Thursday, April 08, 2004

Article on Bangladesh: State of Disgrace. Disappointing state of where things are in Bangladesh. 2:54:37 PM    comment []

I got published on FT! Ok, ok, just a letter in the Letters section, but here is the link. It was interesting to see what they edited out. They took out a sentence at the end of the first paragraph that was: "I am surprised that you published his criticism of FT’s own reporting without first checking whether the pure hard numbers he quotes are in themselves correct or not." Oh well, minor issue. I also referenced a WSJ article in the letter and they took out that reference.   2:51:44 PM    comment []

[Notes from my System Dynamics class on forecasting] - We looked at the Livingston Survey of inflation forecasts made by panel of economists since 1946 and compared against actual inflation. Few interesting observations about the forecasts: * There is attenuation - forecasts are not nearly as extreme as realized inflation. * Delayed adjustment - missed turning points. * Bias towards "good news" - adjustment was faster when inflation was going down. - First order exponential smoothing does a better job than the Livingston panel in forecasting inflation over the last 50 years. As a matter of fact, first order exponential smoothing does better than any other model in the absence of any prior about the underlying data series.   2:42:32 PM    comment []