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Terry Tao brief and informative on the 2010 Fields medalists (Le Monde est aussi très heureux et honoré pour Ngo et Villani, “deux facettes de l’école mathématique française“). Read also Tao’s intro to the winners of the Nevanlinna, Gauss and Chern prizes.
Month: August 2010
Up in the air
It is great, truly great. In fact IMDb and RottenTomatoes do not give it sufficient credit. I was told I would love it, by people who know me, but I didn’t just love it: I adored it.
→ Read more The Manski Critique
Chuck Manski’s recent NBER working paper, “Policy Analysis with Incredible Certitude” (non-gated version) ought to be a must-read for anyone doing or interested in policy analysis.
The study is written in an accessible way, such that it can be in principle followed without explicit academic training in Economics/Econometrics (there are plenty of further references for the technical details), and essentially sums up some of Manski’s conclusions from his well known research agenda on empirical methods in social sciences such as partial identification, and using decision theory with credible assumptions, for policy inference– see for instance his books on these topics (which any applied econometrician should have on his/her shelf; though I confess, my copies are currently still in Aarhus, awaiting my shipping/bringing them to Chicago), Identification Problems in the Social Sciences (1995), Partial Identification of Probability Distributions (2003), Social Choice with Partial Knowledge of Treatment Response (2005), and Identification for Prediction and Decision (2007).
→ Read more Eterna è la strada che va
I’ve been a fan of “Banco del Mutuo Soccorso” (wiki, official) for an indefinite number of years now. I hold for instance the view that their first three early ’70s albums — which I listen to frequently, on my iPod, e.g.
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