
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- Awkward Botany
- Karl Broman
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- Risk and Well-Being
- London Review of Books
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- Pat's blog While it is described as “The mathematical (and other) thoughts of a (now retired) math teacher”, this is false humility, as it chronicles the present and past life and times of mathematicians in their context. Recommended.
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- ggplot2 and ggfortify Plotting State Space Time Series with ggplot2 and ggfortify
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- All about models
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- Lenny Smith's CHAOS: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION This is a PDF version of Lenny Smith’s book of the same title, also available from Amazon.com
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- Mertonian norms
- James' Empty Blog
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- BioPython A collection of Python tools for quantitative Biology
- Why "naive Bayes" is not Bayesian Explains why the so-called “naive Bayes” classifier is not Bayesian. The setup is okay, but estimating probabilities by doing relative frequencies instead of using Dirichlet conjugate priors or integration strays from The Path.
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- Gabriel's staircase
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- Earth Family Alpha Michael Osborne’s blog (former Executive at Austin Energy, now Chairman of the Electric Utility Commission for Austin, Texas)
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- The Keeling Curve: its history History of the Keeling Curve and Charles David Keeling
- Slice Sampling
- Logistic curves in market disruption From DollarsPerBBL, about logistic or S-curves as models of product take-up rather than exponentials, with notes on EVs
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- Busting Myths About Heat Pumps Heat pumps are perhaps the most efficient heating and cooling systems available. Recent literature distributed by utilities hawking natural gas and other sources use performance figures from heat pumps as they were available 15 years ago. See today’s.
- Ted Dunning
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- Higgs from AIR describing NAO and EA Stephanie Higgs from AIR Worldwide gives a nice description of NAO and EA in the context of discussing “The Geographic Impact of Climate Signals on European Winter Storms”
- In Monte Carlo We Trust The statistics blog of Matt Asher, actually called the “Probability and Statistics Blog”, but his subtitle is much more appealing. Asher has a Manifesto at http://www.statisticsblog.com/manifesto/.
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
climate change
- Climate Change: A health emergency … New England Journal of Medicine Caren G. Solomon, M.D., M.P.H., and Regina C. LaRocque, M.D., M.P.H., January 17, 2019 N Engl J Med 2019; 380:209-211 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1817067
- Professor Robert Strom's compendium of resources on climate change Truly excellent
- Anti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- The great Michael Osborne's latest opinions Michael Osborne is a genius operative and champion of solar energy. I have learned never to disregard ANYTHING he says. He is mentor of Karl Ragabo, and the genius instigator of the Texas renewable energy miracle.
- CLIMATE ADAM Previously from the Science news staff at the podcast of Nature (“Nature Podcast”), the journal, now on YouTube, encouraging climate action through climate comedy.
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- Ice and Snow
- "Impacts of Green New Deal energy plans on grid stability, costs, jobs, health, and climate in 143 countries" (Jacobson, Delucchi, Cameron, et al) Global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity are three of the greatest problems facing humanity. To address these problems, we develop Green New Deal energy roadmaps for 143 countries.
- Reanalyses.org
- Tuft's Professor Kenneth Lang on the physical chemistry of the Greenhouse Effect
- "Warming Slowdown?" (part 2 of 2) The idea of a global warming slowdown or hiatus is critically examined, emphasizing the literature, the datasets, and means and methods for telling such. The second part.
- MIT's Climate Primer
- Model state level energy policy for New Englad Bob Massie’s proposed energy policy for Massachusetts, an admirable model for energy policy anywhere in New England
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- "Mighty Microgrids" Webinar This is a Webinar on YouTube about Microgrids from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), featuring New York State and Minnesota
- weather blocking patterns
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- "Betting strategies on fluctuations in the transient response of greenhouse warming" By Risbey, Lewandowsky, Hunter, Monselesan: Betting against climate change on durations of 15+ years is no longer a rational proposition.
