Seasonally Adjusting My Life

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

2011-10-06T11:57:00.002-05:00

I realize that there is going to be a lot said about Steve Jobs (who died this week at only 56 years old), but I feel the need to put in my small contribution to the long list of blog posts and web articles. Jobs was the co-founder and later CEO of Apple. I'm not even an Apple user (yet), but I'm amazed at how much Apple and Jobs' ideas have still impacted my life. On the Telegraph's web site, they claim that Steve Jobs "did more to determine what films we watch, how we listen to music, and how we work and play than any other person on the planet." I think they are right.

I collect quotes. (You can see my collection on the web site at
www.catherinechhood.net/quotes.html.) To celebrate the life of Steve Jobs, I'm posting some interesting and favorite Steve Jobs' quotes below.

For some historical perspective

From an interview in Playboy, 1 February 1985:
"The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We're just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people--as remarkable as the telephone."

From an interview in Rolling Stone, 16 June 1994:
"Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better."

(For the record, I was in college in 1985, writing programs for IBM mainframes, and scared to death of computers. The idea of actually owning one and putting it in my house would have made me laugh. And now I sit here with one on my lap, and I can't imagine life without it. And my favorite computer is my Toshiba laptop, and it runs Windows, even though I hate MS Windows.)

Steve Jobs on Design

From an interview in BusinessWeek, 25 May 1998:
"That's been one of my mantras -- focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."

"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

From an interview in Inc. Magazine:
"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."

In the New York Times, "The Guts of a New Machine," 2003:
"[Design] is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

From CNNMoney:
"It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That's what we get paid to do."

Steve Jobs on business

From an interview on 60 Minutes, 2003:
"My model for business is the Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other's kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people."

Steve Jobs on moving forward

From the commencement address at Stanford University, June 2005:
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

"Stay hungry. Stay foolish."

From an interview on the NBC Nightly News, May 2006:
"I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next."

From an interview in Fortune:
"We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it."

Steve Jobs on Life

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

The September 11 Anniversary

2011-09-11T22:55:00.033-05:00

This has been a very difficult anniversary for me. I know there are people who lost a lot on that day, and by comparison, my losses seem small.

I lived and worked in the DC suburbs back then, and I felt the shockwaves from the Pentagon when the airplane hit. My then 5-year-old was very traumatized, especially when she learned that her Sunday school teacher worked in the section of the Pentagon that had been hit by the plane. It was shortly after September 11 that my 7-year-old decided she should join the armed forces, a decision that she is still working toward. It was just a few days after September 11 that my husband and best friend decided he needed to rethink his religious views, a decision that has made it difficult for us to talk about religion, politics, and other issues even after 10 years.

I remember that day very well. Who would have thought that it would still be so difficult all these years later?

The Summer of Fun

2011-09-05T19:37:00.046-05:00

My oldest child graduated from high school in May and left for college a couple of weeks ago. As a celebration of our last summer together, we decided to pull out all the stops for a "Summer of Fun."

My middle child (who is now a senior in high school) planned a college-tour trip to Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska. It isn't that she wants to go to college in any of those states, it turns out, but her older sister got to go on a college tour, so it seemed like the thing to do. What she really wanted, and what we did, was to go to the Monkees (as in "Hey, Hey, we're the Monkees") reunion tour concert at the Minnesota Zoo on July 1. Then we visited relatives in Iowa and Nebraska. In late July, to celebrate a monumental birthday of my mother's, she took all her kids and grandkids to Disney World for a week. In early August, my oldest and I went to the Joint Statistical Meetings in Miami Beach while the other two hung out in the ocean and at the pool.

The first trip was a working trip, but the trip to Disney World was a real vacation for me. I didn't even check my email. Then as soon as we got home, it was time to take my oldest to college, and it's difficult to work when you are constantly driving.

I have two more kids in high school. My children take their courses by correspondence, which means that they are working at home --- usually in the dining room while I'm working in my office. After years of being home with my kids, it feels very strange to have one of the children not here.

It was nice at the time to have a real vacation and some quality time with my child, but now that it's time to get back to work, I'm feeling the stress. The extra quiet in the house isn't helping matters either. Hopefully I can get caught up in another week and be ready to take on new projects again.

Pi Day Recipe

2011-03-11T19:54:00.002-06:00

Below is my favorite recipe for Pi Day, a very geeky U.S. holiday --- March 14 or 3/14 is the first three digits of pi.

Pi Day Ravioli Casserole
Prep time: 10-15 minutes
Baking time: 40-50 minutes
Serves 8

Ingredients

2 bags (22 or 24 oz) frozen, round, cheese-filled, mini ravioli (slightly thawed for ease of stirring)
1 large or 2 medium zucchini, cut into slices
1 jar/can (26 oz) tomato and garlic pasta sauce
1 c. pepperoni slices (5 oz)
1 c. shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 t. Italian seasoning, if desired

Directions

Heat oven to 350 degrees.
In large bowl, mix all ingredients except cheese and Italian seasoning.
Spoon mixture into an ungreased 9- by 13-inch glass baking dish. Sprinkle with Italian seasoning and cheese.
Bake 40 to 50 minutes or until hot and bubbly.

Notes:
In some stores, it is difficult to find the small, round ravioli. I used to find them at Kroger, but now I have my best success at Food Lion. Finding the correct ravioli for Pi Day is very important. :-)

I also usually use more Italian seasoning than the recipe calls for, probably more than 1 t. for a square baking dish. I really like oregano.

You can also make this ahead the night before, cover it and store in the refrigerator, then uncover and bake the next day.

Mardi Gras Recipe

2011-03-08T08:20:00.002-06:00

To celebrate Mardi Gras, here is an alcohol-free version of Bananas Foster, created by Brennan's in New Orleans. This recipe was created in the 1950's when New Orleans was a major port for the import of bananas.

Catherine's Bananas Foster
Serves Six

Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
6 bananas, cut in half lengthwise, then halved
6 scoops vanilla ice cream

Directions

Combine the butter, sugar, and cinnamon in skillet.
Place the pan over low heat and cook, stirring, until the sugar dissolves.
Place the bananas in the pan and heat until the banana sections soften and begin to brown.
Lift the bananas out of the pan and place four pieces over each portion of ice cream.
Generously spoon warm sauce over the top of the ice cream and serve immediately.

For the original version of this recipe, please check out the Brennan's recipe on the New Orleans Recipes site.

New "Case Study" Paper on the Web

2011-03-03T07:34:00.001-06:00

A new paper on the Catherine Hood Consulting site:
Case Study: Fixing Residual Trading Day Effects in the Seasonally Adjusted Series

Now that my boxes are unpacked (yes, yes, I know, it only took me five years), I have the notes I need to continue writing the case studies book that Kathy and I started back in 2004. To see the outline in its current state, check out the "Case Study Project" page.

"Make them do math"

2011-02-21T17:16:00.010-06:00

One of the more controversial books in recent days is called The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. In January, an excerpt from the book appeared in the Wall Street Journal under the headline, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior." Amy Chua didn't write the headline, but in the book she does describe forcing her daughters to practice the piano and work on their math problems.

Monica Hesse from the Washington Post in an article titled "'Tiger Mother' author faces a tough crowd at Politics and Prose" writes, "Maybe the way to help children do better in math is to make them do math, rather than make them talk about how math makes them feel."

If that's what being a Tiger Mother is all about, then sign me up. Especially if it also includes forcing my daughters to play the piano.

Year-over-year changes versus seasonally adjusted data

2011-02-10T20:43:00.008-06:00

In the article "Seasonally Adjusted, the Job Market Is Great" by Randall W. Forsyth, he says that the current seasonal adjustments won't be accurate because of the recent bad economy. In a lot of ways, this is correct, but it's not that simple.

Forsyth quotes John Williams from Shadow Government Statistics (www.shadowstats.com) who says that seasonal adjustment "has fallen apart in the last several years due to the effects of the extraordinarily protracted and severe economic contraction. Simply put, the severe decline in economic activity has overwhelmed traditional patterns of seasonal activity, destabilizing the calculation of seasonal-adjustment factors using the traditional mathematical models that are based on a number of years of activity, with the greatest weighting given to the most recent period's patterns."

Forsyth then says, "That means the worse the recent experience, the greater the seasonal adjustment to boost the unadjusted result."

However, what both Forsyth and Williams aren't taking into account is that the seasonal adjustment procedure used to produce the employment/unemployment numbers takes unusual events into account. Depending on the filters used and the settings for the extreme value procedure, the values in recent years may NOT be getting the largest weights. The current seasonal adjustment procedure also takes the length of the reporting period into account, something that can sometimes have a significant effect on the numbers.

I was recently looking at some specific manufacturing series for a client. In some sectors, their production dropped significantly in 2008, and when production began to pick up in 2009, the seasonal pattern was different than it had been earlier in the decade. For a series like this, the seasonal adjustment could be quite unstable for several years as the software tries to discover what the new seasonal pattern will be. However, for the employment series I've looked at over the past two or three years, the actual seasonal pattern (and the pattern related to the length of the reporting period or the weekday composition of the month) has remained quite steady. It doesn't matter if the overall level of the series drops --- if the seasonal pattern stays the same, the seasonal adjustment procedure can estimate the pattern and remove the pattern.

As often happens in articles about seasonal adjustment, the "solution" that is often suggested is to look at year-over-year changes. This, in fact, was suggested in the comments by Stephen Wilson, who wrote, "As to seasonal adjustment, I can't imagine why anyone cares. It snows every winter and it's hot in the summer. If you look at year-over-year rates of change the only distortions are from truly unusual events. Both the household and payroll survey agree that jobs are growing slowly and the rate of growth is slowly rising."

The problem with year-over-year changes is that it takes too long to see any meaning changes in the economy. When will we come out of this slump? Isn't that really what everyone is talking about, what everyone wants to know? Year-over-year changes won't let you see a turning point in the economy until it is well past.

Seasonal adjustment does result in loss of information. It is critically important for analysts to look at the original numbers and the year-to-year changes. It is also important to remember that the seasonal adjustment procedures in use now are much more sophisticated that simple exponential weighting of past values.

