DataScience4you2me

Ever since Governor Andrew Cuomo descended into the depths of the L train tunnel and returned with an entirely new shutdown proposal, New Yorkers have been left to guess which, if any, of the sweeping mitigation measures would survive the last-minute intervention. Already, the MTA has discarded the 14th Street busway, the HOV lanes on the Williamsburg Bridge, and much of the plan for increased subway service — against the advice of transit advocates and their own internal recommendations. Plans for increased ferry service have also been scrapped, while the fate of the protected bike lane and other traffic-calming measures on Grand Street remains unclear. [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2V3ePmH March 29, 2019 at 06:38PM

        Smorgasburg Season officially begins on Saturday, April 6th, when 100 small business vendors roll into Williamsburg's East River State Park to kick off the ninth year of what has become "America's largest, weekly open-air food market." As has been the case since 2015, Sunday's Smorgasburg will once again be at Breeze Hill in Prospect Park. And new this year will be a smaller, 25-vendor version set up near the Oculus at the World Trade Center, which will happen every Friday starting on April 12th. [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2CEQvAj March 29, 2019 at 06:20PM

While New York City Council members Ritchie Torres and Reverend Ruben Diaz Sr. may be light years apart on matters of policy, there's now one thing these Bronx politicians have in common: both are considering bids for the 15th congressional district seat held by Rep. Jose Serrano. [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2U266ou March 29, 2019 at 06:04PM

The NYPD is seeking a number of people involved in what Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea called a " brutal & brazen gang murder " earlier this month. Footage from numerous security cameras released by the NYPD shows a number of suspects chasing Taquan Eversley through East New York streets around 7:15 a.m. on March 19th. [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2Fvv0CE March 29, 2019 at 05:31PM

The Tribeca Film Festival returns April 24 to May 5. Listen in as some of your favorite stars, directors and creators share their expertise and dish on their illustrious careers. [sponsor] [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2OzXX4z March 29, 2019 at 08:00AM

Because you love random YouTube videos, check out today's end-of-day links: greatest newscast opening ever, Venmo stalking, Biden/Abrams rumors, Ridley Scott loves high school 'Alien,' absurd SoHo penthouse, and pupper boops. [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2CL28Ww March 29, 2019 at 01:12AM

A woman in the Bronx has called bullshit on a farce that's been allowed to go on too long: The bagged potato products TGI Fridays has been peddling as "skins," despite their patently being skinless chips. [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2FHKwg6 March 29, 2019 at 01:01AM

Opening statements were made in the "Socialite Grifter" trial on Wednesday, and both sides provided extremely different reasons why Anna Sorokin allegedly scammed a number of people and institutions out of $275,000. [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2HXgI0E March 29, 2019 at 12:33AM

It's been over a month since an unidentified man slipped through an unlocked front door into a building on Columbia Street in Brooklyn and walked away with a truly odd assortment of stuff: eight black chairs, a red and black grill, a blender, and a box of toilet paper. [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2ux1mYP March 29, 2019 at 12:20AM

As the powers that be have looked for new ways to get people excited about going to the movies (and justify that expensive ticket), a concept that was once something of a regional anomaly—the movie theater that also serves food!—has become increasingly prevalent. New York City now offers a number of theaters that not only offer the option of snacking on the beloved buttered popcorn/soft drink combo, but also the choice of sipping on an IPA or Margarita at your seat, washing down your sandwich or salad. [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2TGebKg March 28, 2019 at 11:40PM

Mayor Bill de Blasio's embattled NYC Ferry project is facing another round of scrutiny, after an independent budget review revealed that the amount of taxpayer subsidies needed to keep the service afloat are even greater than previously known, and set to dramatically increase under a planned expansion. [SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE] [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2YAp3NR March 28, 2019 at 11:24PM

At 68, Aisha is a native New Yorker figuring out her exit strategy. In 2014, she moved to a rent-stabilized apartment in Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay neighborhood. She pays $1,485 a month for a one-bedroom on a librarian’s salary. But Aisha, who asked that we withhold her last name to avoid problems with her landlord, figures it’s only a matter of time before her rent goes up beyond what she can afford. “It’s just not economically feasible,” she said, about staying in the city long-term. “I can live here but I can’t travel or do anything more than pay rent and just survive.” Even her financial adviser agreed, telling her, "Pray that you don’t get sick." [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2TG3EPh March 28, 2019 at 11:00PM

A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of getting to know Dan Smith , the somewhat mysterious NYC icon who has spent the last 25 years plastering every laundromat window, pizzeria and bodega door in the city with his now iconic flyers—and also, of course, teaching people to play guitar. While Smith certainly has a sense of humor about his public persona, he is very sincere and very serious about what he does—especially about how learning to play guitar can teach you something much bigger: how to live . But that's because he's done the seemingly impossible: he turned what for most people would be a hobby into a lifelong profession [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2YsiCMF March 28, 2019 at 10:15PM

