
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- 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
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- Earth Family Alpha Michael Osborne’s blog (former Executive at Austin Energy, now Chairman of the Electric Utility Commission for Austin, Texas)
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- Awkward Botany
- All about Sankey diagrams
- Risk and Well-Being
- Prediction vs Forecasting: Knaub “Unfortunately, ‘prediction,’ such as used in model-based survey estimation, is a term that is often subsumed under the term ‘forecasting,’ but here we show why it is important not to confuse these two terms.”
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Hermann Scheer Hermann Scheer was a visionary, a major guy, who thought deep thoughts about energy, and its implications for humanity’s relationship with physical reality
- NCAR AtmosNews
- Ives and Dakos techniques for regime changes in series
- James' Empty Blog
- Tim Harford's “More or Less'' Tim Harford explains – and sometimes debunks – the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life
- Fear and Loathing in Data Science Cory Lesmeister’s savage journey to the heart of Big Data
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- Ted Dunning
- "The Expert"
- "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.
- Number Cruncher Politics
- American Statistical Association
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- 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”
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- Why It’s So Freaking Hard To Make A Good COVID-19 Model Five Thirty Eight’s take on why pandemic modeling is so difficult
- OOI Data Nuggets OOI Ocean Data Lab: The Data Nuggets
- Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard on how businesses can help our collective environmental mess Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard set the standard for how a business can mitigate the ravages of capitalism on earth’s environment. At 81 years old, he’s just getting started.
- 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.
- All about models
- Gavin Simpson
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- Label Noise
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- Mike Bloomberg, 2020 He can get progress on climate done, has the means and experts to counter the Trump and Republican digital disinformation machine, and has the experience, knowledge, and depth of experience to achieve and unify.
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- Peter Congdon's Bayesian statistical modeling Peter Congdon’s collection of links pertaining to his several books on Bayesian modeling
- London Review of Books
climate change
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- 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
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- weather blocking patterns
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- Risk and Well-Being
- Reanalyses.org
- Klaus Lackner (ASU), Silicon Kingdom Holdings (SKH) Capturing CO2 from air at scale
- "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
- Simple models of climate change
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- And Then There's Physics
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- Climate change: Evidence and causes A project of the UK Royal Society: (1) Answers to key questions, (2) evidence and causes, and (3) a short guide to climate science
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- Spectra Energy exposed
- Skeptical Science
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- 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.
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- SOLAR PRODUCTION at Westwood Statistical Studios Generation charts for our home in Westwood, MA
- MIT's Climate Primer
- "Lessons of the Little Ice Age" (Farber) From Dan Farber, at LEGAL PLANET
- The Keeling Curve The first, and one of the best programs for creating a spatially significant long term time series of atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Started amongst great obstacles by one, smart determined guy, Charles David Keeling.
- Ellenbogen: There is no Such Thing as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- Professor Robert Strom's compendium of resources on climate change Truly excellent
- RealClimate
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- Exxon-Mobil statement on UNFCCC COP21
- 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.
- 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
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- Isaac Held's blog In the spirit of Ray Pierrehumbert’s “big ideas come from small models” in his textbook, PRINCIPLES OF PLANETARY CLIMATE, Dr Held presents quantitative essays regarding one feature or another of the Earth’s climate and weather system.
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- Andy Zucker's "Climate Change and Psychology"
- `Who to believe on climate change': Simple checks By Bart Verheggen
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- Sea Change Boston
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: maths
New Meetup: Massachusetts Mosses and Lichens
I have started a new Meetup group: Massachusetts Mosses and Lichens. I am inviting anyone with an interest in mosses and lichens to join in, particularly if you live in the “greater Massachusetts area”. Because of pandemic, there’ll be no … Continue reading
Posted in ABLS, American Bryological and Lichenological Society, American Statistical Association, biology, Botany, Brent Mishler, bryology, bryophytes, citizen data, citizen science, ecology, field biology, field research, field science, Hale Reservation, Janice Glime, Jerry Jenkins, lichenology, lichens, longitudinal survey of mosses, macrophotography, maths, mesh models, mosses, Nancy G Slack, National Phenology Network, population biology, population dynamics, Ralph Pope, science, spatial statistics, statistical ecology, Sue Williams, the right to know, Westwood
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We are all Mathematicians
Bobby Seagull. Great.