- Nick Bower's "Scared Scientists"
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Andy Zucker's "Climate Change and Psychology"
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- Transitioning to fully renewable energy Professor Saul Griffiths talks to transitioning the customer journey, from a dependency upon fossil fuels to an electrified future
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- Ellenbogen: There is no Such Thing as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- Climate model projections versus observations
- The Carbon Cycle The Carbon Cycle, monitored by The Carbon Project
- "Warming Slowdown?" (part 1 of 2) The idea of a global warming slowdown or hiatus is critically examined, emphasizing the literature, the datasets, and means and methods for telling such. In two parts.
- The beach boondoggle Prof Rob Young on how owners of beach property are socializing their risks at costs to all of us, not the least being it seems coastal damage is less than it actually is
- AIP's history of global warming science: impacts The American Institute of Physics has a fine history of the science of climate change. This link summarizes the history of impacts of climate change.
- The Sunlight Economy
- Mathematics and Climate Research Network The Mathematics and Climate Research Network (MCRN) engages mathematicians to collaborating on the cryosphere, conceptual model validation, data assimilation, the electric grid, food systems, nonsmooth systems, paleoclimate, resilience, tipping points.
- Warming slowdown discussion
- SolarLove
- NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index report The annual assessment by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the radiative forcing from constituent atmospheric greenhouse gases
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- Paul Beckwith Professor Beckwith is, in my book, one of the most insightful and analytical observers on climate I know. I highly recommend his blog, and his other informational products.
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- SOLAR PRODUCTION at Westwood Statistical Studios Generation charts for our home in Westwood, MA
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: Gibbs Sampling
Reanalysis of business visits from deployments of a mobile phone app
Updated, 20th October 2020 This reports a reanalysis of data from the deployment of a mobile phone app, as reported in: M. Yauck, L.-P. Rivest, G. Rothman, “Capture-recapture methods for data on the activation of applications on mobile phones“, Journal … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian computational methods, biology, capture-mark-recapture, capture-recapture, Christian Robert, count data regression, cumulants, diffusion, diffusion processes, Ecological Society of America, ecology, epidemiology, experimental science, field research, Gibbs Sampling, Internet measurement, Jean-Michel Marin, linear regression, mark-recapture, mathematics, maximum likelihood, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, multilist methods, multivariate statistics, non-mechanistic modeling, non-parametric statistics, numerics, open source scientific software, Pierre-Simon Laplace, population biology, population dynamics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, R, R statistical programming language, sampling, sampling algorithms, segmented package in R, statistical ecology, statistical models, statistical regression, statistical series, statistics, stepwise approximation, stochastic algorithms, surveys, V. M. R. Muggeo
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Sampling: Rejection, Reservoir, and Slice
An article by Suilou Huang for catatrophe modeler AIR-WorldWide of Boston about rejection sampling in CAT modeling got me thinking about pulling together some notes about sampling algorithms of various kinds. There are, of course, books written about this subject, … Continue reading
Posted in accept-reject methods, American Statistical Association, Bayesian computational methods, catastrophe modeling, data science, diffusion processes, empirical likelihood, Gibbs Sampling, insurance, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, mathematics, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, maths, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, multivariate statistics, numerical algorithms, numerical analysis, numerical software, numerics, percolation theory, Python 3 programming language, R statistical programming language, Radford Neal, sampling, slice sampling, spatial statistics, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search
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“Grid shading by simulated annealing” [Martyn Plummer]
Source: Grid shading by simulated annealing (or what I did on my holidays), aka “fun with GCHQ job adverts”, by Martyn Plummer, developer of JAGS. Excerpt: I wanted to solve the puzzle but did not want to sit down with … Continue reading
Posted in approximate Bayesian computation, Bayesian, Bayesian inversion, Boltzmann, BUGS, Christian Robert, Gibbs Sampling, JAGS, likelihood-free, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Martyn Plummer, mathematics, maths, MCMC, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, optimization, probabilistic programming, SPSA, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search
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high dimension Metropolis-Hastings algorithms
If attempting to simulate from a multivariate standard normal distribution in a large dimension, when starting from the mode of the target, i.e., its mean γ, leaving the mode γis extremely unlikely, given the huge drop between the value of the density at the mode γ and at likely realisations Continue reading
Posted in Bayes, Bayesian, Bayesian inversion, boosting, chance, Christian Robert, computation, ensembles, Gibbs Sampling, James Spall, Jerome Friedman, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, mathematics, maths, MCMC, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, multivariate statistics, numerical software, numerics, optimization, reasonableness, Robert Schapire, SPSA, state-space models, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search, stochastics, Yoav Freund
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“The Bayesian Second Law of Thermodynamics” (Sean Carroll, and collaborators)
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/08/11/the-bayesian-second-law-of-thermodynamics/ See also.
