Mobile blogging

Am trying out the Andoid app. If anything it might get me to blog a little more than in the past year.

Pros: Convenience
Cons: No spellcheck! Which is a necessity with a smaller keyboard.

PS: Never understood why there isn't an option for a Dvorak keyboard for mobile devices. With a smaller than usual screen/keyboard it seems more efficient to just lay everything out alphabetically.

Condos in Penang vs Bangkok

I am surprised by the differences in the new condo market in Penang (Malaysia) versus Bangkok (Thailand). In Penang I am told, the condos are unfinished - no bathroom fixtures, toilets, or even floors! Presumably those who buy in Penang are more interested/vested in personalizing the place. In Bangkok, the market seems to be very different since not only are the condos completely finished, they are also completely furnished!

The obvious and perhaps wrong conclusion is that there is a larger foreign component in the Bangkok market who are buying for investment and income purposes by renting out to vacationers or the expat community whereas the Penang market caters more towards the locals who are more willing to deal with the added hassles of personalization.

But with the apparent never ending construction of new condos in Penang the local market might soon be tapped out. Will the Penang condo construction ever move toward the Bangkok model? With a smaller expat community, it is not likely, at least not all the way to fully furnished. But they may come with floors and toilets.

I wonder what the differences are in other places.

Singaporean buffoons in Thailand

Spotted at Suvarnabhumi airport - a bunch of 20 somethings high on themselves. Cut right in front of us at the immigration line. A woman in front of us waved her friends over and five or six of them came running over laughing and giggling. They were probably reveling in the fact that they managed to get into a shorter line. This just confirms my belief that Singaporeans are a bunch of assholes.

Or if you prefer a less harsh judgment - Singaporeans are the Asian version of the ugly American.

Most surprising fact about DC

Police Chief Cathy Lanier:


"After becoming pregnant at age 14, I dropped out of high school."

What the Oregon health study shows or doesn't show

Some thoughts about the Oregon Health Study - which is being dissed by MR here and here.

First off the comparison of this study to Reinhart and Rogoff is way off base. Reinhart and Rogoff were recalcitrant in sharing their data. Had they been more forthcoming in the first place it is possible that someone would have pointed out the Excel error much earlier. Instead they left all the researchers puzzled over their attempts to replicate their findings. This is NOTHING like Reinhart Rogoff.

What if they had found positive effects? Then I think the debate would have shifted to size effects and whether the results were meaningful in any sense. The critics are leaping to the "no result" finding as a way to justify their opposition. They would probably have leaped to a positive result by pointing out the lack of meaningful results regardless.

RCTs are pretty useless in this debate. Think of their outcomes - blood pressure, hypertension and cholesterol levels. How can having insurance by itself promote better outcomes? To actually change these outcomes, insurance holders have to actually change their behavior. There is a lot of behavioral economics evidence out there to argue against anyone actually doing anything about this regardless of health insurance status.

This is an example of RCTs taking away the analysts' ability to think straight. Retrospection would have predicted the null effect. The low income population makes them even more constrained in their ability to affect lifestyle changes that would positively affected the outcome measures. I have some doubt as to whether even a high income population would have been able to affect the lifestyle changes necessary to have a detectable effect.

This is an example of RCT measuring the wrong outcome. We only measure what we can see or even worse - what is easiest to measure. By some kind of fluke these are the outcomes that are hardest to change. I have to change my diet, my exercise regimen, my sleep habits, and so forth. If this is hard for a middle class person how much harder would it be for a low income group?

Effects of the recession on health? Is it possible that the stress of the recession and the job market is driving the results in both treatment and control?

This randomized study should have been titled something like "How much do people take their doctors' advice in changing their lifestyles? An analysis of low income population using Medicaid lotteries" or something similar. Would the findings have made any headlines then?

Alternatively, if the study participants were given medications to treat their hypertension, cholesterol, etc. then the study would have been about the efficacy of drugs on the low income population. Or perhaps prescription drug compliance among the low income population.

The comeback "You still buy health insurance don't you?" is a reasonable response contrary to what Tyler Cowen thinks. And this returns to the possibility that the benefits of ACA and expansion of Medicaid was oversold. Why do we buy health insurance - surely not to become healthier. We buy insurance to preserve the status quo, i.e. I don't want my health to get worse and if it gets worse then at least I can do something about it. I have health insurance and I can go to the doctor. And when we think about health we generally don't think in terms of cholesterol or blood pressure. We think of actual illnesses, pain, discomfort, etc. and again evidence from behavioral economics may be useful here.

What is going here I think is that possibly and perhaps in fact, very likely that supporters of ACA felt they had to justify the expansion of Medicaid by some evidence based reason and like their opponents who will grab at anything they can to fight against it they fell onto the belief that health insurance improves overall health - not specific illnesses, but overall health because it was easier to measure in an RCT.

Instead of making arguments for ACA on grounds of equity and perhaps even a right to adequate care and a right not to impose the costs of emergency room visits on others, etc. they have backed themselves into a corner with this null finding.

Even criminals need an education

From WaPo:

The words on his robbery note were spelled incorrectly, authorities said, and he was unable to articulate his demands. So the confused teller at the downtown Washington bank turned the man away, saying she couldn’t help.

The FBI says the man didn’t fare much better at a second bank three blocks away. There, authorities said, it took the teller a few moments to realize that the man standing at her window April 1 was not a customer.

...

Authorities say that most bank robbers use notes, not guns, but the wording must be clear to be understood. Court documents say the note handed over at the SunTrust simply read, “100s 50s 20s 10s.”

“The teller was confused,” the FBI agent wrote in the affidavit, noting that the teller understood the man to say “money” but nothing else. She handed the note back, and the FBI says he wrote, “all mona.” The teller sent him away. It was only after he left, authorities said, that a customer who was in earshot told her that the man was trying to rob the bank.

The teller at the Bank of America seemed to understand what was happening a bit quicker, although the FBI said she, too, was at first confused by the note reading “all mona.”

Coursera certificates

At some time Coursera used to call them certificates but now they have changed them to “statement of accomplishment”. But whatever they are calling them I find them to be incredibly distracting. Unfortunately I seem to be unable to rise above them (as others can) and work on my own pace (in "archive" mode) and say “Begone with you Coursera certificate”.

I’m feeling some angst about this because I have hit a slew of courses that seem intent on using quizzes and homeworks not to teach but to test. These are the courses that only give you one attempt at getting the answers and this one attempt is the only one that counts as credit toward the certificate. A lot of times it also tests facts and recall rather than interpretationThis is of course the typical traditional college approach. While this doesn’t prevent me from multiple attempts it feels as though my efforts are diluted.

Irrational? You bet. So I try to say to myself, "the statement of accomplishment is meaningless". (And if one reads the fine print that comes with the statement it is readily apparent how meaningless it is.) Part of me wants to protest against these courses. Is unenrolling a better form of protest or a remaining a non participant until the course goes into archive?