Results for “model this” 2739 found
Model this art market illiquidity what would Hayek say?
She [an artist] tries to do a show a year, one every three years at each of the three galleries. The idea, she explained, is for your prices not to have a sudden rise, precisely because they can crash, but rather for your dealers to increase them slowly as your work receives exposure through venues like group shows, exhibitions, and biennials. Auctions can be dangerous for just that reason. At the time we spoke, Wilcox’s works on paper (19″ x 24″) were selling for around $6,000; her largest paintings (12′ x 6′), for $45,000. Dealers take 50 percent. Prices are based on size, not judgments of quality, because you don’t want to influence buyers’ opinions. Smaller works are cheaper, but more expensive per square inch (kind of like real estate). Large paintings are easier to sell in Los Angeles than London or New York, because the houses are bigger.
That is an excerpt from William Deresiewicz, The Death of the Artist: How Creators are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech, an excellent book (ignore the subtitle).
Model this NBA coaches and Adam Smith
Of all the head coaches in the NBA in either 2019-20 or 2020-21, there was a combined one All-Star appearance as a player, by Doc Rivers. At the league’s high point of former players as coaches, in 2001-02, there were 13 different former All-Stars walking the sidelines who had combined for 60 appearances.
Here is more from Kevin Pelton at ESPN. Is it that data analytics matter so much more? A general increase in the division of labor? Or are today’s stars so prominent, perhaps because of social media, that a team does not need recognizable coaches to bring in the fans?
The Pelton posts considers further issues in mechanism design, such as whether a single free throw should be used to determine both points late in NBA games. I would think that leads to an overinvestment in fouling from teams that are behind?
Medical ethics? (model this)
Steven Joffe, MD, MPH, a medical ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, said he doesn’t believe clinicians “should be lowering our standards of evidence because we’re in a pandemic.”
Link here. That sentence is a good litmus test for whether you think clearly about trade-offs, statistical and speed trade-offs included, procedures vs. final ends of value (e.g., human lives), and how obsessed you are with mood affiliation (can you see through his question-begging invocation of “lowering our standards”?). It is stunning to me that a top researcher at an Ivy League school literally cannot think properly about his subject area at all, and furthermore has no compunction admitting this publicly. As Alex wrote just earlier today: “Waiting for more data isn’t “science,” it’s sometimes an excuse for an unscientific status-quo bias.”
To be clear, we should run more and better RCT trials of Ivermectin, the topic at hand for Joffe (and in fact Fast Grants is helping to fund exactly that). But of course the “let’s go ahead and actually do this” decision should be different in a pandemic, just as the “just how much of a hurry are we in here anyway?” calculus should differ as well. I do not know enough to judge whether Ivermectin should be in hospital treatment protocols, as it is in many countries, but I do not condemn this simply on the grounds of it representing a “lower standard.” It might instead reflect a “higher standard” of concern for human lives, and you will note the drug is not considered harmful as it is being administered.
If you apply the standards of Joffe’s earlier work, we should not be proceeding with these RCTs, including presumably vaccine RCTs, until we have assured that all of the participants truly understand the difference between “research” and “treatment” as part of the informed consent protocols. No “therapeutic misconception” should be allowed. Really?
If the pandemic has changed my mind about anything, it is the nature of expertise.
Model this mental illness movie
And:
Box office results fit the story as well. Here is the full paper by Shaan Kamal, et.al. Via Michelle Dawson.
Model this East German crime
Following the collapse of the communist regime in 1989, the number of births halved in East Germany. These cohorts became markedly more likely to be arrested as they grew up in reunified Germany. This is observed for both genders and all offence types.
Here is the full article by Arnauld Chevalier and Olivier Marie, the authors seem to think the reunification event selects for risky parents, are there other possible explanations?
Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Streets Vs Avenues Where to go to dinner in Manhattan model this
Abstract
Yelp data and statistical sampling was used to determine that the average restaurant is better on Manhattan streets than avenues, with an average rating of 3.62 on streets vs 3.49 on avenues. The difference was statistically significant. In addition, you are almost 50% more likely to find an outstanding restaurant while on a street compared to when you are on an avenue. 18% of restaurants on the streets had a score of 4.5 or higher, compared to 13% of restaurants on avenues.
or
From the apparently awesome Alex Bell.
Model this dopamine fast
“We’re addicted to dopamine,” said James Sinka, who of the three fellows is the most exuberant about their new practice. “And because we’re getting so much of it all the time, we end up just wanting more and more, so activities that used to be pleasurable now aren’t. Frequent stimulation of dopamine gets the brain’s baseline higher.”
There is a growing dopamine-avoidance community in town and the concept has quickly captivated the media.
Dr. Cameron Sepah is a start-up investor, professor at UCSF Medical School and dopamine faster. He uses the fasting as a technique in clinical practice with his clients, especially, he said, tech workers and venture capitalists.
The name — dopamine fasting — is a bit of a misnomer. It’s more of a stimulation fast. But the name works well enough, Dr. Sepah said.
The purpose is so that subsequent pleasures are all the more potent and meaningful.
“Any kind of fasting exists on a spectrum,” Mr. Sinka said as he slowly moved through sun salutations, careful not to get his heart racing too much, already worried he was talking too much that morning.
Here is more from Nellie Bowles at the NYT.
