Sign up for Oroeco!

http://www.oroeco.com/

I'm still not sure what we're useful for, though, actually.  Hopefully we will figure that out soon through looking at user data.

Big Data and Data Science

Big data and data science have been generating a lot of excitement lately.  Excitement is great and all, but more importantly, more substantive articles about its limitations and uses have also been cropping up.  Here are some moderately substantive ones.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/opinion/eight-no-nine-problems-with-big-data.html?_r=0

Highlights the general problems with 'big data' but actually it's more about data science as it's practiced in tech firms these days.  The problems aren't explained that comprehensively.  What's nice is that there is an example for each one, though.  

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/your-big-data-is-worthless-if-you-dont-bring-it-into-the-real-world/

This is a bit more substantive.  It makes the argument that big data needs to go from 'thin data' to 'thick data,' where 'thin data' are just traces of activities that are getting collected inadvertently.  'Thick data' is more information about the context of actions.  'Thick data' is probably more useful for making decisions but takes more effort to college, probably requiring one to get out and talk to people.  Then again, it's written by someone who sounds like an advocate of 'the humanities,' who perhaps is trying to justify all the 'qualitative analysis' skills she learned instead of big data analysis.  In fact, its main argument is interesting but largely unsubstantiated.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/523646/the-power-to-decide/

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/523651/startups-embrace-a-way-to-fail-fast/

Good old MIT Technology Review.  The March/April issue had a Business Report on Data and Decision-Making.  It had several articles about trends in how businesses are using A/B testing.

aside : Yes, committing to blogging about an article (that takes more than 20 seconds to understand) is the only way I will ever actually read it much less remember what it said.

Corporate Social Responsibility

I'm taking a class this semester called Governance of Global Production with professor Dara O'Rourke.  He is a cofounder of Good Guide.  http://www.goodguide.com/about

It just occurred to me that he kinda looks like nerdier version of the lead singer of Tool, James Maynard Keenan.

They could be brothers!  or maybe just cousins?

Anyway, I was going to riff on the readings I did this week about corporate social responsibility.

In the past decade or so, the idea that a business should be more concerned with creating "shared value" has been gaining momentum.  This means that businesses have a responsibility to stakeholders beyond their shareholders such as their employees, their local community, and the global environment.  

So far, the prevailing attitude among most business leaders and investors is still that the most important thing to do is to maximize shareholder value.  I think it's safe to say that for the most part, corporations are only interested in sustainability as a way to increase the stock price through improving reputation and thus increasing the value of the brand.  

Even so, within a corporation there are likely to be champions of corporate social responsibility for its own sake.  And there are notable leaders in the corporate world who seem to be truly committed to CSR and sustainability in particular.  O'Rourke specifically singles out Unilever as one of them.  http://www.sustainable-living.unilever.com/

Those committed to CSR wouldn't say (admit) that CSR may sometimes reduce profits.  Instead, they would point out two concepts that change the perspective.  The first is that every corporation exists as part of an economy, where it depends on the well-being of the citizens.  So it may be true that their CSR initiatives actually benefit all companies in their industry not just themselves.  The second concept is that the corporation is planning on sticking around for many years to come.  In terms of game theory, it's a repeated game which can make it beneficial in the very long run to internalize more costs and take others' interests into account.  This is only slightly different from increasing brand value in that it is a more future-oriented perspective.  The brand value motivation would only justify CSR initiatives that would help the corporation get recognition in the near term.

I'm 2048 hero!!

I managed to avoid playing it most of the week, but I still had time to hone my strategy even more!!  I actually got kind of close to 8192...

Anyway...I'm not allowed to play again until the rough draft for my paper is done next week.

Carbon Metrics for Investors

Interest in measuring the GHG footprint and the GHG intensity of investment portfolios is growing!  On the one hand, it's not saying much since so few investors cared in the first place.  Still, it's enough to sustain a growing industry for generating these carbon metrics such as Trucost (and CAMRADATA?).  In fact, Bloomberg terminals (computers for traders) now have a Carbon Risk Valuation Tool.  For the investors that don't care, activist organizations such as 350.org have started calling for them to divest from fossil fuels.  There are also (maybe?) individuals who want to better understand the carbon impacts of their own savings, investments, and retirement plans.

