
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- Gabriel's staircase
- Subsidies for wind and solar versus subsidies for fossil fuels
- 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.
- ggplot2 and ggfortify Plotting State Space Time Series with ggplot2 and ggfortify
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- 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.
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- Karl Broman
- Risk and Well-Being
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- Mertonian norms
- NCAR AtmosNews
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- 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.
- Earle Wilson
- Simon Wood's must-read paper on dynamic modeling of complex systems I highlighted Professor Wood’s paper in https://hypergeometric.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/struggling-with-problems-already-attacked/
- "The Expert"
- 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
- 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”
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- James' Empty Blog
- 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
- What If
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- All about Sankey diagrams
- 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
- 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.”
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- Gavin Simpson
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- GeoEnergy Math Prof Paul Pukite’s Web site devoted to energy derived from geological and geophysical processes and categorized according to its originating source.
- Awkward Botany
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- BioPython A collection of Python tools for quantitative Biology
- All about ENSO, and lunar tides (Paul Pukite) Historically, ENSO has been explained in terms of winds. But recently — and Dr Paul Pukite has insisted upon this for a long time — the oscillation of ENSO has been explained as a large-scale slosh due to lunar tidal forcing.
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- American Statistical Association
- The Keeling Curve: its history History of the Keeling Curve and Charles David Keeling
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- "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.
climate change
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- Simple models of climate change
- Skeptical Science
- 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.
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- "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.
- 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.
- Climate model projections versus observations
- Risk and Well-Being
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- Transitioning to fully renewable energy Professor Saul Griffiths talks to transitioning the customer journey, from a dependency upon fossil fuels to an electrified future
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- “The discovery of global warming'' (American Institute of Physics)
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- "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.
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- The Green Plate Effect Eli Rabett’s “The Green Plate Effect”
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- The Sunlight Economy
- 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.
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- "Getting to the Energy Future We Want," Dr Steven Chu
- "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.
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- "A field guide to the climate clowns"
- weather blocking patterns
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- Wally Broecker on climate realism
- Spectra Energy exposed
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- Earth System Models
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- 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
- Anti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
- Steve Easterbrook's excellent climate blog: See his "The Internet: Saving Civilization or Trashing the Planet?" for example Heavy on data and computation, Easterbrook is a CS prof at UToronto, but is clearly familiar with climate science. I like his “The Internet: Saving Civilization or Trashing the Planet” very much.
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: numerical software
JIGSAW-GEO v1.0
See: D. Engwirda, 2017: JIGSAW-GEO (1.0): Locally orthogonal staggered unstructured grid generation for general circulation modelling on the sphere, Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 2117-2140, doi:10.5194/gmd-10-2117-2017 and a general description at NASA. The figure below is copied from there.
A look at an electricity consumption series using SNCDs for clustering
(Slightly amended with code and data link, 12th January 2019.) Prediction of electrical load demand or, in other words, electrical energy consumption is important for the proper operation of electrical grids, at all scales. RTOs and ISOs forecast demand based … Continue reading
Posted in American Statistical Association, consumption, data streams, decentralized electric power generation, dendrogram, divergence measures, efficiency, electricity, electricity markets, energy efficiency, energy utilities, ensembles, evidence, forecasting, grid defection, hierarchical clustering, hydrology, ILSR, information theoretic statistics, local self reliance, Massachusetts, microgrids, NCD, normalized compression divergence, numerical software, open data, prediction, rate of return regulation, Sankey diagram, SNCD, statistical dependence, statistical series, statistics, sustainability, symmetric normalized compression divergence, time series
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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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A quick note on modeling operational risk from count data
The blog statcompute recently featured a proposal encouraging the use of ordinal models for difficult risk regressions involving count data. This is actually a second installment of a two-part post on this problem, the first dealing with flexibility in count … Continue reading
Posted in American Statistical Association, Bayesian, Bayesian computational methods, count data regression, dichotomising continuous variables, dynamic generalized linear models, Frank Harrell, Frequentist, Generalize Additive Models, generalized linear mixed models, generalized linear models, GLMMs, GLMs, John Kruschke, maximum likelihood, model comparison, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, multivariate statistics, nonlinear, numerical software, numerics, premature categorization, probit regression, statistical regression, statistics
Tagged dichotomising continuous variables, dichotomizing continuous variables, premature categorization, splines
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Fast means, fast moments (originally devised 1984)
(Updated 4th December 2018.) There are many devices available for making numerical calculations fast. Modern datasets and computational problems apply stylized architectures, and use approaches to problems including special algorithms for just calculating dominant eigenvectors or using non-classical statistical mechanisms … 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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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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Bayesian blocks via PELT in R
Notice of Update I have made some changes to the Bayesian Blocks code linked from here, on 24th November 2021. Also I note the coming and going of a “BayesianBlocks” package on CRAN which contained an optinterval function also based upon … Continue reading