By the way, the subheading of the article is "Past years' bad economy ironically help flatter current data. Bob Dylan knew better." And he begins the article by saying, "Everybody talks about the weather, but government statisticians actually do something about it: they seasonally adjust it." If only that were true about the weather. I'm reminded of a favorite quote of mine:

The role of the economist is to make weathermen look good. --Stephen Gallogly

Seasonal Adjustment for a Bad Mood

2011-01-17T08:40:00.005-06:00

In my search for articles about seasonal adjustment, I often find articles about seasonal adjustment disorder, also known as seasonal affective disorder. But aside from seasonal affective disorder, there is some truth about moods being seasonal, and I always wish that I could seasonally adjust my moods because December and January can be difficult times.

In the article, "Feeling Blue? Some Say Jan. 17 is the Worst Day of the Year" by Shelley Emling at http://livingston.patch.com/articles/jan-17-the-worst-day-of-the-year. She says that several years ago, a British psychologist named Dr. Cliff Arnall devised a formula that combined "various ingredients" in a "complicated equation" to calculate that the third Monday in January is the "gloomiest" day of the year. The variables include weather, debt, monthly salary, time since Christmas, and low motivational levels.

When I first read about this formula, I thought that maybe he had done some kind of regression analysis, but after more reading (http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/story.html?id=6637dce1-14f7-403b-9b46-a347bd3c8f23&k=53047 for example), it seems that the formula isn't so scientific. He says that most of his data comes from talking to people, seeing when they feel down, and working out a common denominator. The original sponsor of the study was an airline magazine, and the purpose of the study was to encourage people to book travel.

Dr. Arnall has since admitted that knowing the worst day of the year could make it be the worst day of the year. And the worst day of the year would depend on the person.

I was thinking that I should write an application that would run a regression on the amount of sunshine in a day, temperatures, debt, etc., and find the worst week. I wouldn't even need trading day because it's always good to blame Monday as the worst day of the week.

In the meantime, I will try not to think about this being the worst day of the year.

Bad Seasonal Adjustments

2011-01-14T23:40:00.002-06:00

Several web sites have referred to "bad seasonal adjustment" or "bad seasonal adjustment combined with inclement weather in late December" as the cause for the increase in unemployment claims or problems with the payroll numbers.

Sometimes I take the phrase "bad seasonal adjustment" as a criticism of the seasonal adjustment software or the people who set the options in the seasonal adjustment software. I have to remind myself, though, that most people think about any kind of seasonal adjustment like it's a black box. So I suppose that a bad seasonal adjustment means that there is an extreme seasonal factor for that particular month so that the changes to the seasonally adjusted series from the raw series will also be extreme.

And if there was unusual weather in December that was causing something unusual to happen in the time series, then the seasonal adjustment software will take this into account.

Maybe I take it too personally. I looked at the seasonal adjustments for payroll, and all the factors and all the diagnostics, and it all looked really good to me.

Ora Time and Expense

2010-09-24T19:48:00.017-05:00

I often bid projects by the project and not by time, but some clients pay for a certain number of hours for on-going projects, and for those clients, I need to keep track of time. Based on a recommendation from a friend, I started using a site called Tick (www.tickspot.com) to track time for clients. For free, they let you track time for one client, so I used the site to track time for my biggest per-hour client.

Recently I was downloading at update for my Adobe PDF Reader, and I discovered that there is a whole group of Adobe AIR programs available for free. One of the programs that had won some awards and had been downloaded often was a program called Ora Time and Expense (www.johnwu.com/ora). It was free to download and use, so I thought I would give it a try.

I've been using Ora Time now for almost a month, and I love it. I use it for all of my clients, even the ones that I've bid on the project, not the time. It helps me keep track of the time I spend on clients, and I also time the administrative tasks that I have to do, too. (I've been thinking that I might start timing the tasks to teach Calculus and Statistics for the girls.) With Tick, when I finished something for a client, I had to log into Tick (which sometimes meant turning on my wireless to get on the Internet), pick the client and the project, and enter in the time. With Ora, before I start on a project, I can select the client and the project and hit the timer, and as soon as I'm finished, I hit stop, and the time is recorded for the project. If I want to enter a project and a time, I can do that, too. The program keeps track of expenses, too, though I don't use that feature as much as I use the time tracker, though I like the expenses feature, too.

Well, I guess my time is up. Time to do some work on some contracts.

Back after a holiday

2010-08-02T13:59:00.001-05:00

I'm back from vacation, and the new web course is on-line. The beta testers found a couple of technical problems, but overall, the course was in pretty good shape. A big "THANK YOU" to J.O. for his questions on the content, too. I appreciate the effort.

While I work on getting the basic X-12 course on-line, work also continues for all my great clients!

And the house and the office are quiet because my kids are working on their course work for the 2010-2011 school year. This year they are all in high school and all taking classes through correspondence, except for the AP math classes.

Life is great!

Math and Science Week 2010

2010-07-20T21:31:00.003-05:00

This week is Math and Science week at the Hood House. If the kids want a three week Christmas break (which they do) and want to finish in mid-May to match the public schools here (which they do), then we have to start school in July. Some subjects are more intense than others, so we started with math and science. (Last week was Shakespeare Week, not because we needed to read Shakespeare for school, but just to get the kids used to school again, and to stop anyone from being bored.)

This year I am teaching both AP Statistics and AP Calculus. The good news is that my first AP Statistics student got her scores back last week, and she got a 4. That gives me some confidence as I sail into a new year.

Most parents are happy when school is back in session. It's entirely different when the parent is a teacher. Fortunately for me, my children go to a correspondence school, so the only classes that I have to teach are math. I'm having enough trouble keeping up with lesson plans for AP Calculus. I can't imagine having to take on anything more for the girls.

To celebrate Math and Science Week, we went to Office Depot today to spend some of my coupons. I got some office supplies, but we also bought pens, pencils, erasers, paper, and notebooks for the girls. I have learned, though, to put the office supplies on a different bank card than the school supplies. I'm learning to manage all my tasks much more efficiently.

ttfn

First Web Course completed!

2010-07-02T18:03:00.002-05:00

The first of many (knock on wood) web courses is completely finished and on the web. I wanted it done by June 15, but had to settle for July 2 instead. Beta testing started on June 28 (because I had the first 2/3 completed), and so far, the comments have been really positive. I made a list earlier of what I needed to complete to get course #2 and course #3 on the web, and it's completely do-able. After that, I'm going to slow down a bit with the courses. I think that with an X-13 course on the web, most everyone who is interested in courses could find something they like in a nice price range.

Now it's time to relax and start to enjoy a long holiday weekend.

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

B2B sales calls and squiggly pens

2010-06-29T17:55:00.004-05:00

I learned very quickly after getting a telephone line for Catherine Hood Consulting that the "Do Not Call" Registry is only for private lines. The first day I had my phone line, I had four phone calls just from companies trying to sell me credit card machines. I've had people trying to sell me magazine subscriptions for my waiting room (I don't have a waiting room). And people trying to convince me that I should have a web site (I already have a web site). But the strangest call I had was to try to sell me pens.

About a month ago, I answer my phone the usual way when I don't know who's calling: "Hello, Catherine Hood Consulting."

The voice on the other end of the phone says, "Hey! Want to come to San Diego and go bungie jumping with me?"

I think that his guy either has the wrong number or he knows absolutely nothing about me. So I say, "This is Catherine. I think you may have the wrong number."

"No, Cathereen, I'm trying to reach you. I'm from ***** in San Diego, and we have tons of pens that we have to get rid of, so I am going to make you a fabulous offer on custom printed pens."

At that point, I realize that I had already talked to someone from his company the day before, a woman, and I told her that it didn't matter that she was calling from a very famous company (that I had never heard of) or that she really needed to get rid of pens, I didn't want to be on their calling list. Obviously, asking to be off the list didn't work.

"No, thank you," I say.

"You have no idea what a great deal we can make!"

"I have absolutely no cash right now. Nothing in my bank account at all."

"Oh. Well."

Silence. This seemed to be an argument he hadn't heard before.

"Good-bye," I said.

"Yeah. Good-bye."

They haven't called back.

I like pens. My very favorite day at University of Iowa Hospitals was the end of June, the end of the fiscal year. To use up the office supply budget, our boss let Lisa and I go down to the supply depot and buy as many different kinds and colors of pens as we could find. It was one of the best shopping trips ever, and with taxpayer money. At the Census Bureau, I loved to go to the supply cabinets and look for new kinds of pens. For me, the use of government pens while at work was a great fringe benefit of my good government job. Even now that I have to buy my own pens, I try to keep a lot of good pens handy. I like them for work and for grading the kids' homework.

The idea of custom-printed pens sounded pretty cool, but I didn't want to buy pens from the goofy guy in San Diego who didn't even pronounce my name correctly and thought I would like to bungie jump. I just kept thinking that you would have to be a really bad salesman to NOT be able to sell me a bunch of pens.

Last week, I got a free pen in the mail from a pen company in Tennessee. It's a "squiggle pen," and I love squiggly pens because they look like time series. And it was purple, and purple is my favorite color. And it says "Catherine Hood Consulting" on it, with my phone number. The point of the mailer is that everyone loves to get free pens, and to demonstrate this fact, they sent me a free pen. It was a very effective mailing --- and a lovely pen.

I am so ready to buy a bunch of purple squiggle pens, and give them away to anyone who might be able to send clients my way. As soon as I can fit it into my budget. Because who wouldn't want a free time series pen!

Life in Shoes

2010-06-18T13:46:00.005-05:00

I hate shoes. As long as I can remember, I've hated shoes.

I remember elementary school teachers fussing at me about keeping my shoes on, even on the coldest days of the winter. I had to keep my shoes on in junior high and high school --- it was part of the dress code --- though some teachers didn't pay much attention and you could slip off your shoes while you were sitting at your desk. One thing I loved about college was that I didn't have to wear shoes to class. In fact, it was common practice during the rainy season to put our shoes (and a towel) in our backpacks and wade to class barefoot.

