Feb 11, 2013
Questions about the Benedict XVI's abdication
So I have some interesting political and social questions, that might be a bit different from anything I've heard so far: 1. Will Benedict XVI be permitted to take part in the…
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Archive page 61 of 73
Dec 31, 2012
Presenting "Estimating the Net Social Benefits of the NFIP" at the Benefit-Cost Society Conference in Februrary
The abstract is below. Conference information is available here. The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created by Congress in 1968 to provide insurance and prevention against flood risk and to shift…
Dec 19, 2012
Mercurial Histories
I put a lot of stuff into Mercurial including research, letters, and miscellaneous documents as they are being developed. When a new project shares some common element (such as, for instance, page…
Nov 9, 2012
Who run Bartertown?
Nate Silver. But lost in the discussion of how the Republican Party panned his predictions is an underlying truth. The same group of people who reject climate science, evolutionary science, economic science,…
Oct 30, 2012
Simply Statistics: On weather forecasts, Nate Silver, and the politicization of statistical illiteracy
Simply Statistics: On weather forecasts, Nate Silver, and the politicization of statistical illiteracy simplystatistics: As you know, we have a thing for statistical literacy here at Simply Stats. So of course this…
Sep 19, 2012
Flood Insurance Claims
Histogram of NFIP claims from 1996 to 2010 in 2010 constant dollars—it looks like it might be log-normally distributed.
Aug 25, 2012
OMG, this is the way math was meant to be written
The quadratic formula is [latex]x = {-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac} \over 2a}.[/latex] MathJax is freaking awesome.
Mar 24, 2012
Measuring the Impacts of the National Flood Insurance Program
Measuring the Impacts of the National Flood Insurance Program from James Howard Above are the slides from my presentation at the William and Mary Graduate Research Symposium. The associated paper can be…
Jan 28, 2012
Fiscal Year CPI Indicators
As noted before, the federal fiscal year can cause problems for economic analysis when converting from nominal dollars to constant dollars because the federal fiscal year runs from October 1 to September…
Jan 22, 2012
Dissertation Proposal Defended
I defended and passed my dissertation proposal yesterday. One of the more challenging aspects the public policy program at UMBC is the amount of information going into the proposal. Where some programs…
Jan 20, 2012
Dissertation Proposal Defense Slides
Below are the slides from my dissertation proposal defense. I gave the presentation this morning and was approved. My notes are also included. NFIP Dissertation Proposal Defense from James Howard