QTRS Sept 19, 2024
QTRS Sept 19, 2024
Graphs and interesting content for the curious
Drill baby drill
The eia (9/16/2024) reports on new fields coming on line in the Gulf of Mexico over the next year. No slowing of fossil fuel use in the Gulf.
How hot was August 2024?
Here is your monthly global temperature anomaly update. A bit of a surprise that Aug 2024 was a record for August. Just barely, but yet a record. One month isn’t a trend and there is a fair amount of variability in the data. In fact, we have two instances below where a La Niña year beat out the previous year that was an El Niño. Still, it is worth noting.
In terms of all months. Aug 2024 for neutral year is about where we would expect it. Our neutral month anomalies are expected to be generally higher than previous neutral months and that is what we are seeing.
One reason why hospitals are expensive
The chart comes from the BLS post Compensation costs $67.64 per hour in hospitals, June 2024 (9/17/2024)
Misleading headline of the week
The media wonders why they aren’t trusted. Well, consider this headline from the Guardian: Norway: electric cars outnumber petrol for first time in ‘historic milestone’ (9/17/2024). Statements that seem unbelievable usually are. What’s the catch? My first thought was that this was about car sales and not total cars. You only have to get to the second paragraph to start to question the headline.
Of the 2.8m private cars registered in the Nordic country, 754,303 are all-electric, against 753,905 that run on petrol, the Norwegian road federation (OFV) said in a statement.
A little quick math here, and we realize 1.3 million cars are unaccounted for. Read one more line:
Diesel models remain the most numerous at just under 1m, but their sales are falling rapidly.
In other words, 1,753,905 cars run on fossil fuels, and 754,303 are all electric. I’m assuming the rest are hybrid. Again, a little math 754,303 / (1,753,905 + 754,303) = 30%, and so about 30% of the cars are all electric. The typical person isn’t going to pick up that petrol doesn’t also mean deiseal. Meanwhile, people will read the headline and end up saying that if Norway can have a majority of electric cars, then so can we. Yeesh.
Energy inefficiency
One of the drawbacks of an electric car comes on a cold day when you want to heat the cabin. The heat demand drains the battery, whereas in a gas car, heat is a wasted byproduct that you use. In general, burning fossil fuels for energy is inefficient, as a lot is wasted as heat. RMI raises a valid point in Energy after Fire (9/10/2024) about something I don't fully understand when it comes to energy.
Their graphs sum up the lost energy by main source and use. It is worth keeping in mind as we think about the value of solar and wind. On the other hand, I consider RMI a biased source, and so I wonder what isn’t being said. For instance, solar and wind take up a lot of space and may not be as simple to maintain over time. Still, efficiency is a point in favor of wind and solar, provided I’m not missing something. Comments are welcome on this one in particular. What am I missing?
Latinx
I find it amazing that faculty and the “elites” started using and are still using Latinx. Is this not basically imposing a view on a minority population? Pew (9/12/2024)
How far we’ve come
Sometimes we forget how far we have come. Here is a graph from a 1948 Gallup poll, which was in my Gallop newsletter. It comes from a 2017 Gallup Vault post.
Does diversity improve performance?
The meta-analysis The relationship between team diversity and team performance: reconciling promise and reality through a comprehensive meta-analysis registered report (8/9/2024) suggests that there is almost no improvement in performance due to diverse teams. (Hat tip to Persuasion) They analyze different types of diversity to see if one type might have more positive benefit. Here is the graph with the overall results:
A couple of key quotes from the abstract:
Overall, we found that the average linear relationships between demographic, job-related and cognitive diversity, and team performance are significant and positive, but insubstantial (|r| < .1).
Correlations were more positive when tasks were higher in complexity or required creativity and innovation, and when teams were working in contexts lower in collectivism and power distance. Contrary to expectations, the link between diversity and performance was not substantially influenced by teams’ longevity or interdependence.
Diverse teams offer little in increased performance. On the other hand, they also don’t cause harm.
Keep the data centers coming
The $1.2 billion proposed project is known as the Rumble Technology Campus.
Developer David Aldridge says the campus will host up to 12 buildings totaling 4.2 million sq ft (390,190 sqm).
According to Mymcr.net, Aldridge has applied to have the northern 525 of the 948 acres rezoned from agriculture to commercial.
The spinning CD
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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’ve written the textbooks R for College Mathematics and Statistics and Applied Calculus with R. I welcome any collaborations.