At Yellowstone National Park in the summers of my college years, I found myself wearing shoes because I needed to in the hours when I wasn't working. Between the hot water and the boardwalks, there were very few places where I could go barefoot outside of my dorm room. In the hotel, I needed to wear shoes if I wanted to eat. But when I was working and sitting at the piano, it was easy to take off my shoes and convince the manager that I could feel the pedals better without my shoes on.

For graduate school, I moved to Iowa where I spent most of the winters wishing I could go barefoot, and most of the summers walking around campus barefoot. I got a lot of stares. Maybe it's the farming culture there, but there were not a lot of people going barefoot in Iowa City.

My first "real" job after grad school was in the Reproductive Testing Lab at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Shoes were required because I had to go in the labs sometimes, and it wasn't safe without shoes. I also sometimes had to interact with patients, and my boss thought if I was barefoot, I would look like an escapee from the Psych ward. However, after less than 2 months at that job, I broke all five metatarsals in my right foot. I was in a cast---a fate worse than shoes. After the cast was weeks wearing a board strapped to my foot. It would have been torture for me a few months earlier, but after weeks in a cast, it felt good to be able to wiggle my toes.

At the Census Bureau, I found out with pregnancy #3 that I was quite famous for being constantly "barefoot and pregnant." I wish I had heard about those comments earlier because I might have worn shoes more often. But then again, I was so uncomfortable when I was pregnant that I might not have changed my habits. After I became a manager, they made me take classes in topics like alcohol and substance abuse. The instructor told us that one of the signs of someone with an alcohol or drug problem was that the person would walk around barefoot. The people in the class that knew me all look in my direction and laughed. The instructor was not amused when he realized I had come to class barefoot.

Bud Pautler told me that I should always dress for my next promotion. It was because of that advice that I did start wearing shoes more often, though it was still very difficult to keep them on all day long.

Then I start my own consulting business with an office in a corner of the house just a few steps from my bedroom. "Aaaah," I think to myself, "I never have to wear shoes again."

But running a business from home is difficult, especially with kids in the house. To help me get a handle on keeping the house running even when I had a lot of work to do for clients and the kids, I started visiting the web site of house-cleaning guru The Fly Lady. I liked her advice, and my house was staying cleaner. Then I read her article on "Getting Dressed to the Shoes," and it put me in a quandary.

She says that she used to work for a "direct sales cosmetics company." The sales staff were told that they couldn't make any phone calls to customers unless they were completely dressed, including dress shoes. The company claimed that everyone will act differently in dress clothes and shoes. "The customer can tell when you don't feel good about the way you look." After that, as much as I still hated shoes, I decided that I should dress for work, including shoes.

Not everyone agrees with The Fly Lady. One of the comments on mothering.com said that the advice about wearing shoes keeps her off The Fly Lady's web site. She said there was only one reason to wear shoes at home if you are a stay-at-home Mom: If you spend too much time cleaning, your babies might attack your toes when they want attention.

On the web site Productivity501.com, in the article "Stop Squandering Time At Home," the author says that taking off your shoes improves productivity because you spend less time cleaning floors and carpets. I'm sure that The Fly Lady would say that if this is a problem, then get some shoes for the outside in the mud and snow and other shoes to wear inside.

Gretchen Rubin says in her article on shoes that when she was in law school, her roommate told her about a study that said grad students "who put on their shoes each morning were markedly more efficient than those who padded around in their stocking feet." Unfortunately, she couldn't find the study. Neither could I when I tried to Google it back then or again today.

The Fly Lady says that we need to wear professional shoes or at least lace-up shoes. That is a no-go for me. After my second round of broken bones, my ankle is so swollen that there are very few lace up shoes that are comfortable for me. I wear crocs around the house and open-backed dress shoes to church, but my dress shoes look similar to my work shoes, and probably none of them would pass muster with The Fly Lady.

The danger in crocs or sandals or flip-flops is that they are easy to kick off. I get dressed in the morning in a simple dress or in pants and a nice shirt, and I put on my crocs. But there are so many times when I go to answer the phone and realize that somewhere along the way I've lost my shoes.

Today is one of those days when I have several clients, colleagues, and contacts who have said that they will be calling, so I'm making an effort to keep my shoes on today. Hopefully, the people I talk to will appreciate my professionalism. Maybe they'll say to themselves, "I'm not sure what it was exactly, but Catherine sounded different today. Maybe she's wearing her shoes."

Seasonal adjustments for weekly series

2010-05-31T10:37:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to learn the software from the Fed that does seasonal adjustment for weekly series. The software is not user-friendly, so it's been a difficult learning curve. Tom Evans at BLS is working on a SAS interface that will make the program easier to use, but the interface is still in development. Tom has been helping me learn the program, and he helps me fix my errors when I make a mistake because error messages are nonexistent in the program. I was also having trouble getting the program to run on my series, and I believe it's because my series are short, so the program has trouble estimating holiday effects.

In the short term, I have found that I can get something like looks like a seasonal adjustment from X-12 if I ask for a trend. I can get it almost as smooth or as rough as I would like by changing the trend filter length. With a limit on the Henderson filters of 101, and with a period of 52 (and sometimes 53), the very longest trend doesn't really look like a trend because you can still see the seasonality. But with a very short trend, it is very close to what I get from the Fed's program. So in the short term, I like what I get from X-12, and it's a lot easier to use.

AP Statistics rain date

2010-05-19T13:23:00.001-05:00

The AP Statistics rain date was today. My oldest went into the test site a bit apprehensive, but she found a seat with decent lighting, and when she left, she was smiling. My first foray into teaching AP Statistics, and so far it seems like a success.

Flooding in Middle Tennessee

2010-05-08T20:34:00.004-05:00

In seasonal adjustment, we are very often looking at series with unusual values, and often I'm looking for natural disasters that have caused problems in my series. This week, the natural disaster has been in my backyard.

If you live outside of Nashville, you may not have heard, but Middle Tennessee was hit by a huge flood last week. The national news coverage gave us 15 minutes, mostly due to a failed car bomb in Times Square. Though I understand that terrorism is a real problem, what is happening in Tennessee (and the Gulf of Mexico, I might add) seems to me to be more important.

Nashville had its highest rainfall totals since records began. The Cumberland River and every other river in the area crested at their highest levels in over 80 years. People drowned, some of them stuck in their cars in Interstate-24. The cost of the damage is in the billions; it might be the costliest non-hurricane disaster in American history. It is the single largest disaster to hit Middle Tennessee since the War Between the States.

At our house, the flood waters reached almost to the barn, the highest we've ever seen the creek overflow its banks. Fortunately, we were all here on Saturday, and our house sits high on a hill and is quite waterproof, even when there is more than 15 inches of rain in a single day. My husband had to wade across the creek in the lightening to get to work early this week, but he made it through and back home again. My oldest daughter's AP test was postponed until May 19 (and she was really ready to have it finished), and my middlest daughter couldn't get her braces off because her orthodontist lost his car in the flood and couldn't get to the office.

Maybe the best part of the story is that Nashville isn't on the news. Maybe it's because there was no major looting, no major breakdown in rescue operations. The stories on the local news are about high school kids that are helping people clear the belongings from damaged houses and neighbors who were pulling their neighbors off rooftops using canoes or jet skis. We saw this same kind of cooperation after the big tornado in Murfreesboro just over a year ago. Maybe Nashville and the rest of Middle Tennessee isn't on the national news because in spite of the disaster, there isn't so much bad news in Middle Tennessee.

I'm so proud to be living in Tennessee. I'm so proud of how we all come together and take care of each other.

Newsletters and other goals

2010-04-30T17:02:00.000-05:00

I sent out a newsletter today. It feels great to have concrete goals for my business and to see them accomplished. Not only did I get the newsletter sent out, but I also put new content on the web including updates to the X-12 "Getting Started" papers.

I'm trying some new software to help me keep track of client projects. I'm putting my projects on the list, too, so that even when I am very busy working on projects for clients, I'm still working on my own projects, too --- projects like updates on papers on TRAMO/SEATS, the web courses, and the third quarter newsletter coming out in July.

More research

2010-04-21T23:11:00.001-05:00

I just finished reading a book about brands and intellectual property. I'm not sure I learned much, but it was good to review the material. Much easier to read than the books on tax laws.

I also finished researching textbooks to use for teaching AP Calculus BC and how to rent a bassoon (not every music store rents bassoons, and even oboes are hard to find, I have learned).

My mom was here for a couple of days, and she'll be back on Sunday for the big choir festival I'm singing in. I'm also having to rearrange my office a bit for some installation of extra phone lines next week.

In the middle of this, there is work to do for clients, and papers to write, and web pages to update, and audio files to record. Not to mention meals to cook and dishes to wash.

Sometimes I'm amazed at how crazy one person's life can be.

In order to try to hang on to a thread of sanity, I'm taking a break from my business books. I'm going to finish Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin that I borrowed from my mom. Hopefully in time to return it to her on Sunday. I'm really enjoying the book. The story is amazing, though sometimes the writer gets so dramatic about the situations that I have to remind myself that it's based on Greg's true story. I started it a while ago and got distracted by life. But now I have a goal, so now is the time to finish the book.

After that, I'm going to read The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman. It's an economics book, I suppose, but it's a little less intense than books about laws for small businesses.

This is interesting. Well, interesting to me . . .
Amazon classified The World Is Flat as Politics, but I've read enough of it to believe that it's more about the economics of globalization than about the politics of it. I enjoyed the few pages I've read, and I don't always like "political" books, so maybe I see the economic side of it because that's what I understand. To me, Three Cups of Tea is more of a political book, though it reads like an adventure story, since Mortenson is building schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But Amazon has it classified as Women and Business? It's a story about a man who builds schools for girls, and some of the girls go on to be very successful, but that is a very odd category for this book. Who decides on the categories? The publisher or Amazon? Hmmmmmm.