In a plot twist absolutely no one needed, Michael Avenatti wormed his way into the Nxivm sex cult case on Wednesday, apparently having attempted to insert himself onto Clare Bronfman's defense team. Bronfman, of course, is the Seagrams liquor heiress accused of bankrolling the fraudulent "self-help" group; Avenatti, as you're doubtless aware, is the former Stormy Daniels attorney accused of attempting to extort upwards of $20 million from Nike. [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2HIU9xr March 28, 2019 at 10:03PM

New York home health aides who have been fighting to get paid for every hour they spend on the job had their hopes dashed Tuesday when the highest court in the state ruled that it’s legal for them to get paid for 13 hours of a 24-hour shift while caring for elderly and disabled people in their homes. [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2FE4siZ March 28, 2019 at 09:37PM

  Is the gigantic grocery chain Whole Foods, owned by the even more gigantic Amazon, now going after that most treasured NYC institution, the humble bodega? Maybe ? Earlier this month, the vast conglomerate opened what they’re calling the Whole Foods Market Daily Shop, taking over a busy corner on Seventh Avenue and 25th Street and selling many of the usual bodega items with a fancier, organic, wellness-lifestyle-promoting spin. What even is a "Cranberry Energy Bagel Flat"? We refuse to find out. [ more › ] Gothamist https://ift.tt/2OtsDV2 March 28, 2019 at 08:57PM

The sociologist and public opinion researcher has a series of excellent posts here , here , and here on the electoral college. Here’s the start: The Electoral College has been in the news recently. I [Weakliem] am going to write a post about public opinion on the Electoral College vs. popular vote, but I was diverted into writing about the arguments offered in favor of it. An editorial in the National Review says “it prevents New York and California from imposing their will on the rest of the country.” Taken literally, that is ridiculous–those two states combined had about 16% of the popular vote in 2016. But presumably the general idea is that the Electoral College makes it harder for a small number of large states to provide a victory. . . . In 2016, 52% of the popular vote came from 10 states: California, Florida, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, and Georgia (in descending order of number of votes). In the Electoral College, those states c...

Ben Goodrich, in a Stan forums survey of Stan video lectures , points us to the following book, which introduces Bayes, HMC, and Stan: Ben Lambert. 2018. A Student’s Guide to Bayesian Statistics. SAGE Publications. If Ben Goodrich is recommending it, it’s bound to be good. Amazon reviewers seem to really like it, too. You may remember Ben Lambert as the one who finally worked out the bugs in our HMM code for Stan for animal movement models; I blogged about it a couple years ago and linked the forum discussions where it was being worked out. The linked page has answers to the exercises and an associated Shiny app for exploring distributions. There are also videos for a course based on the book: class videos (YouTube). I haven’t seen a copy, but I am very curious about the section titled “Bob’s bees in a house”, as it’s an example I’ve used in courses. I didn’t come up with the analogy—I borrowed it from a physics presentation on equilibrium in gases or something like that I’...

tl;dr: Someone asks me a question, I can’t really tell what he’s talking about, so I offer some generic advice. Joe Hoover writes: An issue has come up in my subsequent analyses, which uses my MrsP estimates to explore the relationship between county-level moral values and the county-level distribution of hate groups, as defined by the SPLC. Setting aside issues of spatial auto-correlation, control variables, measurement, and all other potential complications, I want to explore the US county-level association between a county mean outcome X and the county-level distribution of rare-event Y (N Y = 0 is about 2800, N Y > 0 is about 250). My initial analytical plan included two analyses: 1. Model Y as some zero inflated function of X. I tried this and observed a lot of noise (small effects with estimated with low uncertainty). 2. Employ a case-control design that includes all hate group counties + a random sample of counties without hate groups. This design is based on a recent ...

Hey— this is cool ! What happened was, I was scanning this list of Springbrook High School alumni. And I was like, Tina Fernandes? Class of 1982? I know that person. We didn’t know each other well, but I guess we must have been in the same homeroom a few times? All I can remember from back then is that Tina was a nice person and that she was outspoken. So it was fun to see this online interview, by Cliff Sosis, from 2017. Thanks, Cliff! P.S. As a special bonus, here’s an article about Chuck Driesell. Chuck and I were in the same economics class, along with Yitzhak. Chuck majored in business in college, Yitzhak became an economics professor, and I never took another econ course again. Which I guess explains how I feel so confident when pontificating about economics. P.P.S. And for another bonus, I came across this page where Ted Alper (class of 1980) answers random questions. It’s practically a blog! from Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science https://ift....

Analysis of variance (Anova) models are a special case of multilevel regression models, but Anova, the procedure, has something extra: structure on the regression coefficients. As I put it in the rejoinder for my 2005 discussion paper : ANOVA is more important than ever because we are fitting models with many parameters, and these parameters can often usefully be structured into batches. The essence of “ANOVA” (as we see it) is to compare the importance of the batches and to provide a framework for efficient estimation of the individual parameters and related summaries such as comparisons and contrasts. . . . A statistical model is usually taken to be summarized by a likelihood, or a likelihood and a prior distribution, but we go an extra step by noting that the parameters of a model are typically batched, and we take this batching as an essential part of the model. . . . A key technical contribution of our paper is to disentangle modeling and inferential summaries. A single multi...

