Category Archives: smart data

What gives me hope … And it ain’t the small stuff

Posted on 3 May 2018 by ecoquant

AS Arman Oganisian of Stable Markets writes “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” That is a fundamentally engineering attitude. It is fundamentally about the economics, and, in particular, the dramatic drop in levelized cost of energy for wind and renewables, … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, biology, bridge to somewhere, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, clean disruption, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate justice, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, Cult of Carbon, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, ecological services, ecology, Ecology Action, economic trade, economics, engineering, environment, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, global warming, Green Tech Media, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, Sankey diagram, smart data, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Sonnen community, the energy of the people, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, wind energy, wind power, wishful environmentalism, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Just because the data lies sometimes doesn’t mean it’s okay to censor it

Posted on 1 May 2017 by ecoquant

Or, there’s no such thing as an outlier … Eli put up a post titled “The Data Lies. The Crisis in Observational Science and the Virtue of Strong Theory” at his lagomorph blog. Think of it: Data lying. Obviously this … Continue reading →

Posted in Akaike Information Criterion, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, Bayes, Bayesian, climate, climate change, climate models, data science, dynamical systems, ecology, Eli Rabett, environment, Ethan Deyle, George Sughihara, Hao Ye, Hyper Anthropocene, information theoretic statistics, IPCC, Kalman filter, kriging, Lenny Smith, maximum likelihood, model comparison, model-free forecasting, physics, quantitative ecology, random walk processes, random walks, science, smart data, state-space models, statistics, Takens embedding theorem, the right to know, Timothy Lenton, Victor Brovkin | 1 Comment

The Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project, in association with ClimateMirror

Posted on 19 January 2017 by ecoquant

(Updated the afternoon of 31st May 2017.) The Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project, operating in association with ClimateMirror, is being funded via the Kickstarter available at this link. Give what you can. Thanks! See our goal statement. This is all … Continue reading →

Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, citizen science, civilization, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate education, climate justice, Climate Lab Book, cynicism, denial, Donald Trump, education, EIA, ethics, evidence, fear uncertainty and doubt, forecasting, fossil fuels, Global Carbon Project, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, NASA, NOAA, open data, open source scientific software, rationality, reason, reasonableness, risk, science, science denier, science education, smart data, statistics, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, UU, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we'' | 6 Comments

Energy Consumption with Air Source Heat Pumps and Water Heater

Posted on 9 December 2016 by ecoquant

Once nice thing about having a net metered solar PV array is that, with a little diligence, you can figure out how much electricity your household is consuming each day, or at finer resolution if you like (*). Below is … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate economics, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, efficiency, energy reduction, engineering, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ISO-NE, local self reliance, New England, smart data, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, statistics, time series, Tony Seba, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION: A Review

Posted on 23 October 2016 by ecoquant

(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 | Leave a comment

NextGen VOICES: `On data’, `On setbacks’, and `On discovery’

Posted on 30 August 2016 by ecoquant

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 →

Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, big data, data science, evidence, Mathbabe, maths, maxims, science, Science magazine, smart data, statistics | Leave a comment

An Energy Revolution

Posted on 15 August 2016 by ecoquant

Professor Mara Prentiss speaks at Harvard on the possibility of an “energy revolution”: Update, 2016-08-16 Although I am not a PhD professor like Professor Prentiss, nor am I associated with an institution as esteemed as Harvard University, I disagree with … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, clean disruption, climate change, climate disruption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, ecology, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, green tech, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Mark Jacobson, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Michael Osborne, microgrids, public utility commissions, PUCs, Sankey diagram, smart data, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon | Leave a comment

“Holy crap – an actual book!”

Posted on 10 August 2016 by ecoquant

Originally posted on mathbabe:
Yo, everyone! The final version of my book now exists, and I have exactly one copy! Here’s my editor, Amanda Cook, holding it yesterday when we met for beers: Here’s my son holding it: He’s offered…

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 | Leave a comment

A model of an electrical grid: A vision

Posted on 3 August 2016 by ecoquant

Many people seem to view the electrical grid of the future being much like the present one. I think a lot about networks, because of my job. And I especially think a lot about network topologies, although primarily concerning the … Continue reading →

Posted in abstraction, American Meteorological Association, anomaly detection, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, Boston, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, Canettes Blues Band, clean disruption, climate business, climate economics, complex systems, corporate supply chains, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, differential equations, distributed generation, efficiency, EIA, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, extended supply chains, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Kalman filter, kriging, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Lenny Smith, local generation, marginal energy sources, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, mesh models, meteorology, microgrids, networks, New England, New York State, open data, organizational failures, pipelines, planning, prediction markets, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reason, reasonableness, regime shifts, regulatory capture, resiliency, risk, Sankey diagram, smart data, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, spatial statistics, state-space models, statistical dependence, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastics, stranded assets, supply chains, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, thermodynamics, time series, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wave equations, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon | Leave a comment

data.table

Posted on 15 June 2016 by ecoquant

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

Posted in big data, data science, engineering, numerical analysis, numerical software, numerics, open source scientific software, R, smart data, statistics | Leave a comment

On Smart Data

Posted on 11 June 2016 by ecoquant

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 | Leave a comment