Mission Statement and Coming soon ...

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 Greetings! Thanks for stopping in to my blog.

This nascent blog is mostly experimental and is only just getting started. I will be using this blog as a vehicle for experimenting with automation (automating forecasts and publishing them with little human interventions).

This effort hasn't really started yet.

Truth Statement

My missions in this blog are (in order of priority):

  • To estimate Truth (with info, data, and analysis (causal inferences and forecasting))
  • To help others better estimate Truth by offering clarity and information
  • To support the brisk exchange of ideas and information relating to Economics and Econometrics

That may sound overly idealistic or sappy, but I won't apologize for that.

Promise:  I will not prioritize any goals in this blog over accurately estimating Truth and helping others to do so. I will not quash any hypothesis or idea to accommodate political alliances, cliques, social standing, wishful opinions, or personal feelings. 

Here, I will cheerfully fall back on one of my favorite editorial declarations and the founding motto of The Atlantic:  "Of no party or clique."

Estimating Truth: Please notice I didn't use verbiage like "speaking Truth" or "establishing Truth". I have carefully chosen the phrase "estimating Truth".

Especially in the field of Economics, Truth and objective reality are typically difficult to come by, but that does not mean objective reality doesn't exist for us or that all analyses are equally flawed. It only means that it is difficult to firmly establish Truth, and likely none of us has a perfect view of it.

The best we can hope for in Economics is to estimate Truth and objective reality. And to that end, my mission here is to offer explanations and overviews of concepts in Economics that might help non-Economics students more accurately estimate Truth and to provide some causal inferences, which are actually mathematical estimations of Truth (very exciting). Additionally, I intend to offer select forecasts that may provide mathematical estimates of future Truth (which is also exciting to me).

Using actual data to estimate Truth in Economics (a specialty called Econometrics) is a practice that often leads us to surprising hypotheses and conclusions. Often our pre-existing views -- the ones that make us feel warm and fuzzy -- are destroyed by Econometric analysis. This can sometimes be painful, disconcerting, and divisive.

Warning:  If having your favorite ideas and suppositions undermined by exposure to actual data is irritating for you, then this blog may not be for you. Having said that, I promise not to draw conclusion based on preliminary analysis and I would ask readers to exercise the same caution.

Here's what I plan to share here:

  • Some pro bono Econometric / Machine Learning work
    • Forecasts that serve the public interest:
      • Running Forecasts of Lake Travis Water (semi-annual)
        • Monthly Mean Water Level (started 5/1/2021)
        • Monthly LOW Water Level (coming soon)
      • Running Forecasts for other lake levels
        • Suggestions invited
          • Candidate:  Lake Hopatcong (NJ)
          • Candidate: White Rock Lake (Dallas area, TX)
  • Explorations of causality that serve the public interest
    • Suggestions invited
    • Candidate:  The Effects of Oil Prices on US Economic Output
    • Candidate:  The Effects of Income Inequality on US Economic Output
  • Occasional topical posts designed to briefly introduce topics in Economics / Econometrics / Machine Learning to people who have not studied these fields.
  • Possible Topics:
    • Series:  Antipatterns in Economic Thought
      • This will be a series of posts that explore, question, debunk thought errors and myths that related to economics.
    • Gender Equality in Pay
    • Income Inequality in Perú Rising or Falling?
    • How Evil Are Petroleum Speculators?

Here's what NOT to expect:

  • A slick, highly-polished, commercialized, monetized blog.
    • This blog is to introduce / explain topics to individuals seeking to learn about things I can explain -- including things that I just figured out. I will invest primarily in what is essential to service that mission.



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