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mathieutd

837 karma · joined June 11, 2014

Economist at Cornell with a side interest in tech

my public key: https://keybase.io/mathieu; my proof: https://keybase.io/mathieu/sigs/odMpbjnd9n-NAePcKdQxnUBqiWaA3Otr8lpboTcdr3g

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mathieutd··on Cancer expert given experimental treatments for incurable brain tumour
I don't understand this logic at all. How can more information be bad? If you see a mass that looks very likely to not be cancer, for which the cost of further investigation is higher than the likely benefit, then the rational patient will agree not to investigate further. I don't see how more information can be bad unless you assume that the patient is an idiot or irrational.
mathieutd··on The Dome: A simple violation of determinism in Newtonian mechanics (2005)
There is an external force here: gravity.
mathieutd··on Zipf's Law (2008)
One cool way to generate Zipf's law is through random growth. See an example here for the distribution of cities:

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/114/3/739/1848099

The idea is that if the growth rate of a city is drawn from the same distribution, regardless of the actual city size, we get Zipf's law. To me this is a reasonable explanation why we see Zipf's law in many places in nature.

mathieutd··on Is growth linear, not exponential?
Not quite! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weierstrass_function
mathieutd··on Why is it hard to buy things that work well?
Do you a reference for these statements? I'd be curious to read more about the topic.
mathieutd··on Share of Population with Cancer by Country
"This share has been age-standardized assuming a constant age structure to compare prevalence between countries and through time."

Not sure why the rate is so much higher in the US and Canada. Better detection might be part of the explanation.

mathieutd··on Ask HN: Films that made you see the world differently?
Children of Men is amazing.
mathieutd··on S&P 500 drops 9%, extending losses after 15-minute trading halt
Mortgage rates have moved surprisingly little. They usually trade at around a 2% premium over the 10-year government bonds for a 30-year fixed. Right now that would mean about 2.8% but my local bank quotes 3.5%. My guess is that spread is going to shrink over time but who knows. I'm waiting...
mathieutd··on Running Tips
The best running tip I've ever had is "run tall". Most people tend to slouch forward at the hip which prevents some muscle groups from engaging. Made a world of difference for me.
mathieutd··on What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?
I disagree with this. You should pay your higher interest rate debt first.
mathieutd··on What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?
Do you have any brand to recommend?
mathieutd··on Cloudflare S-1
Call your broker. They might have shares available.
mathieutd··on How to earn your macroeconomics and finance white belt as a software developer
Economics professor here. I disagree. We formulate theories that we test using data. Same as physics except that economics is much more messy. Another difficulty is that in many cases (macroeconomics for instance) we cannot do experiments to test theories. This makes it much harder to learn from the data.
mathieutd··on Crunching 200 years of stock, bond, currency and commodity data
What index did you invest in?
mathieutd··on Show HN: Jobs Done – A ritual app for ending the work day inspired by Deep Work
If you feel like sharing your notebooks I'd love to see them.
mathieutd··on Canadian cable companies interrogate, search Montréal software developer
It has nothing to do with Quebec. These warrants can be issued anywhere in Canada and in many countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Piller_order#Canada).
mathieutd··on The first Bitcoin Cash block has been mined
Interesting to see that the backlog in unprocessed transactions on the original bitcoin chain is exploding at the same time: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#24h
mathieutd··on The first Bitcoin Cash block has been mined
That's surprisingly fast. Much more hashing power than anticipated is backing the fork.
mathieutd··on The first Bitcoin Cash block has been mined
Lack of transactions. The mempool is almost empty: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/uahf/#2h
mathieutd··on Badly educated men have not adapted well to trade, technology or feminism (2015)
Good question. This is very puzzling.
mathieutd··on Why Were Economists as a Group as Useless Over 2010-2014 as Over 1929-1935?
Why? They formulate theories and test them against data to understand how the world works. Is that not the definition of science?
mathieutd··on Julia 0.5 release
Are there large speed improvements from the previous version?
mathieutd··on Someone claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto just wrote to the Bitcoin developer list
The header says that it's from vistomail.com. It doesn't have to be satoshi@vistomail.com.
mathieutd··on Show HN: Places iOS App – Find beautiful destinations around the world
Very nice app! Have you thought of allowing users to comment on destinations?
mathieutd··on Malaysia B772 has crashed near Donetsk
Really? Would you mind sharing your source on this?
mathieutd··on How to Test Your Netflix Streaming Speed
This is amazing. I am with Verizon Fios and the speed peaked at 560kps. If I use a vpn, it reaches 3000kps very quickly.