Well, it's time to get some reading done.

ttfn

Book report: Working For Yourself

2010-04-09T16:00:00.004-05:00

After doing some research on small businesses, I decided that I needed a book specifically on the legal aspects of consulting, including the issue of sole-proprietorship versus incorporating. I ordered Working for Yourself: Law & Taxes for Independent Contractors, Freelancers & Consultants (7th edition, 2008) by attorney Stephen Fishman. The book is not as boring as the title would imply, though it's not the kind of book that is easy to just sit down and read. The chapters are ordered quite logically, but it's also easy to skip chapters that don't apply to your situation or to only read the chapters related to the information you need right now.

I appreciate the fact that this book is for consultants and others in the service sector, not for retailers or manufacturers. He starts with the very basics, so if there is a chapter that I already knew something about, like copyrights and intellectual property, then the early material in the chapter was just a review for me. However, even in the chapter on copyrights, I still learned something. Therefore, in the chapters about tax laws for small businesses (something I knew almost nothing about), everything I read was something new to me.

Mr. Fishman also gives very practical advice. For example, he gives several tips on how to find the right financial adviser for your small business. For some, this may seem simple, but for me, this was extremely welcome advice. I think that one reason I've been putting off talking to a financial adviser is that I didn't know where to start or exactly what I needed. Now I know.

I like this book, and I think it's going to be a good reference in the next few years. Though I don't have any hard evidence yet, I think this book will save me hundreds of dollars in legal fees and accountant fees (now that I know what I'm looking for and asking for, their billable hours will be fewer) and probably thousands of dollars in taxes over the years.

Book report (Updated): Million Dollar Consulting (Third edition, 2003)

2010-04-09T15:31:00.010-05:00

Update, 10 April 2010: I wrote a review of this book on 9 April 2010. I retract my original review. I felt like I had given the book a fairly good review. I mentioned several times that Alan Weiss's book gives new consultants lots of encouragement. I now feel not quite so encouraged.

The author of this book left a comment on this blog (I left the full comment there, so you can see it if you wish), saying, in part:

Maybe if you followed my advice, which is free on my blog and elsewhere, you wouldn't have to resort to $4 used books. And you could have taken the time at least to visit my site, which puts most others to shame.

To that piece of advice I ask, "How can I know if I'm following Alan Weiss's advice without the book?" I'm supposed to Google Alan Weiss? I'd never heard of him before. Or Google the phrase "Million Dollar Consultant"? It's not something that pops into my head as something to Google.

I did visit the site mentioned in the 2003 edition of the book, and it isn't the same as the picture in the book. The new version is much too busy for my taste, but that's OK. Not all of us have the same style when it comes to web design.

I guess some of us don't have the same taste when it comes to consulting either, for that matter.

Again, as a disclaimer, I did read the third edition (2003) which I bought at a used bookstore for $4. There is a new edition, and I haven't read it. Would I shell out the money to buy the latest edition new from my favorite bookstore? Not after reading Alan's comment. Maybe I don't understand how to run a consulting business (which is why I'm buying books), but maybe, too, Alan's books are not as encouraging as I had originally thought.

Growing up

2010-04-09T13:45:00.001-05:00

I talked with a colleague today who said she still didn't know what she wanted to be when she grew up. I laughed because I sympathized with her dilemma.

As long as I can remember, Daddy had told me I should be a statistician, that I was good at it, and I believed him without reservations when I was young. However, there were times in grad school and early in my career when I had my doubts.

During the summers of 1985 and 1986, I played the piano in the lobby of Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. It was the best summer job in the world. The work hardly seemed like work, the pay and tips were great, I met lots of fun people, and there was always so much to do and so many places to go. My second year there, my brother worked there, too, and we had a great time on some amazing backbacking trips. I also dated a cowboy that summer, and through him, I met some bar and ski resort owners, several of whom offered me jobs for the ski season or for the summer.

When things would get tough in my life, I would dream about being back out in Wyoming or Idaho, married to Greg and playing the piano for a living. It seemed ideal, perfect. Of course, it's simple to think it's perfect when it's just a dream. Real life has a way of making things less than perfect.

I still love playing the piano and singing, but I'm so happy working on seasonal adjustment projects for clients. There is nowhere else I'd like to be and nothing else I'd like to be doing. It doesn't mean that I won't go back to school someday, or that I won't start piano lessons again, but even if that happens, I don't want to give up my work on time series.

So today, talking about what we wanted to be when we grew up, I realized that I'm finally there. I do want to be a statistician, with no reservations.

Being grown up feels pretty good after all.

Business research

2010-03-26T21:17:00.001-05:00

I'm always working to keep up with what's going on with seasonal adjustment, but I've been seeing that I need to learn more about running a consulting business. I bought some books at the used bookstore in Knoxville last week. Though I realize that a couple of the books are out of date (one of the books doesn't mention the internet at all as a way to attract new clients), they have me thinking about this consulting business in new ways. (And they were cheap.) It's pretty exciting.

Even before I bought the books, I knew I needed to spend more time with an accountant. I spend so much time at this time of the year working on taxes, and I always promise to do better in the next year, but then I get busy on projects for clients and my own research, and all my receipts just pile up in the file cabinet. But at least I have receipts!

Along similar lines, I have this feeling that I should be more serious about finding an attorney here in Tennessee. I love getting legal help from my friend who specializes in intellectual property law, but he's not in the state. I guess it's cool to have more than one attorney, and probably a better idea than not having one accountant.

And along the lines of research, while I watch basketball this weekend, I'm going to learn Bill Cleveland's latest weekly seasonal adjustment program. If I have some time, I hope to get some work done on my current TRAMO/SEATS project, too. And who knows? Maybe I'll have some time to work on the web courses, too.

ttfn

New pages are up!

2010-03-04T18:14:00.002-06:00

I posted the updated pages today---new design and updated content.

I also posted the demonstration course, 16 slides from the introductory course. I wanted to put up a bit of a trailer/teaser for the courses, and I also wanted to make sure that people could navigate the courses properly before the spent money for a full course.

The full introductory course has about 320 slides. My web site designer made it very easy for me to load the slides and the audio into the course pages, but recording the audio for 320 slides will take some time. I feel like on some of the 16 audio files I already recorded, I sound like I have a cold, and I don't. I think that my mouth gets dry from all the talking. With more audio files to record, I will need to find a better way to stay hydrated.

If you'd like to test out the format for the web courses, please do. The link is here at
http://www.catherinechhood.net/samplecourse_whysa.html.

Any questions or comments you have are also appreciated.

Updates on FAQ (and the need for some motivation)

2010-02-27T20:53:00.001-06:00

I've finished updating the FAQ. I incorporated some answers to some questions from readers of the FAQ, particularly about the spectral diagnostics. I also needed to update some answers in regards to Windows Vista and Windows 7, and make sure the information was correct about Census's new interface to X-12.

I need to finish testing all the links and check through the spelling again. With some luck (and hopefully some spelling skills over the past few days), I should have the new pages posted by March 4 or 5.

I need to download TSW again and make sure it hasn't changed too much. I have so many papers started about TSW that aren't finished. I need to treat this project like it's a project for clients and set some firm deadlines. That's an idea I will need to think about . . .

New web pages

2010-02-26T17:35:00.004-06:00

David (at Exit 42 Design) sent me the code for the new web pages today. Very exciting! I have known David since he was born, so it was really fun to work with him and to get to know him better now that he is "all grown up."

Between the time I talked to David and when he sent the code, however, I had changed my mind about the color scheme for the site. It's been gray, green, and blue, with some purple for some links. I decided that to make the site really look like my site, I needed more purple. Purple has been my favorite color for years, though it is also my school color (Go Paladins!), and one of my sorority colors.

To try different colors, I used the site http://colorschemedesigner.com/. I had been there before, and I like it. Besides having great tools to find colors that go together, they have a place where you can test your colors against different kinds of color blindness.

David added some black, and I've replaced the green with purple, though there is still green in my logo. I like the new pages and the new colors. However, the best part is the page for the web courses. I can't wait to finish the audio files so I can show off the pages.

While updating the web pages, I realized that my business plan is also woefully out of date, so it is time to update the plan and reassess my short- and long-term goals.

I also realized that if I was changing the colors for my pages, I should change them on the blog, too. I also finally updated my Blogger template.

Time to get back to work.

ttfn

Mentors and anniversaries

2010-02-19T21:49:00.002-06:00

Today would have been my grandmother's birthday. I loved being with her because she was so much fun. As I got older, she became more and more of a mentor to me. My grandma didn't know statistics, but she knew people, and she always gave me great advice about how to get along with difficult people. When people would tell me that my children were too close in age, she was the person I would turn to for comfort. (And what are you supposed to do about it anyway after you already have the kids?) Grandma would tell me over and over that having the girls be so close in age would be better for them in the long run. "Just get through the diaper days," she would say. Grandma was right. The kids are such good friends now, and teaching them at home has be easier because they are so close in age. I only wish that Grandma were still alive to see how right she was and how beautiful my girls are. Grandma has been gone for some time now, but I still miss her every day.

My dad's birthday would have been next week. I loved being with Daddy because he was so much fun. Daddy was a great mentor to me, too. He understood about the pressures of grad school and difficult supervisors, and he understood the frustration of not being able to get the data you needed for a big regression project. He was a great person to talk to, and it wasn't until he was gone that I realized how much I depended on him. It's been almost three years since Daddy died, and I still miss him every day.

Next week also marks the five year anniversary of my last day at the Census Bureau. Some days I can't believe that it has been five years because it seems like yesterday when I was there. On other days it seems like an entire lifetime ago that I was there. At Census I had some incredible mentors, some formal and some informal: Bud, Nash, David, Al, John, to name a few. At Census I also had wonderful friends: Kathy, Amy, Joe, Brian, Roxanne, Ayonda, to name a few. These last few years have been a lot of fun in many ways, but they have also been very lonely years.

Along with the obit for Dr. Lehmann, this month's Amstat News also had a letter from Dr. Pantula encouraging us to be a mentor to young statisticians. That is not a problem for me since I happen to live with a high school student who wants to be a statistician and follow in the footsteps of her mother and grandfather. Though I don't feel like a "young statistician" at this point, I don't feel like an old statistician either. I think that maybe this middle-aged statistician needs to find more mentors in her life. I think it would help me be less isolated. At the Census Bureau, you could sign up to be a mentor or to get a mentor. I wish there was a way for isolated statisticians to find other statisticians for mentors.

