Well Said...

"The secret of being a bore is to say everything."

~ Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet "Voltaire" (1694-1778)

Social Security Shortfall versus Taxing the Rich

A recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, DC included the following graph, which has become quite the splash:

[Click image to enlarge]

Source: Ruffing, R & Van de Water, Paul N (2010, August 13), What the 2010 Trustees’ Report Shows about Social Security, Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The Art and Science of Data Enjoined

Check out this fascinating talk by data journalist David McCandless. The art and science of data are increasingly being enjoined by technology.

Well Said...

"Interfaces keep things tidy, but don’t accelerate growth: Functions do."

~ Prof Alan Jay Perlis, Epigrams on Programming (1982)

Prof Alan Jay Perlis (1922-1990)

Well Said...

"The theory of struggle is the only theory that is pragmatic. It therefore, joins the virtues of a theory, definition, and finiteness, to the virtues of historical things: reality and infinity."

~ Dr Emanuel Lasker, Undisputed World Champion of Chess (1894-1921)

Dr Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941)

US Jobs Recovery to Take Years

According to the The Hamilton Project at Brookings (2010, August 20), the US economy will have to create 11.6 million new jobs in order to return to pre-economic crisis employment levels. Moreover, the US economy is still shedding jobs, which means that the nation's unemployment wounds will fester into the indefinite future. Even after employment levels begin to increase in the US, Brookings reports that a full jobs recovery could take upwards of 5-12 years with the longer scenario being more likely.

The US economy will need more robust growth to close this gap. If future job creation reaches about 208,000 jobs per month, the average monthly job creation for the best year for job creation in the 2000’s, it will take almost 140 months (about 11.5 years) to reach pre-recession employment levels. In a more optimistic scenario with 321,000 jobs created per month, the average monthly job creation for the best year in the 1990’s, it will take 59 months (almost 5 years).

The chart below shows the amount of time necessary to close the employment gap for different rates of job creation based on experience data from the decade beginning in 2000.

[Click image to enlarge]

The US is now enduring the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression. Currently, more than 15.1 million Americans are unemployed, which compares to 12.8 million Americans at the peak of the Great Depression in 1933.

Source: Greenstone, M & Looney, A (2010, August 20), The Long Road Back to Full Employment: How the Great Recession Compares to Previous US Recessions, Brookings.

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Tame versus Wicked Business Intelligence Problems

I recently commented on a post in a business intelligence forum, and I wanted to share that comment here for others to consider. The forum was discussing the challenges of implementing business intelligence and analytics:

One of the concerns I have with automating business intelligence is that many problems that I am confronted with from my clients are simply not "tame" (in other words, problems we understand, and in which ample data is available). Solving "tame" problems is much different than solving "wicked" problems (in which we have little understanding of the variables or conceptual framework, and in which little pertinent or valid data is available). Clearly, "tame" problems should be automated as much as possible. However, "wicked" problems are often the "writ large" of business intelligence requirements. Not all problems can or should be automated as the first step in solving the problem at hand. Also, automated business intelligence must be transparent enough that validation and reliability testing can be performed manually. Business intelligence is a vital growth area for enterprise in the 21st century, but we must still take care to do the job right in accordance with best research practices.

Well Said...

"Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them."

~ Dr Laurence J Peter, co-author of The Peter Principle

Dr Laurence J Peter (1919-1990)

Well Said...

"Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry."

~ Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837)

US Inflation-Adjusted Pay Increases 2000-2009

According to a report in USA Today (2010, August 17), “After adjusting for inflation, military compensation rose 84% from 2000 through 2009. Compensation grew 37% for federal civilian workers and 9% for private-sector employees...” USA Today based the report on data provided by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The chart below compares the inflation-adjusted pay increases for military personnel, Federal civilians, and private sector employees for the period 2000-2009.

[Click image to enlarge]

Source: Cauchon, D (2010, August 17), Military Towns Enjoy Big Booms, USA Today.

Well Said...

"A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry."

~ Bernard de Fontenelle, Preface sur l'Utilité des Mathématiques et de la Physique (1729)

Bernard de Fontenelle (1657-1757)

On Algorithmic Thinking

As the 20th century closed and the human race entered the third millenium, Dr David Berlinski (2000) wrote about two great ideas that have most shaped the technological progress of Western civilization:

The first is the calculus, the second the algorithm. The calculus and the rich body of mathematical analysis to which it gave rise made modern science possible; but it has been the algorithm that has made possible the modern world.... The great era of mathematical physics is now over. The three-hundred-year effort to represent the material world in mathematical terms has exhausted itself. The understanding that it was to provide is infinitely closer than it was when Isaac Newton wrote in the late seventeenth century, but it is still infinitely far away.... The algorithm has come to occupy a central place in our imagination. It is the second great scientific idea of the West. There is no third. (pp. xv-xvi)

The advent of the algorithm is fundamental to any understanding of how (and why) the post-modern economy produces and allocates value. Said another way, the algorithm is what differentiates the post-modern economy from the industrial period, which is all but over.

Dr David Berlinski (1942- )

Source: Berlinski, D (2000). The Advent of the Algorithm: The 300-Year Journey from an Idea to the Computer. San Diego, CA: Harcourt.

Well said...

"Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious."

~ Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207-1273)

Shrine of Rumi, Konya, Turkey

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

~ William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)

Human Suffering is Absolute

The expanding Main Street Depression in the US is now accelerating, and in absolute terms, the level of human suffering reached to date surpasses that of the Great Depression of the 1930's. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 15.1 million Americans were unemployed as of July 2010. In contrast, 12.8 million Americans were unemployed at the peak of the Great Depression in 1933.

[Click image to expand]

I personally refuse to marginalize human suffering using ratio analysis, and I would urge our fiscal and monetary policy-makers to do the same. When historians study wars, they count casualties in absolute numbers of souls rather than as percentages of some given population. Likewise, economists must learn to study depressions using the absolute numbers of people effected. The Main Street Depression now imploding America is a horrific event in our nation's history that needs to be understood in absolute terms and numbers that make it real rather than abstract. Said another way, economists must learn that human suffering is absolute.

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Main Street Depression Imploding America

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