QTRS August 1, 2024

Interesting content for the curious with lots of graphs

Graph of the week

Increases of Offshore Wind Potential in a Warming World (7/10/2024) provides us with this chart of future offshore wind power potential change, which essentially will be more or less wind based on four different emission scenarios. Interestingly, while Europe could see nearly a 40% increase in wind relative to 1995–2014, measured as W/m^2, Austria might see a 5% decrease. I see this type of analysis as valuable for planning and adaptation purposes, although I’ll add that in past posts I’ve questioned the viability of off-shore wind. I’ll also add that the first sentence of the abstract, “Offshore wind farms, a rapidly expanding sector within wind energy, are playing a significant role in achieving global carbon neutrality, and this trend is to continue.” is questionable. Still, the graph is great.

Relative changes in the annual-mean offshore wind power density in different future terms. (a) Percentage changes (%) in annual-mean of North American offshore wind power density in the near term (2021–2040), middle term (2041–2060), and long term (2081–2100) relative to the historical period (1995–2014) under SSP1–2.6 (blue), SSP2–4.5 (light-blue), SSP3–7.0 (orange), and SSP5–8.5 (pink) (b–h) The same as that in (a), but for Europe, mid-high latitude Asia, global, Southeast Asia, South America, Africa, and Australia, respectively.

Great quote

Credit goes to FS (7/28/2024). I’ll add that I can relate to the frustrations of a “softer way,” as academics are really sensitized (and I’m a tad direct).

Indra Nooyi was the CEO of Pepsi from 2006 to 2018. Her biography contains many pearls of wisdom, like this one on getting better results:

“As a leader, I could be very blunt in my drive to make sure we made all the right decisions. In some meetings, I would comment on plans directly and sometimes point out why I thought a unit’s strategy wouldn’t work. “Your strategy makes no sense,” I’d say. “There’s no way you can deliver the return you have assumed in your financial model.” This wasn’t popular—or effective. At some point, George Fisher, the CEO, noted my style and pulled me aside. “Be careful about throwing hand grenades,” he said. “You may turn people off even though you mean well.” George coached me to take a different tack, by saying, for example, “Help me understand how this comes together. As I see it, this technology platform requires a lot of investment and patience. Is it prudent to factor in a quick return?” Much as I hated this new, softer way of asking questions, I found it got results. I appreciated how George spoke to me—one-on-one, straight, and in a constructive tone.”

— Source: My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future (Members can access my highlights here).

Identifying sequences

The paper Familiar Sequences Are Processed Faster Than Unfamiliar Sequences, Even When They Do Not Match the Count-List (7/9/2024) concludes that “order processing speed is driven primarily by the familiarity of the specific sequences being processed.” The graph here from their paper is the familiarity ranking of sequences they studied. What I find interesting about this are some of the differences and drop-offs. For example, 3-2-1 has a big drop-off from 1-2-3. I thought readers would find it interesting.

From the gardens

The first dahlia of the season is in bloom, with many more to come. We overwinter about 20 clusters of Dahlia tubers each winter and plant them each summer. The hibiscus has also started blooming.

Data centers and electricity demand

A report from DCD (7/31/2024) notes

US utility American Electric Power (AEP) is expecting a huge increase in its energy load over the next five years, driven almost entirely by data center demand.

In its Q2 2024 earnings results this week, AEP said it has seen customer commitments for more than 15GW of incremental load by the end of the decade, driven by “robust data center demand.”

That figure equates to around 40 percent growth over the next six years compared to AEP’s current total grid load.

This is just for data center demand. What about moving to electric vehicles? There is too much demand for electricity to electrify everything while also adding demand for data centers alone.

They also plan to spend money on the grid.

The company has said it is planning to invest $43 billion over the next five years in grid upgrades.

Where will the extra GW come from?

The 20GW of generating capacity the utility aims to add reportedly includes around 8GW of wind, 6GW of solar, and 5GW of natural gas.

I consider this optimistic for wind and solar generation, but even if they are met, the plan is to add more fossil fuels. Keep in mind that this is an additional load and not about replacing current fossil fuel generation with wind and solar. Net zero isn’t happening.

Female and male differences

At the risk of upsetting some folks, I’ve pointed out differences in males and females that most people recognize in posts such as Female vs. Male Grip Strength (8/1/2023) and in the recent post on the secret service fitness standards (7/23/2024). Here is a less obvious result reported in the article New Brain Research Confirms That Gender Differences Are Hardwired (7/24/2024). I’ll note first that the title should have the word some.

In fact, researchers at Stanford recently used artificial-intelligence methods to examine brain activity in roughly 1,500 young adults 20 to 35 years of age. Neuroscientists have known for many years that every human brain is characterized by a “fingerprint” of brain activity at rest, unique to that individual. The Stanford neuroscientists used big-data AI techniques to determine the fingerprint of every one of those young adults. They then compared women with men.

Did women differ from men? Was there significant overlap?

The Stanford team then mapped fMRI patterns of connectivity onto cognitive functions such as intelligence. They found particular patterns of connectivity within male brains that accurately predicted cognitive functions such as intelligence. However, that male model had no predictive power for cognitive functions in women. Conversely, they found patterns of connectivity within female brains that predicted cognitive functions such as intelligence among women. However, that female model had no predictive power for cognitive functions in men. These findings strongly suggest that the determinants of intelligence in male brains are profoundly different from the determinants of intelligence in female brains.

It seems to me that recognizing and understanding differences is better than pretending they don’t exist. Now, this is just one study, and we’ll see what others have to say as the techniques to deal with large and complicated data improve.

Food production improvements

I ran into some USDA data and I thought it was worth sharing a few charts to note the impressive improvements in crop yield. Some positive news for a change. Following the regression lines, we’ve seen yield improvements of about 40%, 43%, and 21% for corn, soybean, and winter wheat, respectively, over the time periods of the graphs (28 years). That’s impressive.

The spinning CD

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Comments

Please point out if you think something was expressed wrongly or misinterpreted. I'd rather know the truth and understand the world than be correct. I welcome comments and disagreement. We should all be forced to express our opinions and change our minds, but we should also know how to respectfully disagree and move on. Send me article ideas, feedback, or other thoughts at briefedbydata@substack.com.

Bio

I am a tenured mathematics professor at Ithaca College (PhD Math: Stochastic Processes, MS Applied Statistics, MS Math, BS Math, BS Exercise Science), and I consider myself an accidental academic (opinions are my own). I'm a gardener, drummer, rower, runner, inline skater, 46er, and R user. I welcome any collaboration.