There are several different ways to calculate the footprint for investments, often referred to as financed emissions.  There are then several different ways to calculate the carbon intensities of investments, where the carbon intensity is the carbon footprint normalized by something such as revenue.  This report by the 2 Degrees Investing Initiative presents a good overview of these different metrics.

Really, the metric one uses depends on what it is being used for, what decision it is informing.  These decisions depend on the investor (activist's) theory of change and ethics.  For example, an investor making decisions on how to allocate funds might be purely motivated to minimize exposure to carbon risks.  In other words, it is an investment strategy based on the theory of change that regulations and other future events will make carbon intensive companies less profitable.  The investor behavior is not based on the ethic that it is immoral to invest in carbon intensive companies.  It makes economic and professional sense that this investor should use a metric that will highlight the exposure to carbon risk.

An individual whose money is managed by said investor might think that it is immoral to invest in carbon intensive companies just as they might think it's immoral to invest in tobacco companies.  Then, regardless of what investment strategy was actually pursued, they might care about how much emissions his or investments are "responsible for."

I am working on a report that claims that the carbon metric used by investors to allocate investments doesn't have to be and in fact probably shouldn't be the same one used to evaluate the ethical (social?) responsibilities of the investments.

It Puts the Statistics in the Data Science

Data science is a trendy buzzword.

That doesn't mean I am not interested in it, though.

I'm reviewing my statistics by walking through this tutorial, which will soon be a book 'Statistics Done Wrong.'

I am finding it really helpful.  It highlights several common pitfalls of interpreting statistics.  The language is approachable and clear.

Yaaay!!!

ec-discuss 2048

Someone made an ec-discuss version of 2048!!  It's pretty awesome, although admittedly just a bunch of inside jokes.  I won!

Background information on ec-discuss.  It's actually a very large MIT undergraduate mailing list of the undergraduate dorm East Campus.  At MIT, mailing list permissions can be set so that anyone can join the mailing list so as a result there are many non-residents and alumni still on the list.

Someone might ask about getting help on homework or borrowing hair dye.  These innocuous requests might then snowball into a giant discussion or flame war.  The long email chains are semi-regular occurrences that usually pick up before finals' week or other stressful times when people really want to procrastinate.

In the past few years they have tended to be more inane and jocular in nature.  Some popular topics (regardless of the starting topic) are wanting to unsubscribe, Vlad the Impaler, and stud-finder finders.

2048

got obsessed with this game

http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/

trying to get 4096

i've gotten pretty close...

there are other things going on in my life, but this one is the easiest to blog about.  haha

Freshman Year

I think I wrote this at the end of freshmen year at MIT in 2004.  It's kind of a love letter to East Campus, the dorm I used to live in.

'sscrazy Even though so many things have changed already, it doesn't feel different.  Instead, it feels natural.  Of course, this whole spiel is only about my own experience.  It is specific to my past, my present, and most importantly, it is specific to myself.  This is just a story.
 During the my last few days in St. Louis, I wrote:
 

I feel like I'm entering a door that I can't see the other side of.  What do I not know.  I don't know who I'm going to be hanging out w/ and how I'm going to feel about people.  I don't know what my daily/weekly/monthly schedule is going to be like.  I don't know what it's going to look like when I look out the window, or if I'll even have a window.  I don't know how classes will be.  I don't know my competition.  I don't know the system.  Most importantly, I don't know what is going to be most important to me.  I suppose it's kind of the same every year.  I get a new routine.  I get a new strategy for how I'm going to approach my life; how I do work, how/when I play.  So, here's to the rest of my life. 

As time passed, I got to know some things... When I first came to Boston, the first thing was to find a place to live - a home, not just a physical location but also a community.  Over the summer, I chose a dorm notorious for its eccentric inhabitants.  I thought I might relate to the people there.  Now, all I can say is, man, I was so right.  I love the environment that I'm in.  The people on my hall encourage exploration and activity.  They value intellectual integrity and creativity.  There are tools for building things like lofts, tables, and other addendums to your room if you want.  Art is everywhere as people customize their rooms, doors, and hallways.  The kitchen is another great resource.  Along with these material commodities, the most valuable resource is the knowledge and support of the people you live around.  Thus, college is a sanctuary for learning things in a safe and effective way whether it's learning how to bake a pie or how to play hockey with burning tennis balls.  Yeah, I live with a special bunch.  When I tell people from the other side of campus where I live, they nod understandingly with a hint of pity and fear.
      
