Author Archives: F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Did you know that the great North American activist, author, and scholar W. E. B. Du Bois was also a pioneer in the field of data visualization? Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Britt Rusert have collected Du Bois’s beautiful data portraits, including the one pictured … Continue reading →

Bayesian Update (6 June 2019): I have changed the title of this blog post to reflect a more likely explanation for the pattern of price changes pictured below. For more information about William Baumol and the so-called “Baumol effect”, see … Continue reading →

In case you are visiting from another planet, “Make America Great Again” (#MAGA) was one of Donald J. Trump’s slogans during the 2016 presidential campaign, while “Black Lives Matter” (#BLM) refers to a grassroots movement in support of people of … Continue reading →

https://twitter.com/ndimichino/status/1098621012990664705

As we approach the end of the month, here’s a partial list of what we’re reading these days: Carissa Byrne Hessick on “Vagueness Principles.” Daniel B. Klein on “Adam Smith’s 1759 Rebuke of the Slave Trade.” Jonathan R. Macey & … Continue reading →

How much time do you spend responding to emails? Is this “email time tax” worth it? (Or does email bring you joy?) We recently stumbled upon this critique of email by Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University. … Continue reading →

Their forceful ideas inspired countless crimes against humanity and massive amounts of human suffering (here is a partial list): Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published “The Communist Manifesto” in London on this day in 1848. File under: Garbage In, Garbage … Continue reading →

If you could take only one road trip in your life (assume a fixed budget of $2000 USD or 2000 euros for either trip), which one would you prefer: (a) Seattle to Boston or (b) Lisbon to Moscow?

As my friend and colleague Alex Tabarrok (@ATabarrok), an economics professor at George Mason University, recently pointed out (see chart below), CO2 emissions in the USA are actually falling, but alas they are rising in the rest of the world, … Continue reading →

Do you have the day off? The third Monday of February is a federal holiday, but what should we call it? Read about the history of Washington’s Birthday here, via Wikipedia. Below is a portrait of George Washington by John … Continue reading →