Posted in mathematics, mathematics education, maths
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“The truly common core”
Repost of “The truly common core“, from Ben Orlin‘s Math with Bad Drawings blog. https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2020/02/19/uncommon-core-standards/
Posted in education, mathematics, mathematics education, maths
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Cumulants and the Cornish-Fisher Expansion
“Consider the following.” (Bill Nye the Science Guy) There are random variables drawn from the same kind of probability distribution, but with different parameters for each. In this example, I’ll consider random variables , that is, each drawn from a … Continue reading
Repeating Bullshit
Yeah, how much was it? And was it different? I mean, not based on how Curry or Tisdale feel, but by the numbers.
The Johnson-Lindenstrauss Lemma, and the paradoxical power of random linear operators. Part 1.
Updated, 2018-12-04 I’ll be discussing the ramifications of: William B. Johnson and Joram Lindenstrauss, “Extensions of Lipschitz mappings into a Hilbert space, Contemporary Mathematics, 26:189–206, 1984. for several posts here. Some introduction and links to proofs and explications will be … Continue reading
Posted in clustering, data science, dimension reduction, information theoretic statistics, Johnson-Lindenstrauss Lemma, k-NN, Locality Sensitive Hashing, mathematics, maths, multivariate statistics, non-parametric model, numerical algorithms, numerical linear algebra, point pattern analysis, random projections, recommender systems, science, stochastic algorithms, stochastics, subspace projection methods
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Numbers, feelings, and imagination
“But numbers don’t make noises. They don’t have colours. You can’t taste them or touch them. They don’t smell of anything. They don’t have feelings. They don’t make you feel. And they make for pretty boring stories.” That’s from here, … Continue reading
Posted in mathematics, maths, numbers, numerics, oceanography
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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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When linear systems can’t be solved by linear means
Linear systems of equations and their solution form the cornerstone of much Engineering and Science. Linear algebra is a paragon of Mathematics in the sense that its theory is what mathematicians try to emulate when they develop theory for many … Continue reading
The Rule of 135
From SingingBanana.
Is the answer to the democratization of Science doing more Citizen Science?
I have been following, with keen interest, the post and comment thread pertaining to “Democratising science” at the blog I monitor daily, … and Then There’s Physics. I think the core subject being discussed is a little different from my … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, astronomy, astrophysics, biology, citizen data, citizen science, citizenship, data science, ecology, education, environment, evidence, life purpose, local self reliance, marine biology, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, moral leadership, new forms of scientific peer review, open source scientific software, science, science education, statistics, the green century, the right to know
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Chesterton’s fence, ecological sensitivity, and the disruption of ecological services
Hat tip to Matt Levine for introducing me to the term Chesteron’s fence: Chesterton’s fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. … In the matter of … Continue reading
Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION: A Review
(Revised and updated Monday, 24th October 2016.) Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neil, published by Crown Random House, 2016. This is a thoughtful and very approachable introduction and review to the societal and personal consequences of data mining, data science, … Continue reading
Posted in citizen data, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, compassion, complex systems, criminal justice, Daniel Kahneman, data science, deep recurrent neural networks, destructive economic development, economics, education, engineering, ethics, Google, ignorance, Joseph Schumpeter, life purpose, machine learning, Mathbabe, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, model comparison, model-free forecasting, numerical analysis, numerical software, open data, optimization, organizational failures, planning, politics, prediction, prediction markets, privacy, rationality, reason, reasonableness, risk, silly tech devices, smart data, sociology, Techno Utopias, testing, the value of financial assets, transparency
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Polls, Political Forecasting, and the Plight of Five Thirty Eight
On 17th October 2016 AT 7:30 p.m., Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com wrote about how, as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s polling numbers got better, it was more difficult for FiveThirtyEight‘s models to justify increasing her probability of winning, although … Continue reading