In the meantime, I thank God for the mentors that I have had in my life.

Just some thoughts for today. Happy birthday, Grandma!

Erich Lehmann (1917-2009)

2010-02-19T21:32:00.000-06:00

I just read in the February issue of Amstat News that Erich Lehmann passed away on Sept. 12, 2009, at the age of 91. I was just telling my AP Statistics student about taking a class on point estimation. (She couldn't believe that you could teach nothing but that for an entire semester. Sometimes I have trouble believing it, and I was there.) The textbook: Lehmann's Point Estimation.

The book was difficult, but that wasn't why the class was so hard. I took this class in the fall of 2001. I had gone back to grad school in 1999 after several years of working and kids. The kids were so great about leaving me alone when I had homework, but after the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, I had trouble doing homework. I wanted so much just to play with the kids, or just to sit and hold them. I talked to Dr. Gentle about it, and he was nice about it, but I knew that I didn't have enough of a grasp on the material to continue with the next class. So Lehmann's Point Estimation was my last textbook in my schooling in Statistical Computing at George Mason University.

Lehmann had a very interesting life. He was born in France, raised in Germany, and had to flee from the Nazis in 1933. He went to graduate school at Berkeley in 1940 and never left. The list of honors he had won is incredible.

Modern statistics was founded just before World War II by men like Jerzey Neyman and R.A. Fisher. Lehmann was, for me, the most famous of the second-generation statisticians. Even though I didn't really enjoy my point estimation class, I would see his work in lots of different things that I would read.

May God bless his family.

DreamHost versus Seanic

2010-02-09T21:46:00.002-06:00

As I work on web pages for my courses, I thought that maybe I would need a web hosting company that offers more bandwidth and disk space. I have been with Seanic since I started my web pages, but I went with Seanic without doing any research, so I thought maybe it was time to do some research on web hosting companies.

I signed up for DreamHost with a 97-day money back guarantee. Today was day 89, and I cancelled my account. There were some billing problems, and they didn't seem willing to fix the problem. It seemed kind of crazy to me that they wouldn't work harder to keep my business when they knew I was in the first 97 days.

In the meantime, I had some problems on catherinechhood.net which is hosted by Seanic. The fault was completely mine, and yet when I contacted customer support, they were extremely helpful and polite. He sent me instructions to fix my problem to my email address and told me to contact him again if they were unclear. The instructions were clear, my problem fixed, and I'm staying with Seanic. I may have to buy a more expensive plan with more bandwidth, etc., but it will still be very reasonably priced, and with great customer service.

It's been a bit frustrating, but now in hindsight, I'm glad I tried another hosting company, and I'm happy that I got lucky back in 2006 and found Seanic. It was good that I saw the true customer service at DreamHost, even in my first 97 days.

If you are looking for a new web hosting company, I can say now that I've done some research, and I can recommend Seanic.Net (http://www.seanic.net/).

ttfn

New Version of X-12 and the Window Interface

2010-02-09T15:36:00.000-06:00

The Census Bureau released a new version of the Windows Interface to X-12 and a new version of X-12-ARIMA in December. I've been so swamped with work that I downloaded the new X-12-ARIMA without downloading the new interface. However, I found myself recommending the new interface to someone based only on the word of friends at Census, so I decided I should try it out myself.

Generally, I like the diagnostics output now, and I think it's great that there are Java graphs available. But I'm not crazy about the graphs. Maybe I'm too sensitive about graphs, and maybe I'm jealous that I wasn't the person to program the graphs. I still need to read the documentation. Maybe I can do what I want with the graphs if I read the instructions.

Whatever the case, I still need to redo my web pages to reflect the changes in the programs available from Census. I should download TRAMO/SEATS again, too, just to see if there are changes there. I realized today that I've been so focused on work for my clients that I haven't been keeping up with my reading and research. That will change starting today.

ttfn

A new direction for my teaching career

2009-08-09T20:21:00.000-05:00

This year I'm taking a break from Belmont to teach AP statistics to my oldest child.

My husband and I have taught our three children at home since kindergarten. Darin felt it was essential for their safety when we lived in the DC suburbs, and it was essential when we lived in Europe because they couldn't attend school there. My high school students attend Christian Liberty Academy through correspondence. I like the curriculum for the most part except for the mathematics courses (though I believe my children may disagree with me about the theology courses). CLA is just starting to offer Algebra I and Geometry by Harold Jacobs, which is good, but they offer Algebra II only through Saxon Math, which I don't like. They also don't have any good pre-calculus or calculus class, and no statistics.

My oldest child had Algebra I as a 7th grader (using Harold Jacob's book, which is a great book), and she finished pre-calculus last year using the trig book from CLA and an extra book by Forester. So this year I taught her AP Statistics, with moral support from teachers at church and friends from Facebook, using text books I've borrowed from staff at Belmont and the "5 Steps to a 5" book recommended by a college friend who teaches AP Statistics. I was a little bit worried that we'd do all this work and not find a place for her to take the test, but I talked to the AP coordinator at the high school closest to our church, and she was happy to include Miriam with her AP Statistics class.

With so little time before my children leave for college, it's nice to have more time to spend at home with them. We will be going to Belmont for their Preview Day for high school students, so that will be a different perspective for us all.

Next year I hope to teach calculus to my two oldest. So I don't expect to be teaching at Belmont next year either. Maybe for the 2011-2012 school year . . .

The Joint Statistical Meetings in the Post

2009-08-05T22:03:00.001-05:00

From an article in The Washington Post style section,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/04/AR2009080403117.html):

In D.C., Statisticians Flex Their Strength in Numbers
By Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Real superheroes, most people know, skip the capes and tights. Too bulky, too flashy, spandex doesn't breathe well, etc.

Which is why they can be easy to miss when they're in town, even when there are 6,000 of them, super-number crunchers, data heroes, with powers of finding meaning in digits far beyond those of mortal men and women.

The 6,000 is just rough data, not accounting for last-minute arrivals. Their median annual income is $65,720. Their employment is expected to grow 9 percent by 2016.

That's not even getting into their standard deviations.

Ladies and gentlemen: statisticians. At the Washington Convention Center this week for the Joint Statistical Meetings, the largest international gathering of data junkies on the continent.

Later, the author discusses the importance of statistical literacy:

. . . The general population does not get it. Worse, they don't even get what they don't get. They use "random" when they mean "uniform." They confuse "cause" with "correlation." They do not question study designs, like the recent survey claiming Republicans were happier with their sex lives than Democrats, but failing to take into account that more Republicans are men, who always think they're studs. They can't tell the difference between relative and absolute risk. They can't tell the difference between the mean and the median. "That eats at me constantly," says Jim Cochran, a statistics professor from Louisiana.

Go ahead. Laugh. Roll your eyes at the number crunchers, and the way they flock excitedly to sessions with names such as "Alternatives to Proportional Hazards Survival Methods." But this stuff matters. Statistics on the recession -- you think those create themselves? What about tracking the spread of infectious diseases? Don't even get statisticians started on the 2010 Census, which for the first time will include an option for same-sex marriages. Which would be fine, except that some gay couples have actually self-identified as married on the Census for decades, which means that some valiant guy on a computer needs to figure out how to interpret the numbers.

Why do they do it?

"I think it must have been something that happened to us in childhood," Larry Featherston says. He's a member of the Committee on Statistics and Disability, which aims to improve disability research.

"We might like to hang around with numbers," says David Keer. "But the real question is, what can we use them for? In this country, if you're not counted you don't count."

It's so true, even while sounding so . . . boring. Who wants to save the world using the Bayesian method?

The statisticians get that, and they're working on their image.

Our 20th Anniversary

2009-08-05T09:13:00.000-05:00

Twenty years ago today, Darin and I were married. We are celebrating by Darin working in Tennessee and me working at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Washington, DC. Tonight I'll be going to a party at Dr. Findley's house (a former supervisor at Census).

It's not really how I imagined celebrating my 20th wedding anniversary on that long ago day back in 1989. But on the other hand, I did realize at the time that our wedding was at the same time as the JSM that year and knew it could happen again. Darin and I have spent several anniversaries together at the JSM and had a great time. Dallas especially comes to mind. There was nothing to do except watch people in the lobby and eat across the street at Denny's (where they did not appreciate my Redskins t-shirt).

Sometimes the JSM take place the same time as my middlest child's birthday which means she got to spend her 8th birthday shopping in New York City and her 11th birthday at the Mall of America in Minneapolis.

I'm happy that the 2010 meetings are on the west coast. It will give me a chance to be home with Darin for our 21st anniversary!

Happy Anniversary, Darin!

New web design coming

2009-07-01T21:06:00.001-05:00

I've been saying for a while that I want to get my course on-line, and I've been working on it for a long time without making much progress. So I've finally hired someone to help me with the design aspects. David Joyce of Exit 42 Design is going to design pages for the courses and help me redesign the site by improving my CSS code.

I've known Dave for years, and I love his work for other sites. I'm really looking forward to seeing what he comes up with, and it's a big burden off my shoulders to have some help with the html for the site.

Stay tuned. I really think I can get my first course on the web in 2010.

ttfn

Nobel Prize to Paul Krugman

2008-10-13T23:16:00.002-05:00

The Nobel Prize committee named Paul Kragman as the winner of the Nobel Prize in economics "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity." He is a professor at Princeton, I learned, but he also writes for the New York Times, and he's one of the people who has been giving advice about the current financial crisis and he makes a lot of sense, even before he won the prize. His ideas about injecting government capital into banks seems to be an idea that is catching on. Maybe more people will listen to him about this now that he's more famous.

So what did he do to be recognized by the Nobel committee? His field is in the area of economics called strategic trade theory which "argues that countries can subsidize certain industries to gain global market share. Others have praised his work on the development of clusters of related industries and his equations that measure how economic shocks affect the current account, exchange rates and capital flows." (from bloggingstocks.com)

It did seem a bit ironic to me that the prize for economics was announced in the middle of all this financial trouble. What do you suppose he's going to do with his prize money?