Posted in American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, anomaly detection, astrophysics, Cauchy distribution, changepoint detection, engineering, geophysics, multivariate statistics, numerical analysis, numerical software, numerics, oceanography, population biology, population dynamics, Python 3, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, R, Scargle, spatial statistics, square wave approximation, statistics, stepwise approximation, time series, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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JASA demands code and data be supplied as a condition of publication
The Journal of the American Statistical Association (“JASA”) has announced in this month’s Amstat News that effective 1st September 2016 “… will require code and data as a minimum standard for reproducibility of statistical scientific research.” Trends were heading this … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, citizen science, engineering, ethics, evidence, new forms of scientific peer review, numerical software, planning, rationality, reasonableness, resiliency, science, statistics, stochastic algorithms, testing, the right to know
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data.table
R provides a helpful data structure called the “data frame” that gives the user an intuitive way to organize, view, and access data. Many of the functions that you would us… Source: Intro to The data.table Package
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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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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Phytoplankton-delineated oceanic eddies near Antarctica
Excerpt, from NASA: Phytoplankton are the grass of the sea. They are floating, drifting, plant-like organisms that harness the energy of the Sun, mix it with carbon dioxide that they take from the atmosphere, and turn it into carbohydrates and … Continue reading
Posted in AMETSOC, Antarctica, Arctic, bacteria, Carbon Cycle, complex systems, differential equations, diffusion, diffusion processes, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, Emily Shuckburgh, environment, fluid dynamics, geophysics, GLMs, John Marshall, marine biology, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, NASA, numerical analysis, numerical software, oceanic eddies, oceanography, physics, phytoplankton, science, thermohaline circulation, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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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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Generating supports for classification rules in black box regression models
Inspired by the extensive and excellent work in approximate Bayesian computation (see also), especially that done by Professors Christian Robert and colleagues (see also), and Professor Simon Wood (see also), it occurred to me that the complaints regarding lack of … Continue reading
Posted in approximate Bayesian computation, Bayes, Bayesian, Bayesian inversion, generalized linear models, machine learning, numerical analysis, numerical software, probabilistic programming, rationality, reasonableness, state-space models, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search, stochastics, support of black boxes
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November Hottest Ever, and Christmas Likely To bring Record Warmth in The East (Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal; AGU Blogosphere)
The long-range guidance is showing strong indications that the incredible December warmth in the Eastern U.S. will continue to the end of the month. A blast of cold air will arrive later this week,… (Click on image for larger map, … Continue reading
Posted in AMETSOC, capricious gods, climate, climate models, Dan Satterfield, differential equations, diffusion processes, dynamical systems, ensembles, ENSO, environment, forecasting, geophysics, Hyper Anthropocene, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, numerical software, physics, science, the right to know, wave equations
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“1D Wave with Delta Potential and Triangle Initial Position” (Jeff Galkowski, Stanford)
The latest calculations from Jeff Galkowski, of Stanford.
Posted in computation, engineering, Jeff Galkowski, mathematics, maths, McGill University, numerical analysis, numerical software, physics, proud dad, quantum, scattering, science, Stanford University, the right to know, University of California Berkeley, University of Rochester, wave equations, waves
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Southern Oscillation (SOI) correlated with Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR)
To the climate community this is nothing at all new, but I spotted these time series today and thought they would make a nice exhibit on how something people have direct control over, greenhouse gas emissions, affect a “teleconnection mechanism” … Continue reading
Posted in AMETSOC, bifurcations, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate models, Dan Satterfield, differential equations, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, ENSO, environment, forecasting, generalized linear models, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, IPCC, Mathematica, mathematics, maths, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, numerical software, oceanography, open data, physics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, science, Spaceship Earth, state-space models, thermodynamics, time series
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Solar array with cloud predicting technology launched in WA
Australia’s first grid-connected solar power project with cloud predicting technology launched at Karratha Airport, WA, in bid to smooth solar supply. Source: Solar array with cloud predicting technology launched in WA
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, dynamic linear models, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, environment, ethics, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, Kalman filter, mathematics, maths, meteorology, microgrids, mitigation, NCAR, numerical software, optimization, physics, prediction, probabilistic programming, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, solar power, stochastics, sustainability, time series
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Your future: Antarctica, in detail
Climate and geophysical accuracy demands fine modeling grids, and very large supercomputers. The best and biggest supercomputers have not been available for climate work, until recently. Watch how results differ if fine meshes and big supercomputers are used. Why haven’t … Continue reading
Posted in Antarctica, Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate zombies, disingenuity, ecology, ensembles, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, IPCC, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL, living shorelines, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, mesh models, meteorology, multivariate statistics, numerical software, optimization, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sea level rise, spatial statistics, state-space models, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastics, supercomputers, temporal myopia, the right to know, thermodynamics, time series, University of California Berkeley, WAIS
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Comprehensive and compact tutorial on Petris’ DLM package in R; with an update about Helske’s KFAS
A blogger named Lalas produced on Quantitative Thoughts a very comprehensive and compact tutorial on the R package dlm by Petris. I use dlm a lot. Unfortunately, Lalas does not give details on how the SVD is used. They do … Continue reading
Posted in Bayes, Bayesian, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, forecasting, Kalman filter, mathematics, maths, multivariate statistics, numerical software, open source scientific software, prediction, R, Rauch-Tung-Striebel, state-space models, statistics, stochastic algorithms, SVD, time series
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