Rabbit's blog http://blog.luispedro.org Um texto pode esconder outro. Leia duas vezes antes de avançar Wed, 19 May 2010 22:15:27 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 en hourly 1 Beira Project http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/beira-project http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/beira-project#comments Wed, 19 May 2010 22:13:22 +0000 luispedro http://blog.luispedro.org/?p=1393 The Beira Project will provide HIV-related non-profits in Mozambique with tools, physical and technical, to do their job better, to reach more people better.

Rita and Luis, two graduate students in Pittsburgh (in theatre and computational biology), will be working with two local Mozambican organisations in Beira (Mozambique’s 2nd largest city) supporting them in their work.

It’s online at http://beiraproject.org/

To help out, come to our fundraiser party (in Pittsburgh, USA, May 29 2010) or donate online

]]> http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/beira-project/feed 1 Filhos da Puta: Sócrates Edition http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/filhos-da-puta-socrates-edition http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/filhos-da-puta-socrates-edition#comments Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:04:58 +0000 luispedro http://blog.luispedro.org/?p=1389 O abuso de processos de difamação por parte do nosso PM é nojento. A partir daqui, já estou do outro lado da barricada, do lado do PS com D.

As eleições vindouras, como todas as eleições, são primeiro uma votação sobre o partido do poder. Este partido gosta do poder demasiado para ficar com ele.

]]> http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/filhos-da-puta-socrates-edition/feed 8 Manuela Ferreira Leite http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/manuela-ferreira-leite http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/manuela-ferreira-leite#comments Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:52:30 +0000 luispedro http://blog.luispedro.org/?p=1387 Penso que foi P.J. O’Rourke que disse de Ann Coulter (uma conhecida polemicista de direita americana): ela diz as mesmas coisas que eu digo. Excepto que eu só as digo às três da manhã, quando estou bêbado que nem um cacho.

]]> http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/manuela-ferreira-leite/feed 2 Outras Paragens http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/outras-paragens http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/outras-paragens#comments Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:38:46 +0000 luispedro http://blog.luispedro.org/?p=1385 Mutual Information

]]> http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/outras-paragens/feed 1 Taxa de Câmbio http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/taxa-de-cambio http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/taxa-de-cambio#comments Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:45:24 +0000 luispedro http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/taxa-de-cambio Estou numa loja de roupa em Nova Iorque.

Isto está recheado de europeus.

]]> http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/taxa-de-cambio/feed 3 Estado http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/estado http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/estado#comments Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:58:15 +0000 luispedro http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/estado Na série o Estado no seu melhor:

A CP está há um ano à espera de autorização dos ministérios dos transportes e das finanças para poder comprar comboios porque a procura está no pico.

As linhas estão no limite de capacidade, em parte porque pois o Governo mandou rever as obras de modernização da linha do Norte e estas tardam em rearrancar.

A conclusão, à Estado, é que estas dificuldades da ferrovia portuguesa em responder à procura crescente pelo comboio têm sido utilizadas pelo Governo para justificar a urgência da introdução da alta velocidade.

Brilhante. Dificulta-se o crescimento das alternativas ao nosso projecto preferido (o TGV) como forma de justificar o projecto preferido. Isto, meus senhores, é o Estado no seu esplendor.

]]> http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/estado/feed 0 22.3% http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/223 http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/223#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:47:05 +0000 luispedro http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/223 Eu tenho dúvidas que seja possível medir o PIB formal com três digitos de precisão.

Não tenho dúvidas nenhumas que a estimativa do tamanho da economia informal tenha uma margem de erro de alguns pontos percentuais.

Dizer que a economia informal são 22.3% do PIB (um número repetido por todo o lado) é um disparate, um erro científico em nome do cientificismo. São pouco mais de 20% é muito mais correcto.

]]> http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/223/feed 0 Sentence of the Day http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/sentence-of-the-day http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/sentence-of-the-day#comments Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:51:15 +0000 luispedro http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/sentence-of-the-day After every bubble, there’s generally a sort of an anti-bubble–when analysts start looking for reasons that this is the worst crisis ever.

Megan McArdle

]]> http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/sentence-of-the-day/feed 0 Briliant http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/briliant http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/briliant#comments Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:07:32 +0000 luispedro http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/briliant In the series this is starting to look like a blog:

Some fireworks in the Olympics opening ceremony were digitally faked.

]]> http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/briliant/feed 0 Nr of Athletes vs. GDP http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/nr-of-athletes-vs-gdp http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/nr-of-athletes-vs-gdp#comments Sat, 09 Aug 2008 05:27:07 +0000 luispedro http://blog.luispedro.org/posts/nr-of-athletes-vs-gdp In the series this looks like a data analysis blog:

Looking at the number of athletes vs GDP (Data from Wikipedia), brings up a nice looking graph (dots are data points, the line is a linear fit in log-log space):

Nr of Athletes vs GDP Beijing 2008

The nice fit leads to the following equation:

Nr = 0.07 * sqrt(GDP)

We can use this line to compare how countries compare to what their GDP would predict. Let’s look at over- and under-achievers

Countries that over-achieve (relative)

Country Predicted Actual Fold Increase
Belarus 23 208 8.9
Ukraine 44 254 5.8
Zimbabwe 2 13 5.7
Jamaica 11 56 5.1
Moldova 6 31 4.8
Mongolia 6 29 4.7
Kiribati 1 3 4.6
New Zealand 42 182 4.4
Croatia 25 106 4.2
Serbia 23 92 4.1

Countries that under-achieve (relative)

Country Predicted Actual Fold Decrease
United Arab Emirates 52 5 10.5
Haiti 7 1 7.4
Guinea 7 1 6.8
Kuwait 39 6 6.5
Bangladesh 31 5 6.1
Botswana 12 2 5.8
Oman 22 4 5.5
Algeria 42 8 5.3
Democratic Republic of the Congo 10 2 5.2
Cameroon 15 3 5.1

It’s the former socialist countries that over-achieve the most. Kiribati is a fluke, which would be removed by a more complete statistical treatment. New Zealand and Jamaica simply shine in sports.

Under-achievers tend to be either oil-rich or at war (not all, Bangladesh has neither). Saudia Arabia also does bad (16 athletes vs 76 predicted).

Interesting how oil wealth does not translate into sports gains. Maybe because it’s not the sports facilities but positive cultural factors that matters most in explaining the GDP dependency. The two factors just tend to be bundled together in rich countries. However, they become unbundled in oil-wealthy countries and they cannot make it to the Olympics.

Still, note the absence of Norway and Canada in this list. In fact, Canada out-performs its GDP prediction by a factor of 2 (Norway does as expected). Not that this disproves the theory: both countries are culturally western.

Interesting, the US has almost exactly as many people in the event as its GDP predicts (548 predicted vs. 595 actual—too small of a difference to be significant). Its power is explained simply by wealth (and not by superior patriotism, cultural interest in sports, or any other such explanation).

China, on the other hand, outperforms its prediction by a factor of 2.6 (247 predicted vs. 639 actual—the biggest absolute difference between predicted and actual in the world). Like ex-socialist countries, China’s performance can probably be attributed to sport performance being treated as a state matter.

For those interested in reproducing this: Source code to generate plot and figures (in Python, requiring numpy and matplotlib—mostly a dump of an interactive ipython session, so not very clean).

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