That Hat

2008-10-09T21:26:00.001-05:00

My friend Kathy is not only a seasonal adjuster, she's also a knitter. She sent the following web site to a bunch of us yesterday.

"Seasonally adjusted for maximum effect—
that's That Hat"

http://www.morehousefarm.com/KnittingKits/Hats/ThatHat/

Our friend Brian responded that he thought that was seasonality because "there's DEFINITELY a peak."

:-)

It's finally here

2008-10-07T09:30:00.000-05:00

It's been on everyone's lips all around campus for months and months. Preparations and security and have taken all our good parking spaces and made even walking around campus difficult. But tonight is the night, and I'm hoping that on Thursday I can find a good parking space again.

Belmont's tag line for the year: "The road to the White House runs through Belmont University."

The Joy of Keynesian Economics

2008-07-01T17:18:00.003-05:00

I took economics in high school and learned absolutely nothing, except how really bad a class could be when the teacher came to work drunk. I didn't take economics in college because I couldn't imagine it could be much more interesting than my high school class because I couldn't imagine a professor at Furman coming to work drunk.

I have really enjoyed learning more about economics as I was involved more and more with economic statistics. However, I readily confess that the subject does NOT make me giggle.

So imagine my surprise, as we're watching serious news programs on television, that my girls (and especially my oldest), start to giggle at the phrase "Keynesian Economics". It turns out that one of my girls' favorite actors, from two of my girls' favorite movies, is actor Skandar Keynes (Edmund Pevensie in both The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian). Skandar is the great-great-nephew of famed economist John Maynard Keynes and the son of author Randal Keynes. It also turns out, according to IMDB, that Skandar is the great-great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, but that name doesn't make the girls giggle as much as the name "Keynes" (pronounced like "canes", for those of you unfamiliar with the movies or Keynesian economics).

Anyone interested in learning mroe about Keynesian economics should visit the site
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/KeynesianEconomics.html.
You can see if it makes you giggle.

ttfn

Time to focus on consulting

2008-06-20T01:37:00.002-05:00

I really enjoy teaching, and I don't regret at all taking the job at Belmont University, and I feel so privileged and blessed to be able to teach my children at home. But Praise God for summer! It's so nice to have a break from the teaching and to be able to really focus on some time series projects for my consulting business.

One goal I have had for more than a year now is to get my courses on the web so that individuals could take the courses on their own computer. But my courses are copyrighted, so I can't just put them up for anyone to see. I've talked to several people, but no one who works in web design could quite catch my vision for the courses. So after more than a year thinking and dreaming and talking to people about this, I finally made a huge breakthrough today!!! I am learning PHP, and I'm finding some wonderful free code, and I'm finally beginning to think that I can really get this done this summer. My goal is to have the slides on the web, with notes and sound files of me talking, and have it all password protected.

I also found my notes on that user-defined holiday project I started while still at Census, and as I went through my notes, I realized that I was even farther ahead on this program than I had remembered!

So a very exciting day all the way around!

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Summer Break

2008-06-13T16:39:00.000-05:00

I finished all my work for Belmont over a month ago, and it's been a relief. I really enjoy teaching, but I have some really interesting consulting projects, and I still had to get my girls through their school. And today, we're officially finished!

The two younger girls finished up a couple of week ago. My oldest finished up her last set of book reports today, and we put them in the mail.

I finished up my programming project (and was paid promptly). It was nice to be working in SAS again. It had been a long time. It was nice to know I could still work on SAS macros.

It also inspired me to work on my Visual Basic program again for user-defined holidays. I had started it at Census as a SAS macro, but I want to get it into something more practical than SAS. I also want to do some research on different kinds of Easter effects and other related holidays for the Joint Statistical Meetings of the American Statistical Association in 2009.

Next week I hope to sign some contracts for another fun seasonal adjustment project. It looks to be a very exciting summer for me!

ttfn

Three-year Anniversary

2008-02-25T09:54:00.000-06:00

Today is the three-year anniversary of the day I left the Census Bureau. To celebrate, I gave the girls a day off from school.

Mom was here for the weekend to help me celebrate my birthday and Daddy's birthday. We celebrated both by going to a scrapbook day at Rita's house. I'm working on a scrapbook for me about my dad.

But first, I do need to finish grading tests, and cleaning up some in my office so I have the space to work on scrapbooks. And then there are taxes to do, and lesson plans, and some programming to do for clients . . . .

ttfn

Driving Lessons

2008-01-14T17:39:00.002-06:00

My oldest took her written drivers' test on Monday, and she passed, so she now has her "graduated driver's license", what used to be called a learner's permit when I was a kid in Tennessee.

On the same day that my oldest took her driving test, my youngest started high-school-level algebra. It's hitting me hard that the girls are really growing up. They are making fun of me, but it's more difficult than they think.

24

2008-01-09T20:42:00.002-06:00

In early December, one of the pastors at the organ church told a joke that went something like this:

A young man is sent to a maximum security prison for larceny. As in many jokes and movies about prison, the young man ends up sharing a cell with an older, veteran prisoner who takes a liking to him.

The first night in the cell block, the younger man hears something strange. Someone calls out, "Sixteen!" All the prisoners laugh, except for the new kid.

"Twenty-five!" More laughter.

After a several more numbers and much more laughter, the new guy asks the older prisoner to explain what everyone's laughing at. The older man says, "Well, at night, we've got nothing better to do than to tell jokes."

"But they're not jokes," the younger man says. "They're just numbers."

"That's all you know," the older man replies. "The thing is, we've all been here so long that we've heard all each other's jokes so often that we've memorized them. So rather than tell the whole joke again, we've numbered 'em all. Now we just remind each other of the joke by calling out the number."

"Really? Can I try it?"

"Go for it, kid."

"Eleven!"

Silence.

The young man turns to the older prisoner and says, "I don't get it. What's wrong?"

The older man shakes his head. "Some people just don't know how to tell a joke."

The only thing that made the joke funny in church is that the person telling the joke messed it up so badly that people were really confused and no one really laughed --- some people really don't know how to tell a joke.

But I had heard the joke before, a long time ago, and this time it reminded me so much of my friend Kathy that I was laughing at the joke long before Pastor Tommy started getting confused, and long before he told the punchline.

When Kathy and I were working together at Census, several years ago now, the division chief of our division back then sent an email to the entire division that said, "There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't." We had heard the joke before, and we thought it said 11 when we'd heard it before. My friend John said that he though it was supposed to be 11 instead of 10. So Kathy and I sent a message to everyone in our address books on our home email accounts and asked them which number they thought was funnier, 10 or 11. We also starting asking people in person or on the phone. Several of our relatives wrote back that they weren't sure which number was funnier, but that they thought the two of us were crazy and/or insane. I remember my dad thought that 10 was funnier because it was a nice, round number, and Mr. West, the guard at the front desk thought that 11 was funnier because it was closer to midnight, and he got off work at midnight.

After that, there was a SpongeBob episode were Patrick goes with SpongeBob to boating school, and the kids and I happened to see it on TV while were were shopping for batteries at a Radio Shack. Kathy happened to see the same episode. Patrick gets nervous and tells the class his name is 24, and the class laughs. SpongeBob says, "You know what's funnier than 24? . . . 25!"

And there were times when someone would say a number, and Kathy and I would just start laughing, like the time we went to Bojangles for lunch and Kathy had ticket number 24 and I had number 25, or the other way around, and we both looked at our numbers and just started laughing. The lady who took our money asked what was so funny. I told her that I was doing my SpongeBob impersonation. She said, "Yeah, I like SpongeBob, too," but she still looked at us like we were insane.

My oldest and I were at the county seat the other day and had to take tickets to talk to the ladies. We had numbers 10 and 11, and we both just started laughing.

It's not exactly like the prison joke, but there are some numbers that remind me of people or of other jokes, and they just make me laugh.

So when I saw this speed limit sign, I had to take a picture, even if it was hard to take a picture of a shining sign in the dark. Where else was I going to see a speed limit of 24?

You know what's funnier than 24?

A New Year

2008-01-04T23:48:00.000-06:00

I have had several inquiries for my consulting business --- some really interesting seasonal adjustment work and some SAS program debugging. All of the potential clients seem to be easy to work with at this point.

I'm also trying to work out a way to get some of my courses on-line for people who want to pay. I need to talk to my computer support people about this again and see if he has any suggestions. I really also need to do a mailing, but I don't know when I'm going to find the time. I have some programming projects of my own I should be working on also.

I also found out this week that I will be teaching again at Belmont for the Spring semester, which starts next week. I need to redo my syllabus and get ready to teach again. I know it will be easier this semester, but right now it seems a bit overwhelming on top of everything else.

And I have a pile of tests to grade by the middle of the month when we need to send in the next batch of work to my oldest daughter's correspondence school.

I hope everyone is having a great 2008. Go Ohio State!

ttfn

Limbo

2007-12-11T22:34:00.002-06:00

Work on the consulting side as been slow since November. That turned out to be a blessing as a fought a very bad case of poison ivy. I don't expect it to pick up until January, though I am very thankful for my few regular clients. I do have a few new prospects, so I'm not at all discouraged.

I finished all my grading for the Belmont courses. It's a relief to be finished, but I still don't know if I'm teaching next semester or not. It would be nice to teach another semester now that I have this semester under my belt, but it would also be nice to have a break. I'd really like to do a mailing, too, to drum up more business for my courses. Plus, I have some catching up to do for grading for the girls, and I would love to have more time to scrapbook (I still have a couple of pictures to paste in my Japan book).

On the other hand, I'm getting a lot of French done on the long commutes to Belmont. I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of sentence structure and basic verb forms. It's funny, though, what they've taught me and what they haven't. For example, I know the words for January, February, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, but not the other months or the other days of the week. And we've learned the names for France, Belgium, Italy, England, and Canada. And I know how to ask about the time and the weather, but they keep making me practice asking about the weather in Canada or in England in January or February --- "Il faisait très froid au Canada en janvier et en février." And I can order coffee, beer, or wine, but I don't drink any of those, though I can order milk because they taught me that (I might need milk in my coffee). But, realistically, I do know that Diet Coke is "Coca-Cola Lite" in France, so I suppose I don't need to know anything else to drink. I've been renting French movies, and I'm really enjoying listening to the French. Maybe I'll learn the other months and some good things to eat that way.