An oversight panel may soon begin issuing subpoenas. Congressional Democrats are preparing to issue their first round of subpoenas to President Donald Trump’s new attorney general this week — but not on the issues that one might expect. For months, House Democrats have threatened to subpoena Trump and top members of his inner circle for everything from the Mueller investigation to Trump’s personal finances and business dealings. But one week after a summary of Mueller’s findings were released to the public, the House Oversight Committee plans to vote on Tuesday to issue subpoenas to Attorney General Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross related to a question on the upcoming census. On Friday, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, wrote in a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that the committee “is seeking to understand the real reason that you added a citizenship question to the 2020 census.” Cummings also accused Commerce Department ...

 It’s part of a nation-wide push on abortion restrictions The Georgia House of Representatives approved a bill that would effectively ban most abortions in the state on Friday. The bill, titled HB481 , or the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, would bar women from terminating their pregnancies after a fetal heartbeat is first detected, which can be as early as around the six-week mark. That is a point prior to which most women are even aware they are pregnant. If passed, this legislation would be one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the U.S. and an affront to a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. Gov. Brian Kemp, a first-term Republican, is all but certain to sign the bill once the legislative session ends on Tuesday. Kemp released a statement after the bill passed the House on Friday, praising the legislature for daring to take such an aggressive step to limit abortions in the state. “The legislature’s bold action reaffirms our priorities and w...

Republicans want the House Intelligence Committee Chairman to resign. President Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign is now hawking T-shirts that mock the latest foil to the Republican Party : the notoriously soft-spoken House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff. The T-shirt, on sale for $28 , features an illustration of Schiff with a pencil as a neck and wearing a clown’s nose. The image stems from a new nickname that Trump bestowed upon Schiff at a rally in Michigan earlier this week. ”Little pencil neck Adam Schiff,” Trump said on Thursday. “He’s got the smallest, thinnest neck I’ve ever seen. He is not a long ball hitter.” Little Pencil-Neck Adam Schiff He spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking. He should be forced to resign from Congress! Everyone should buy a Pencil-Neck Adam Schiff shirt today! BUY Now: https://t.co/5SMsrJC8nU pic.twitter.com/v3Vvmma0e6 — Official Team Trump (@TeamTrump) March 29, 2019 Schiff came under fi...

And the rest of the week’s best writing on books and related subjects. Welcome to Vox’s weekly book link roundup, a curated selection of the internet’s best writing on books and related subjects. Here’s the best the web has to offer for the week of March 24, 2019. We’ve talked a lot here in the book link roundup about wildly low salaries are in the publishing industry, and how that’s one of the reasons the field is so white. The standard response is that since publishing is a dying industry, low salaries are an unfortunate necessity, but at the Guardian Australia, Bethany Patch argues that this response is just an excuse : No matter how much we love our jobs, our working conditions have been lagging at the mercy of big business. They are not isolated to my publishing house, they are historical and ingrained throughout the industry. This is an industry that has relied on the insecurity of its employees. Different country, same Guardian: Alison Flood delves into the seedy teams...

Turks began voting on Sunday in local elections that President Tayyip Erdogan has described as a matter of survival for the country. Reuters: Top News https://ift.tt/2HPvOpw March 31, 2019 at 09:23AM

Ukrainians began voting in a presidential election on Sunday in which a comedian with no political experience and who plays a fictional president in a popular TV series is tipped to win the first round. Reuters: Top News https://ift.tt/2U3m1To March 31, 2019 at 09:21AM

Arab heads of state, long divided by regional rivalries, are expected to unite at a summit on Sunday to oppose a U.S. decision to recognize Israel's annexation of Arab lands captured in 1967. Reuters: Top News https://ift.tt/2FE0t5O March 31, 2019 at 08:14AM

Riding a wave of public fury over corruption, liberal lawyer Zuzana Caputova won Slovakia's presidential election on Saturday, bucking a trend that has seen populist, anti-European Union politicians make gains across the continent. Reuters: Top News https://ift.tt/2FC95d5 March 31, 2019 at 07:14AM

A break-in at the North Korean embassy in Spain last month was "a grave terrorist attack", a representative from North Korea's foreign ministry said on Sunday in the North's first official comment on the incident. Reuters: Top News https://ift.tt/2UmssAu March 31, 2019 at 06:59AM

Thousands of Venezuelan opposition sympathizers protested on Saturday against recurring blackouts that crippled much of the country this month and have aggravated the OPEC nation's economic and social crisis. Reuters: Top News https://ift.tt/2WwC2y0 March 31, 2019 at 06:57AM

Factory activity in China unexpectedly grew for the first time in four months in March, an official survey showed on Sunday, suggesting government stimulus measures may be starting to take hold. Reuters: Top News https://ift.tt/2HXwWXH March 31, 2019 at 06:50AM