Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from August, 2020

With Fans Forbidden Due To COVID-19, A Noticeably Quiet U.S. Open Kicks Off In Queens

Tennis players are navigating the eerie stillness of a Grand Slam event known for its lively crowds. Last year's U.S. Open set an attendance record, drawing more than 737,800 fans over two weeks. (Image credit: Al Bello/Getty Images) News : NPR https://ift.tt/34UZ1u3 September 01, 2020 at 08:32AM

Walmart+ will finally launch in September. Can it compete with Amazon Prime?

The Walmart+ membership program launches September 15. Can it offer an alternative to Amazon Prime? | Walmart One Walmart executive says the new program is “the ultimate life hack” Walmart’s much-anticipated membership program, Walmart+, will finally launch nationwide September 15, the company announced today, about six months after the Covid-19 pandemic pushed the retailer to delay its original timing. The brick-and-mortar retail giant needs the program to be successful to stop top-spending customers from fleeing to Amazon Prime. Walmart+ will cost $98 a year, or $12.95 a month, and focus mainly on unlimited delivery of groceries and other general merchandise from Walmart stores that will be delivered as soon as the same day they are ordered. Members also get fuel discounts at Walmart gas stations and those of partners, as well as access to “Scan & Go” technology which allows shoppers to use smartphones to scan goods at Walmart stores and exit without stopping to pay a cashie...

Trump Defends Kenosha Shooting Suspect

The president on Monday painted the accused 17-year-old Kenosha shooter's actions as possible self-defense, saying, without evidence, that the teenager "probably would have been killed." (Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images) News : NPR https://ift.tt/2YPeNmA September 01, 2020 at 04:46AM

Problem of the between-state correlations in the Fivethirtyeight election forecast

Elliott writes: I think we’re onto something with the low between-state correlations [see item 1 of our earlier post ]. Someone sent me this collage of maps from Nate’s model that show: – Biden winning every state except NJ – Biden winning LA and MS but not MI and WI – Biden losing OR but winning WI, PA And someone says that in the 538 simulations where Trump wins CA, he only has a 60% chance of winning the elec overall. Seems like the arrows are pointing to a very weird covariance structure. I agree that these maps look really implausible for 2020. How’s Biden gonna win Idaho, Wyoming, Alabama, etc. . . . but not New Jersey? But this does all seem consistent with correlations of uncertainties between states that are too low. Perhaps this is a byproduct of Fivethirtyeight relying too strongly on state polls and not fully making use of the information from national polls and from the relative positions of the states in previous elections. If you think of the goal as fore...

D.C. Mayor Bowser Blames Outside Agitators As Cause Of Weekend Violence

Some 70% of those arrested in weekend unrest came from outside the District, police say. Bowser says the U.S. attorney's office has failed to prosecute those who have been arrested in violence. (Image credit: Patrick Semansky/AP) News : NPR https://ift.tt/31LGJJM September 01, 2020 at 02:53AM

The Atlantic Daily: What Portland Foretells about the State of Democracy

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox . A pro-Trump caravan clashed with counterprotesters in Portland, Oregon. One man, purportedly affiliated with a far-right group, died. One of our writers warns that such violence speaks to something troubling about the state of democracy. NATHAN HOWARD / GETTY The American democratic system depends on the ability to disagree peacefully. Today, that premise is under threat, our staff writer Franklin Foer warns—and the threat is coming from the White House . “When a society discards politics, violence assumes its place,” Frank writes, citing the deaths of two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and that of the man in Portland. Donald Trump is not alone in his turn away from politics, Frank argues: He merely accelerated what the Republican Party has been flirting with since the Newt Gi...

Course sequence: Data analytics for the liberal arts

[This article was first published on George J. Mount , and kindly contributed to R-bloggers ]. (You can report issue about the content on this page here ) Want to share your content on R-bloggers? click here if you have a blog, or here if you don't. I’m a proud liberal arts graduate myself who, with some fumbling, ended up in the world of data analytics. It may sound odd, but I never fancied myself much of a “math person,” and I still love to explore the world through the arts and qualitative methods. I still hold that it’s because of these interests that I decided to dig in on data analytics: I wanted to be as efficient, productive and automated as possible in using quantitative data, so that I had the time and energy to explore it qualitatively. This distinction holds a truth that we can...

Crowd Counting Consortium Crowd Data and Shiny Dashboard

[This article was first published on R Views , and kindly contributed to R-bloggers ]. (You can report issue about the content on this page here ) Want to share your content on R-bloggers? click here if you have a blog, or here if you don't. Jay Ulfelder, PhD, serves as Program Manager for the Nonviolent Action Lab, part of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He has used R to work at the intersection of social science and data science for nearly two decades. Where are people in the United States protesting in 2020, and what are they protesting about? How large have those crowds been? How many protesters have been arrested or injured? And how does this year’s groundswell of protest activity compare to the past several years, which had already produced some of the largest single-day gatherings in U.S. history ? These are the kinds of questions the Crowd Counting Consortium (CCC) Crowd Dataset helps answer. Begun after the 2017 Women’s March ...