I guess I'm feeling a little bit lost tonight. I should probably grade papers for the girls, but I think I'll read Dumas instead.

ttfn

Saxon Math

2007-10-12T22:17:00.003-05:00

Things are finally settling down for school this year. My high school student and I really struggled with her math course. Her high school wanted her to put in 3-4 hours a day working on math, and yet it was 95% review. She was so discouraged. She's already had Algebra I and Geometry from books by Harold Jacobs. This was an Algebra II book, and our first time with a book by John Saxon.

I thought I should look ahead in the book to see when the review would end. I discovered that there were several topics that should be covered in Algebra II that aren't in the book at all.
Algebra II should be a study of functions, and Saxon math thinks it's a study of geometric shapes and polar coordinates. It's so frustrating to me. Besides the fact that my child was hating math, I was worried that she wouldn't be ready for higher math in later years if we continued with only the Saxon book.

So I bought another Algebra II book, one by Paul Foerster. She's doing problems in both books so that she can take the tests from the first book, and we're learning all the concepts in the second (more difficult) book. Though it sounds like extra work for my daughter, she's actually doing much better in school since we started this. She's still spending 3-4 hours a day working on math problems, but she's interested in math again. She completes her assignments quickly in the Saxon book because she knows that more interesting material is coming. It's been a burden on me to figure out a schedule that will work for her school and for her, but now that we're getting it settled, I'm feeling better, too. Also, I know that she won't be getting behind in math.

Darin worries that I push my kids too much in math. I don't want to require them to be math majors, but I don't want their future career choices to be hampered by inadequate preparation, especially in math.

Last Day of Summer Vacation

2007-08-12T22:11:00.000-05:00

School starts for the girls tomorrow. And I now have two teenagers.

Maybe I'm just too tired, but I'm not so stressed over it right now. Maybe it will hit me when my oldest and I are going over her math assignment tomorrow that I have a girl in high school now. She reminded us tonight that it's less than six months before she'll get her learner's permit and be able to drive out on the roads.

The consulting business is picking up again now that summer is almost over, and I'm working on class notes for the course at Belmont for next week. When I think about what I have to do, I think that I should be really stressed about biting off too much, but right now it feels like I can handle this. We'll see how it goes. First, I still have to clean up my office and sort papers before the new school year gets too far gone.

ttfn

Trip to Belmont

2007-08-01T22:15:00.000-05:00

I took a trip up to Belmont this morning to pick up my textbook and start some paperwork. I also got to see where my office will be. (I share with the other adjuncts.) The math secretary also gave me my keys and syllabi from other professors who have taught the course in years past.

It's a nice drive, and it's a nice campus, but it's really hot today, and all the walking around campus (like walking over to Human Resources) while carrying an armload of books around really made me tired. I suppose that I should have brought along an empty book bag, but I didn't think about it until it was too late.

I need to start working on my course materials for Belmont, but what I really want to do is work on scrapbooks. I ordered more pictures over the weekend. I'm thinking that with some careful planning, I can finish up 2006 before the end of 2007. I would really like that. Then all I have to do are baby books, my trip to Japan, anything before the year 2000, the year we spent in Luxembourg . . . . . . .

New projects always seem too big at first. One step at a time, and soon I'll be able to teach Statistics 101 with one hand tied behind my back.

ttfn

New school year

2007-07-11T09:44:00.000-05:00

There have been several changes in the wind for this next school year. One change is my new teaching job at Belmont University. The other big change is that my oldest daughter is starting high school. We've been homeschooling the kids since kindergarten, but I wanted the kids to have a transcript when they finished high school. So my oldest daughter is going to be in correspondence school this year.

She and I decided on Christian Liberty Academy (CLA). I would have liked to send her to the University of Nebraska high school because of their really good reputation, but we couldn't afford it. On the bright side, we've been using some books from Christian Liberty for years, so we know what we're getting into. Also, we can take individual classes from Nebraska and still get them on her transcript from CLA. I think we might end up doing that for math. CLA only requires one year of math, so after this year, any math she takes will cost us extra, so maybe we can afford to pay a little bit more and get the course from another correspondence school.

For seventh grade for all the girls, I switched to a curriculum from Veritas Press that was more difficult than what we had been using for elementary school. This made for a big jump in time commitment and difficulty between sixth grade and seventh grade for the girls. The positive side of this is that the leap from eighth grade to ninth grade won't be so much of a leap. I'm generally pleased with the ninth-grade text books. So far my girls haven't read many short stories and poetry for the past two years, and not much American literature, and the new literature class will fill in the gaps nicely. I'm still a bit skeptical about the Algebra II book from Saxon Math, but I can supplement with my books if I need to. I think it's a bit light on the trigonometry.

We worked out a schedule for the year together, and I looked through the forms that CLA sent on a CD. Some of them I need to use for them when I send in materials for grading, but the scheduling forms were optional, and we didn't like them. I decided to program my own scheduling forms. I came up with something that the girls and I liked, and so I have the whole school year in the computer now. We can all access the calendar, and I can print out weekly schedules for all three girls. My husband thought I was completely obsessed with this project, but after years of writing out assignments by hand, I can't believe that I didn't write a computer program to do this years ago, and the programming for it took me just a few hours.

ttfn

ICES III in Montreal

2007-06-30T09:36:00.000-05:00

Every time I look at this blog I realize that it mirrors how overwhelmed I've been feeling since Daddy's death.

I had a bit of a melt-down (again (speaking of Daddy)) the day we were supposed to leave for the ICES III conference in Canada, but to make a long story short, we did finally leave that day, and we went on the trip, and the conference was good, and the girls had a good time, and we got to see lots of friends. The next step for me, professionally, is to finish up writing the papers that I presented, before the end of August.

I sent in the paperwork I needed to send to Belmont, and I'm looking forward to starting my teaching gig there in late August. I'm even looking forward to the commute --- some quality time in the car to practice with my French CD's.

The consulting business has slowed down for the summer, but it's been nice to have a break, and it was nice to have the money in the bank already to pay for the trip to Montreal.

The other big issue for us this summer was getting my oldest daughter ready for high school at her correspondence school. I'll write more about that in a bit.

ttfn

About Daddy

2007-04-03T20:51:00.000-05:00

This is the eulogy I gave tonight at Daddy's funeral:

When I was a child, I thought that everyone had the same kind of childhood that I had, and it wasn't until I was older that I learned to appreciate the uniqueness of my childhood. Let me tell you about my dad.

When I was little, before I could say the word "statistician," Daddy and I would pretend to be statisticians. We’d do little experiments in the kitchen, or we’d do a survey of words in the newspaper, and then we would graph our results. We discussed the properties of bell-shaped curves. We figured out the probability of drawing a pair of matching socks from my well-mixed sock drawer.

When I was in third grade, Mrs. Hoffman was teaching us multiplication tables, and I was bored. When I told Daddy I was bored in math, he said he would teach me a magic trick. He got out his book of logarithm tables (back in the olden days before calculators could do logarithms), and he showed me how to look up numbers in the logarithm table. Then you would take the logarithms and add them, but when you undid the logarithm they would really be multiplied. I tried it over and over for any multiplication problem I could think of, and the next day I told Mrs. Hoffman that my dad had taught me a really cool magic trick with logarithms. She called my dad later and suggested to him that he should stop teaching me at home. He ignored her suggestion.

But math to my dad was more than just the kind of math you might use as a statistician, it was the kind of math you used in sports. I learned how to compute "yards per carry" and "runs batted in." There is never a time in my life when I can remember NOT knowing the rules to football, baseball, and basketball, and I've been a Nebraska football fan my whole life. Some of you might know that my dad knew Richie Ashburn who played major-league baseball in Philadelphia and later worked for them as a broadcaster, but my dad had other connections, too. When we lived in Vermillion, South Dakota, Daddy was friends with the announcer for the town baseball team. Daddy and Don and I went to a lot of baseball games in Vermillion, and sometimes I would get to sit up in the announcer’s booth, and one time I even got to run the scoreboard, to turn on the balls, strikes, and outs. Daddy took us to high school football, basketball, and wrestling, and University of South Dakota football and basketball, too. And when we moved to Tennessee, we started going to Science Hill and ETSU games and track meets.

Time with Daddy was more than just math. Daddy read out loud to us, everything from "The House that Jack Built" and "Oh How Do We Get to the Zoo?" to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Rice Burrows. Daddy taught me to sing the tenor part on the hymns with him before I could read well enough to read the words of the hymns. We took family vacations out west to see the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, and trips in the east to every major Civil War battle site, and as many of the minor ones as Daddy could find.

Daddy loved to look for patterns in every day things, from the number of petals on wildflowers to odometer readings on the car. I remember calling Daddy on his 48th birthday and asking how it feels to be 48. He said it felt a lot like 47. I called him on his 49th birthday, and he was really excited. This wasn't just any birthday. I had just turned 25, and he was 49, and that was 5 squared and 7 squared. And to make it even better, on his mom’s next birthday, she was going to turn 81, so then we'd have 5, 7, and 9 squared. I remember that he said, "We couldn't have done better if we'd planned it." And I remember thinking, but who would have thought to plan this?

No matter what happened in our lives, I always knew, without any doubt, that my dad loved me and my brothers, even when (or maybe especially when) we were being punished. I also knew, without any doubt, that he loved my mom.

It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that not every child has this kind of childhood. Not everyone grows up in such a secure and loving home with such amazing parents. I also discovered that not everyone loved math and statistics like I did.

Now I’m married with three kids of my own, and this has given me a chance to see Daddy’s teaching abilities with the next generation. I remember very clearly overhearing my dad watching a Nebraska football game on TV, and hearing him explain the kind of plays you might want to run on second and 7. I went out to see who he was talking to, and it was daughter Naomi when she was only two months old. I asked Daddy what he was doing, and he told me that it’s never too early to start training the next generation. And it works. Much to my husband’s chagrin, all three of my girls route for Nebraska. Daddy loved watching his granddaughters play soccer and going to their piano recitals. And Mom and Dad took us all on a family vacation out to Yellowstone and Custer State Park to see Daddy’s beloved buffaloes in the wild.