Model this (spoiled rich kids edition)
- “About 80 percent of respondents reported drinking alcohol at least two or three times a month, and 39 percent reported drinking at least twice a week.” (60% reported drinking once a week or more)
- “Students who came from lower-income households were much less likely to drink than their wealthier peers; 35 percent of respondents whose parents make less than $40,000 in combined income drank at least once a week while that figure was 69 percent for students whose parents make at least a combined $250,000.”
Via Tyler R.
Chernobyl model this
Now, in a strange turn more than three decades after the meltdown, the exclusion area around Chernobyl is gaining a following as a tourism destination, apparently propelled by the popularity of a TV mini-series about the blast that was broadcast in the United States and Britain last month.
The mini-series, HBO’s “Chernobyl,” fictionalizes the events in the aftermath of the explosion and fire at the plant’s Unit 4 nuclear reactor. It has been one of the highest-rated shows on the IMDB charts.
“The number of visitors increases every day, every week, by 30, 40, now almost 50 percent,” said Victor Korol, the head of SoloEast, a company that gives tours of the site. “People watch TV, and they want to go there and see the place, how it looks.”
Here is the full NYT story by Iliana Magra. Not long ago I predicted, half tongue in cheek, that the Chernobyl show could end up making nuclear power more rather than less popular…
Sentences to ponder model this
The proportion of students studying fully online who are enrolled within 50 miles of their homes has risen from under half to fully two-thirds, a new study finds.
Here is the longer piece.
Model this saliva exchange
One of the most blatant violations of the rules against touching saliva among other taboos is described by Dubois…in his [1906] account of one of the “disgusting religious orgies” he so meticulously depicts. In these orgies, not only do men and women eat meat and drink alcoholic beverages, but they transgress the normal saliva prohibition. I cannot possibly improve upon Dubois’ vivid word picture: “In this orgy called sakti-puja, the pujari, or sacrificer who is generally a Brahman, first of all tastes the various kinds of meats and liquors himself, then gives the others permission to devour the rest. Men and women thereupon begin to eat greedily, the same piece of meat passing from mouth to mouth, each person taking a bite until it is finished. Then they start afresh on another joint, which they gnaw in the same manner, tearing the meat out of each other’s mouths. When all the meat has been consumed, intoxicating liquors are passed around, every one drinking without repugnance out of the same cup.
That is from the quite interesting Two Tales of Crow and Sparrow: A Freudian Folkloristic Essay on Caste and Untouchability, by Alan Dundes.
Model this is songwriting becoming more complex?
In the 1960s, an average hit song on the Billboard Top 10 had an average of 1.87 writers and 1.68 publishers each year. Songwriting duos were common, and creativity a simpler endeavor…
During the LP era (60s-80s), the number of songwriters and publishers on hit songs didn’t rise as dramatically. Based on the Songdex analysis, in the 70s, hit songs on the Billboard Top 10 had an average of 1.95 writers and 2.04 publishers each. During the 80s, the number of average publishers in top 10 songs slightly rose to 2.06. The number of writers remained the same.
In the 90s, the number spiked to an average of 3.13 writers and 3.49 publishers per top 10 song. Incidentally, the change coincides with the rise of digital music formats, such as the MP3. Napster also launched in 1999. All of which ushered in an era of massive data overload (and that’s before streaming took hold).
Consumers quickly adopted digital music formats, resulting in a “market need for registration, licensing and reporting systems,” says Music Reports. In the 2000s, Billboard Top 10 hits had an average of 3.50 writers and 4.96 publishers each year.
This past decade, streaming has emerged as a major source of revenue for record labels. Using its Songdex catalog registry, Music Reports noted that Billboard Top 10 hits saw an average of 4.07 writers and six publishers.
Here is the full story, I am glad Beethoven never did much co-authoring, with apologies to Diabelli.
Indonesian cyanide coffee model this demand shifters
The case set off morbid curiosity and made national headlines after Ms. Wongso was arrested in late January, three weeks after she and Ms. Salihin, both graphic designers, met with another friend at Olivier, the cafe, inside Indonesia’s largest upscale shopping mall.
Intrigued residents have flocked to the restaurant to sit in the booth where Ms. Salihin was poisoned, and to order the iced Vietnamese coffee that was the last thing she drank. The restaurant regularly runs out of the brew.
Here is the full NYT story. Can you use this as a classroom example of how the demand curve shifts out? And here is another way to firm up demand (NYT): “They have connections to more money than any of the galleries anyway…” — get the picture? The article is interesting throughout.
Model this, basketball defense
The veteran forward [Jared Dudley] explained concessions are sometimes necessary and the Suns purposely awarded opponents easy buckets occasionally to speed games up, which he emphasized the Wizards are not considering.
Here is more from Jorge Castillo, who is writing about the desire of the Wizards to speed up their offense, and take more three point shots, and all that entails.
Is the way forward here to model the Suns, the Wizards, Dudley, or all of the above?
Paid by pages read? (model this)
Soon, the maker of the Kindle is going to flip the formula used for reimbursing some of the authors who depend on it for sales. Instead of paying these authors by the book, Amazon will soon start paying authors based on how many pages are read—not how many pages are downloaded, but how many pages are displayed on the screen long enough to be parsed. So much for the old publishing-industry cliche that it doesn’t matter how many people read your book, only how many buy it.
That is from Peter Wayner, via Craig Richardson.