Posted in abstraction, American Statistical Association, anemic data, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, economics, education, forecasting, information theoretic statistics, mathematics, maths, politics, prediction markets, sociology, the right to know, theoretical physics, thermodynamics
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NextGen VOICES: `On data’, `On setbacks’, and `On discovery’
Science Magazine has a periodic column called Science in brief and occasionally that column features a set of what they call “NextGen VOICES”, meaning young scientists. They gather the survey using Twitter (of course) via the hashtag #NextGenSci. For the … Continue reading
Repaired R code for Markov spatial simulation of hurricane tracks from historical trajectories
(Slight update, 28th June 2020.) I’m currently studying random walk and diffusion processes and their connections with random fields. I’m interested in this because at the core of dynamic linear models, Kalman filters, and state-space methods there is a random … Continue reading
Posted in American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Arthur Charpentier, atmosphere, diffusion, diffusion processes, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, environment, geophysics, hurricanes, Kalman filter, Kerry Emanuel, Lévy flights, Lorenz, Markov chain random fields, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, MCMC, mesh models, meteorological models, meteorology, model-free forecasting, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, numerical analysis, numerical software, oceanography, open data, open source scientific software, physics, random walk processes, random walks, science, spatial statistics, state-space models, statistical dependence, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastics, time series
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“Holy crap – an actual book!”
You’ll find links to Cathy O’Neil’s important book in the Blogroll here, as well as a link to reviews of it. I have not read it yet. While I have pre-ordered it, it’s not available. I have read the reviews, … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, Buckminster Fuller, business, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, complex systems, confirmation bias, data science, data streams, deep recurrent neural networks, denial, economics, education, engineering, ethics, evidence, Internet, investing, life purpose, machine learning, mathematical publishing, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, moral leadership, multivariate statistics, numerical software, numerics, obfuscating data, organizational failures, politics, population biology, prediction, prediction markets, privacy, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rationality, reason, reasonableness, rhetoric, risk, Schnabel census, smart data, sociology, statistical dependence, statistics, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the value of financial assets, transparency, UU Humanists
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David Spiegelhalter on `how to spot a dodgy statistic’
In this political season, it’s useful to brush up on rhetorical skills, particularly ones involving numbers and statistics, or what John Allen Paulos called numeracy. Professor David Spiegelhalter has written a guide to some of these tricks. Read the whole … Continue reading
Posted in abstraction, anemic data, Bayes, Bayesian, chance, citizenship, civilization, corruption, Daniel Kahneman, disingenuity, Donald Trump, education, games of chance, ignorance, maths, moral leadership, obfuscating data, open data, perceptions, politics, rationality, reason, reasonableness, rhetoric, risk, sampling, science, sociology, statistics, the right to know
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France, and Mathematics
Cédric Villani, does Mathematics. “Problems worthy of attack, prove their worth by hitting back.” — Piet Hein
On Smart Data
One of the things I find surprising, if not astonishing, is that in the rush to embrace Big Data, a lot of learning and statistical technique has been left apparently discarded along the way. I’m hardly the first to point … Continue reading
Posted in Akaike Information Criterion, Bayes, Bayesian, Bayesian inversion, big data, bigmemory package for R, changepoint detection, data science, data streams, dlm package, dynamic generalized linear models, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, Generalize Additive Models, generalized linear models, information theoretic statistics, Kalman filter, linear algebra, logistic regression, machine learning, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, maximum likelihood, MCMC, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, multivariate statistics, numerical analysis, numerical software, numerics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rationality, reasonableness, sampling, smart data, state-space models, statistical dependence, statistics, the right to know, time series
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“Catching long tail distribution” (Ted Dunning)
One of the best presentations on what can happen if someone takes a naive approach to network data. It also highlights what is, to my mind, the greatly underappreciated t-distribution, which is typically only used in connection with frequentist Student … Continue reading
Six cases of models
