we ‘naturally’ behave but rather how we are taught to behave by the market—well who, nowadays, is doing most of the actual teaching? Primarily, economists. The question of barter cuts to the heart of not only what an economy is—most economists still insist that an economy is essentially a vast barter system, with money a mere tool (a position all the more peculiar now that the majority of economic transactions in the world have come to consist of playing around with money in one form or another) [10]—but also, the very status of economics: is it a science that describes of how humans actually behave, or prescriptive, a way of informing them how they should? (Remember, sciences generate hypothesis about the world that can be tested against the evidence and changed or abandoned if they don’t prove to predict what’s empirically there.)

    Or is economics instead a technique of operating within a world that economists themselves have largely created? Or is it, as it appears for so many of the Austrians, a kind of faith, a revealed Truth embodied in the words of great prophets (such as Von Mises) who must, by definition be correct, and whose theories must be defended whatever empirical reality throws at them—even to the extent of generating imaginary unknown periods of history where something like what was originally described ‘must have’ taken place?"

    economics rationality conservatism David-Graeber anthropology debt Austrian-school takedown pragmatism-it-ain't

  • Welcome to The Bessenberg Bindery NEW website | The Bessenberg Bindery – Custom Case Bound Books from Thomson-Shore

    "The Bessenberg Bindery has served the university, medical, legal, publishing, advertising and book collecting communities in southern Michigan since 1978.

    We are a hand book bindery that offers a full range of sewn, hardcover book binding, custom boxes, book repair, prototype objects, custom photo album and scrap books, portfolios, and desk accessories. We quote on jobs as small as one book, or as large as 500.

    We are a craft shop and all our work is customized to meet our clients' varied requirements. In both original binding and book repairs we stress attractiveness, proper fit and durability."

    local bookbinding making project vendor