Not that the individuals are really all that different from the rest of the MIT community.  In general, we are all bonded by what is best described as "nerd pride."  It's the idea of learning for the sake of being proud of what you know, whether it's mechanical engineering, math, ocean engineering, or electrical engineering.  It's not about the money or making a living; it's not about having power; it's just about being smart and knowing how to do something and being useful.  This point of view does, however, look down on business and certain other less course intensive majors.  This is one of many ways I'm very lucky to be the way I am.  Because I am a nerd, and I came here to do engineering, and I possess that same "nerd pride," I don't have any problems fitting in or being challenged for not being "core" enough.
 

As I sink into the depths of Tetazoo (hall), East Campus (dorm), MIT, Boston, Massachusetts, My Life, I have become acquainted with not only the people around me, but also the sense of overall community, my values, and the school system.  I am beginning to develop a routine.  It took some time to tweak my daily schedule: work, sleep, class, work, eat, class, eat, work, work, play, sleep.  We even have our own vocabulary for our daily meanderings.  Work is otherwise known as “tooling,” while playing is “punting.”  Between tooling and punting, we do what we can in order to keep doing.

In college, you find out about a lot of inner conflicts.  Many people lose their motivation for doing work.  The new environment disrupts their pretty ideas of how life should be, and they scramble to reestablish their reason to live.  I haven't had too many problems with this, since for whatever reason, these questions are not new to me.  Maybe my world has been shaken before, or maybe I was just more sensitive to the smaller jolts growing up.  I have not even really had to struggle much with loneliness or homesickness.  Even insecurities about academic validation, the assurance that I am smart enough to be here, have mostly evaded me.  For me, the main struggle has been to keep myself sane and functional.  In college, you have to take care of yourself, and people here are often much more demanding of themselves than they should be.  In the doctrine of living life to its fullest, it's easy to lose perspective about your own limitations of how much social interaction you can take.  It can be extremely hard to find alone time or just a place where you can feel completely relaxed.  Having fun is fun, but you're still not relaxed.  It also seems like a lot of people here compulsively do work out of a need to feel productive, myself included.  We don't even know what we’re working for.  We’re all trying to figure out what we want.  

Maybe if we live enough, we will find out. In short:college is great

Interstate Cooperation for Clean Energy

I wrote up a policy  memo for a class last week.  It made me realize how much of a problem coal still is, largely because it is not easy for coal-miners to transition to other jobs.  

California, Arizona, New Jersey are leading the nation in manufacturing and installing solar power.  Arizona alone has over 316 solar companies, supplying a variety of parts for solar installations[i]. 

The number of solar installations has been growing across the nation, increasing 15% in Q2 of 2013[ii].  States with solar manufacturing are well-positioned to benefit as more states install more solar power.  Those states will have more well-paying jobs and tax revenues as the solar industry grows. 

On the other hand, there are many opponents of solar power.  About 40% of the electricity generated in the United States is from coal.  Coal mining in the US is concentrated in some states, particularly Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming.  These and other states such as Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, and Illinois have strong pro-coal lobbies and constituents[iii].

Coal miners and their communities are justifiably concerned about losing their jobs and economic security.  Right now, they support ways to keep coal cheap, which works directly against the interests of the solar industry and Arizona generally.

In order to undercut the support for cheap coal, I recommend that states without coal industries share some of the benefits of their growing solar industries with coal miners.  Continued access to healthcare and education are particularly valuable.  Solar producing states should offer scholarships to family members of coal miners to their state universities.  They could also contribute to a fund to pay for healthcare for families of coal-miners.

Those directly affected by the decline of the coal-producing industry are relatively few, about 20,000 coal-miners in Kentucky, for example[iv].  Providing a safety net for those people would go a long way towards reducing the urgency of keeping coal production going.  This would give coal producing states less opposed to clean tech.  They would also have more resources to develop jobs in other industries rather than coal mining.

Solar producing states should partner with coal producing states to find mutually beneficial solutions to their economic, environmental, and health problems.        

---

[i] ‘Arizona Solar’, Solar Energy Industries Association [accessed 5 December 2013].

[ii] ‘Solar Industry Data’ [accessed 5 December 2013].

[iii] Kris Maher and Tom McGinty, ‘Coal’s Decline Hits Hardest in the Mines of Kentucky’ [accessed 5 December 2013].

[iv] ‘Mining Employment and Production Trends’, The Impact of Coal on the Kentucky State Budget .