The previous post included an attempt to explain land surface temperatures as estimated by the BEST project using a dynamic linear model including regressions on both quarterly CO2 concentrations and ocean heat content. The idea was to check the explanatory … Continue reading
Posted in AMETSOC, anemic data, Anthropocene, astrophysics, Bayesian, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, BEST, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate models, dlm package, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, environment, fossil fuels, geophysics, Giovanni Petris, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, information theoretic statistics, maths, maximum likelihood, meteorology, model comparison, numerical software, Patrizia Campagnoli, Rauch-Tung-Striebel, Sonia Petrone, state-space models, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search, SVD, time series
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Climate Denial Fails Pepsi Challenge
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, card draws, card games, chance, climate, climate change, climate data, climate education, confirmation bias, data science, denial, disingenuity, education, false advertising, fear uncertainty and doubt, fossil fuels, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, ignorance, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, obfuscating data, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sociology, the right to know
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Cory Lesmeister’s treatment of Simson’s Paradox (at “Fear and Loathing in Data Science”)
(Updated 2016-05-08, to provide reference for plateaus of ML functions in vicinity of MLE.) Simpson’s Paradox is one of those phenomena of data which really give Statistics a substance and a role, beyond the roles it inherits from, say, theoretical … Continue reading
Posted in Akaike Information Criterion, approximate Bayesian computation, Bayes, Bayesian, evidence, Frequentist, games of chance, information theoretic statistics, Kalman filter, likelihood-free, mathematics, maths, maximum likelihood, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, probabilistic programming, rationality, Rauch-Tung-Striebel, Simpson's Paradox, state-space models, statistical dependence, statistics, stochastics
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“Lucky d20” (by Tamino, with my reblogging comments)
Careful consideration to really basic things like this is, for me, incredibly refreshing, and helps with the self-discipline needed to deal with real-world problems, those often being messy and having distracting entanglements. A couple of thoughts: I think the mechanism … Continue reading
Gavin Simpson updates his temperature analysis
See the very interesting discussion at his blog, From the bottom of the heap. It would be nice to see some information theoretic measures on these results, though.
Posted in AMETSOC, Anthropocene, astrophysics, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, carbon dioxide, changepoint detection, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate models, ecology, environment, evidence, Gavin Simpson, Generalize Additive Models, geophysics, global warming, HadCRUT4, hiatus, Hyper Anthropocene, information theoretic statistics, Kalman filter, maths, meteorology, numerical analysis, R, rationality, reasonableness, splines, time series
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Of my favorite things …
(Clarifying language added 4 Apr 2016, 12:26 EDT.) I just watched an episode from the last season of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled “Force of Nature.” As anyone who pays the least attention to this blog knows, opposing human … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, bridge to somewhere, bucket list, Buckminster Fuller, Carl Sagan, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, compassion, data science, Earle Wilson, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, evolution, geophysics, George Sughihara, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, life purpose, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, numerical analysis, optimization, philosophy, physical materialism, physics, population biology, population dynamics, proud dad, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rationality, reasonableness, science, sociology, statistics, stochastic algorithms
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HadCRUT4 and GISTEMP series filtered and estimated with simple RTS model
Happy Vernal Equinox! This post has been updated today with some of the equations which correspond to the models. An assessment of whether or not there was a meaningful slowdown or “hiatus” in global warming, was recently discussed by Tamino … Continue reading
Posted in AMETSOC, anemic data, Bayesian, boosting, bridge to somewhere, cat1, changepoint detection, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate models, complex systems, computation, data science, dynamical systems, geophysics, George Sughihara, global warming, hiatus, information theoretic statistics, machine learning, maths, meteorology, MIchael Mann, multivariate statistics, physics, prediction, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, sea level rise, time series
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patents disincentivize progress
Very interesting.