Sum of divisor powers

The function σ k takes an integer n and returns the sum of the k th powers of divisors of n . For example, the divisors of 14 are 1, 2, 4, 7, and 14. If we set k = 3 we get σ 3 ( n ) = 1³ + 2³ + 4³ + 7³ + 14³ = 3096. A couple special cases may use different notation. σ 0 ( n ) is the number of divisors n and is usually denoted d ( n ), as in the previous post . σ 1 ( n ) is the sum of the divisors of n and the function is usually written σ( n ) with no subscript. In Python you can compute σ k ( n ) using divisor_sigma from SymPy. You can get a list of the divisors of n using the function divisors , so the bit of code below illustrates that divisor_sigma computes what it’s supposed to compute. n, k = 365, 4 a = divisor_sigma(n, k) b = sum(d**k for d in divisors(n)) assert(a == b) The Wikipedia article on σ k gives graphs for k = 1, 2, and 3 and these graphs imply that σ k gets smoother as k increases. Here is a similar graph to those in the article. ...

Coronavirus Australia map: tracking new cases, Covid-19 stats and live data by state

Guardian Australia brings together all the latest on active and daily new Covid-19 cases, as well as maps, stats, live data and state by state graphs from NSW, Victoria, Queensland, SA, WA, Tasmania, ACT and NT to get a broad picture of the Australian outbreak and track the impact of government response Vic cases map ; NSW cases map NSW hotspots list ; Qld hotspots list Sign up for Guardian Australia’s coronavirus email Due to the difference in reporting times between states, territories and the federal government, it can be difficult to get a current picture of how many confirmed cases of coronavirus there are in Australia. Here, we’ve brought together all the figures in one place, along with comparisons with other countries. Continue reading... from Datablog | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2YMK0qv via IFTTT

Victoria and Melbourne Covid trend map: where coronavirus cases are rising or falling

Guardian Australia analysis and map shows how the pattern of Covid-19 has changed by region and throughout Melbourne. Live data updates will track the numbers as the Vic lockdown continues Australian stats interactive ; NSW cases trend map Coronavirus world map ; cases and deaths over time by country Melbourne’s stage 4 restrictions ; Victoria’s stage 3 rules Sign up for Guardian Australia’s coronavirus email A Guardian Australia analysis of coronavirus cases in Victoria shows where infections have been increasing, and where Covid-19 cases are on the decline. Using data aggregated daily from the dashboard of the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) here , we calculate the number of new cases a day for every local government area in Victoria. Continue reading... from Datablog | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2YMi2ei via IFTTT

NSW and Sydney Covid trend map: where coronavirus cases are rising or falling

Guardian Australia analysis and map shows how the pattern of Covid-19 has changed by region and throughout Sydney. Live data updates will track the numbers throughout New South Wales NSW Covid-19 hotspots list Full Australian stats interactive ; Vic cases trend map Sign up for Guardian Australia’s coronavirus email A Guardian Australia analysis of coronavirus cases in NSW shows where Covid-19 infections have been increasing, and where cases are on the decline. Using data from New South Wales Health we calculate the number of new, locally-acquired cases a day for every local government area (LGA) in NSW. Continue reading... from Datablog | The Guardian https://ift.tt/31FgPaE via IFTTT

1 Killed In Portland Amid Clashes Between Pro-Trump Caravan And Counterprotesters

President Trump blamed Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler for losing control, while the mayor responded that it was violence that Trump "helped create." (Image credit: Nathan Howard/Getty Images) News : NPR https://ift.tt/32G0RMM August 31, 2020 at 02:45AM

How Big Data has Redefined the Legal Industry

Rooted in Greek civilization, law is one of the world’s oldest professions, and for all these years, particularly in America, has been steadfast in its commitment to justice for all, and as a way to change things for the better. American lawyer Clarence Darrow, once said, “Justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom; Justice is what comes out of a courtroom.” While justice is the noble aim of law which has remained constant over the years, the legal industry, until recently, was also insulated from a fast-changing world of technology. One of the biggest changes of an age of technology, is the entrance of “big data” into the world, which got noticed, globally, around 2010.  The expression “big data” itself was coined in 2005, by technology expert, Roger Magoulas, to describe the variety of massive, complex data sets that could not be managed and processed with traditional data management tools. Co-founder and Co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Econom...

Women Scientists Have the Evidence About Sexism in Science

In the war against the coronavirus, leading women scientists are among the generals. For instance, Kimberly Prather of UC San Diego, has been a leader in establishing the role that airborne transmission plays in spreading the virus. The renowned UC Berkeley researcher Jennifer Doudna—a pioneer in gene-editing technology—threw herself into efforts to improve testing and accelerate the search for a vaccine. Countless other women, including epidemiologists, doctors, nurses, and lab technicians, have devoted themselves to crushing COVID-19. That women in science and medicine should figure so prominently during the pandemic only stands to reason. Why go into battle with just half an army? Yet the urgent, high-profile research that female scientists are doing now is also a reminder of how much the sciences have sacrificed by shutting women out in the past. In my six decades in science—as a researcher, a businesswoman, and a high-level administrator—I have had to persevere when told, somet...

‘I Thought the Pearly Gates of Hollywood Were Going to Open’

Tracee Ellis Ross’s career once depended on a man in Italy picking up the phone. It was 2000, and the then-27-year-old actor desperately wanted to accept an offer to star in the UPN sitcom Girlfriends . The role of neurotic, perpetually single lawyer Joan Clayton was Ross’s dream job: Until then, she had mostly appeared in little-seen indie films and TV movies. So the chance to lead a comedy-series ensemble could help her establish the identity she’d been craving since she was little, growing up as the daughter of the legendary singer Diana Ross. She felt she could earn the unconditional adoration that her mother received from her own fans. She could quiet the scrutiny of the skeptics who doubted her talent. She could pay her own health insurance. Ross pictured herself on a boat—not a canoe or a kayak, but some massive vessel, an ocean liner, perhaps—beating back the turbulence and tides of instability inherent to a career in Hollywood. With Girlfriends , she could be its captain. But...