Posted in approximate Bayesian computation, Bayesian, bifurcations, Boltzmann, capricious gods, dynamical systems, ensembles, games of chance, Gibbs Sampling, information theoretic statistics, Josiah Willard Gibbs, mathematics, maths, physics, probability, rationality, reasonableness, science, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastics, thermodynamics, Wordpress
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“A vignette on Metropolis” (Christian Robert)
This is a very welcome addition by a master of Bayesian computation, providing a great, brief answer for many of my colleagues who ask, “What’s this MCMC thing about anyway?”
Christian Robert on the amazing Gibbs sampler
Professor Christian Robert remarks on the amazing Gibbs sampler. Implicitly he’s also underscoring the power of properly done Bayesian computational analysis. For here we have a problem with a posterior distribution having two strong modes, so a point estimate, like … Continue reading
example of Bayesian inversion
This is based upon my solution of Exercise 2.3, page 18, R. Christensen, W. Johnson, A. Branscum, T. E. Hanson, Bayesian Ideas and Data Analysis, Chapman & Hall, 2011. The purpose is to show how information latent in a set … Continue reading
Bayesian deconvolution of stick lengths
Consider trying to determine the length of a straight stick. Instead of the measurement errors being clustered about zero, suppose the errors are known to be always positive, that is, no measurement ever underestimates the length of the stick. Such … Continue reading
The dp-means algorithm of Kulis and Jordan in R and Python
dp-means algorithm. Think k-means but with the number of clusters calculated. By John Myles White, in R. (Github link off that page.) By Scott Hendrickson, in Python. (Github link off that page.)
Posted in Bayesian, Gibbs Sampling, JAGS, mathematics, maths, R, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search
Tagged dp-means
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Blind Bayesian recovery of components of residential solid waste tonnage from totals data
This is a sketch of how maths and statistics can do something called blind source separation, meaning to estimate the components of data given only their totals. Here, I use Bayesian techniques for the purpose, sometimes called Bayesian inversion, using … Continue reading
“The joy and martyrdom of trying to be a Bayesian”
Bayesians have all been there. Some of us don’t depend upon producing publications to assure our pay, so we less have the pressure of pleasing peer reviewers. Nonetheless, it’s all reacting to “What the hell are you doing? I don’t … Continue reading
How fast is JAGS?
How fast is JAGS?.
The zero-crossings trick for JAGS: Finding roots stochastically
BUGS has a “zeros trick” (Lund, Jackson, Best, Thomas, Spiegelhalter, 2013, pages 204-206; see also an online illustration) for specifying a new distribution which is not in the standard set. The idea is to couple an invented-for-the-moment Poisson density to … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian, BUGS, education, forecasting, Gibbs Sampling, JAGS, mathematics, MCMC, probabilistic programming, R, statistics, stochastic search
Tagged error-in-variables problem, optimization, zeros trick
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HadCRUT4 version “HadCRUT.4.2.0.0” available as .RData R workspace or image
I’m happy to announce that I have made available the HadCRUT4 observational ensemble data as an .RData image for use with R. These were downloaded from the MetOffice Hadley Observations Web site. Detailed documentation is available on this page, with the … Continue reading