Besides being a mother, you might have guessed that I’m a statistician by profession. Every day I use the lessons he taught me. I teach classes on time series, and I explain to people how magical logarithm can be. I teach my girls math and music and history, and we visit as many battlefields from the War Between the States as we can manage. I still sing tenor on the hymns in church. I still have a very well-mixed sock drawer.

I could never live up to everything Daddy did. I mean, we are talking about the man who had to walk through the snow barefoot to school every day, and uphill both ways. OK, so he liked to tell stories, and I was fairly gullible, but I did always work hard at what I set my mind to do. I always wanted to do my very best, not so that my dad would love me, but because I loved him, and I wanted to be just like him.

The most important thing that Daddy taught me was to be passionate about God. Finding patterns in nature wasn't some kind of hobby with Dad, or something to pass the time. It was just one way to marvel at all the amazing gifts that God has given us, to appreciate the world around us, to see God’s handiwork in even the little things. Daddy taught me that there is beauty in everything around us. There is beauty in every situation, even the bad ones, when we can see that God is in control. When something miraculous happens and other people chalk it up to coincidence or chance, as statisticians, we can figure out the probabilities and see very clearly the hand of God. Daddy taught me how to see the Power behind the chance.

The older I get, the more I'm convinced that if someone doesn't love math, it's only because they didn't have a good teacher. So every day, I can thank God that I had the very best math teacher, right from the start.

Daddy

2007-03-30T20:56:00.000-05:00

Tonight I lost my dad to cancer. He was the greatest dad in the world, and my first and greatest math and statistics teacher. I'm so sad to lose him, but I feel so blessed to have had such a wonderful man for my dad and my mentor.

Today was the one-year anniversary of us moving back to the States. I'm so glad that we moved back to the States, and I'm so glad that we live so close to my parents' house.

Graphs

2007-03-23T09:44:00.000-05:00

If there is anything I like better than time series, it's statistical graphs.

I had a client who asked me to make some graphs for his research report. It was the most fun I've had doing statistics in a very long time.

His supervisor suggested scatter plots. They turned out to be quite helpful.

He also needed a way to compare results over many questions. So I made graphs of the confidence intervals, taking into account that he was doing multiple comparisons. Though they are a little bit crowded, it was still a great way to look at the questions and see where the statistical differences were.

I could be really happy if I could get paid all the time to make graphs for people's research.

ttfn

Two-year Anniversary

2007-02-26T17:56:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was the two-year anniversary of my leaving the Census Bureau. I'm still in touch with many of my former co-workers, and the more I hear about what is going on there, the more I'm glad I decided to leave.

I was having health problems that the doctors thought were caused by stress. I have had a very stressful past two years with moving to Europe, and moving within Luxembourg, and coming back to the States without jobs or a place to live, with a broken leg that included a hospital stay and surgery. And through it all, I haven't been sick at all (except for that broken leg). I just keep wondering if it wasn't the stress that was getting to me but something in that old building.

So now Census is getting a new building, and I suppose it beats having a lot of health problems, but anyone I know who is already in the new building isn't happy.

If I had moved into the new building, I'd have to spend my life in a sunless, noisy cubicle. Not to mention the daily commute. And there are all the meetings and all the red tape and all the reports to write for management that keep a person from doing fun work like programming and research. If I was at Census, I would be making 8-10 times more than I will make this year (just a forecast of my earnings this year), but it's not worth it to me.

Here I am in my 200-square-foot corner office, with a fireplace, easy chair, CD collection, big wooden desk, and awesome views of pasture land and wooded hills, and a commute that consists of 8 steps from my bedroom door. I like the work I'm doing because I only accept work that I will like. I have time for research and programming. I'm working part-time so I can spend more time with my kids.

So much has happened to us in the past two years that it seems like so much longer since I was at the Census Bureau. Though I seriously doubted my decisions along the way, and I doubted my ability to see God's direction for my life, it's much easier now to have some peace about my current life. I really do feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be.

I celebrated my anniversary by installing SAS software on my computer. It will take me some time to get up and running with it again, but I'm looking forward to having SAS again. I feel very hopeful about my future.

ttfn

Health Insurance

2007-02-09T08:50:00.000-06:00

The worst part of starting my own business was not knowing what to do about health insurance. I'm happy to say that the debate is over.

My husband received a notice that he would be hired on permanently and was invited to an orientation meeting yesterday morning. We were hoping that meant that he would be hired on permanently starting next week. It turns out that he was already considered permanent beginning this past Monday. That means, as of Monday, we have health insurance! With this permanent job, my husband also gets a raise, and he will qualify to transfer to other jobs in the company that he would like better.

I try not to worry, and I haven't lost any sleep over it, but a lack of health insurance was a concern for me. We are making it financially, and we have some in savings, but we don't have a lot in savings, and one really big bill would have put us in a tailspin. Now I know we're going to be OK. The coverage is really good, and we're going to get the dental also because it will give us a discount for the orthodontist. It's just really such a relief.

I just feel that a huge weight has been lifted off this family. I know we can make now.

Business is good

2007-02-03T09:36:00.000-06:00

Business is really picking up. After no paying clients in 2006, I've had a lot of work in 2007. I've even been a little bit busier than I would like because I don't want to neglect the children. They are being good sports about my working, though. I told them if I make a million dollars this year then I will buy them an in-ground swimming pool. They figured out that I should be making about $4,000 a day, so if they see me away from the computer, they ask me why I'm not working. They can be harder task-masters than any boss I've ever had. On a more realistic note, I'm hoping to pay for orthodontia for the girls, and I'm feeling very hopeful.

Personal Provenance

2007-01-23T17:52:00.000-06:00

My younger brother is two years younger than me and, as long as I can remember, he's been smarter than me. Which, now, is really cool. But when you're little, it's kind of embarrassing.

One of our favorite Catherine-was-so-stupid-and-pig-headed moments to laugh about now happened when we were probably about 6 and 8, or maybe 8 and 10. My brother and I are in the car with my parents, and my brother says something, and I'm not really paying attention because I don't understand what he said. A little bit later, I happen to notice that one of the businesses in town has a balloon hanging on its sign, and it's shaped like a little blimp. So I say, "Look, there's a little blimp!"

My brother says, "That's what I said."

My response was something to the effect: "I know you said something, but that's not what you said."

His response was something to the effect: "What I said was 'Look. there's a miniature dirigible.'"

I proceeded to have a huge argument with him about whether or not what he said was the same thing as what I said. Sometimes my parents would be upset with us for arguing all the time in the car, but this time, I think they were too busy laughing.

So about a month ago, my brother uses the word "provenance" in reference to my grandfather's organ that he was helping me move to my house. I have no idea what he's talking about. "Don't you watch the 'Antiques Roadshow'?" he asks. Well, I do sometimes, but I somehow tend to tune out words that I don't know the meaning of. Words like dirigible. You would think that my brother would know this about me already. So then my brother decides to help me improve my vocabulary and encourages me to use the word in conversation so that I will remember the word. Seein's how it sounds so French, and I'm all about learning French, you would think that I could remember this word. But I don't. I have a really hard time remembering the word whenever I find some opportunity to use it in a sentence. And I see the word all the time now, so I don't know how I missed it before. As an example, here is an article on Wikipedia about a really interesting painting by Jan van Eyck, and the article has a section on Provenance.

So I got out my very first stat book from Iowa the other day, and I find an index card with my dad's writing on it. I have a very clear memory of my dad and I sitting at the dining room table at the house we lived in when I was a kid. I really don't know how old I was, but definitely older than 4 and younger than 12, and probably about 10. I had asked my dad some questions about normal distributions, so he took out an index card from his pocket (my dad loves to carry index cards and pens with him everywhere), and his black felt-tip pen, and he drew some pictures on that card. And I remember afterwards thinking that the card was really important, because when I grew up, I was going to need to know the normal distribution. So I kept it in a safe place in my room, and the card surfaced when I was in grad school, and I was using it for a bookmark, mostly to help me not be so homesick.

I hadn't seen that card in years, and I found it today. And I realized that this is a very important part of my provenance---the documentation regarding my origins.

So I called my dad, and I tried to use the word "provenance" in a sentence, and I couldn't remember the word.

Sorry about that, brother dear.

ttfn

Wishing you a Seasonally Adjusted Holiday Season!

2006-12-08T13:10:00.000-06:00

My friend Erica used to have (and maybe still has) a cartoon on the wall of her office, and I wished I had asked her for a copy. But today I found a copy on the site cartoonbank.com.

One man to another as they walk down the street at Christmas time:
“Yes, I’m somewhat depressed, but seasonally adjusted I’m probably happy enough.”

Click here to see the cartoon at cartoonbank.com.

Cheers!

Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006

2006-11-21T22:21:00.000-06:00

I was sorry to hear of Milton Friedman's passing last week. I hear all this talk of Bo Schembechler and Robert Altman, but I didn't hear anything on the regular news about Dr. Friedman, and it's really too bad. Not to minimize the contributions that Mr. Schembechler and Mr. Altman have made in other people's lives, or to speak ill of the dead, but it seems that Dr. Friedman's impact can be felt around the world and will still be felt decades from now.

Milton Friedman wrote a lot of books, some of them I own and have read. He was an incredibly brilliant man, and he was really good at explaining things. He won the Nobel Prize for Economics back in 1976. According to Wikipedia, he made "major contributions to the fields of macroexonomics, microeconomics, economic history, and statistics", and his Nobel Prize was awarded for "his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy."

Friedman advocated laissez-faire capitalism, and is considered to have been one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. Wikipedia says that his ideas "had a major impact on the economic policy of both the Nixon and Reagan administrations" and in other governments in other countries. Some people say that his book Capitalism and Freedom, published in 1962, was part of the reason behind the fall of communism in parts of Eastern Europe.

He explained free-market economics in a series of specials aired on PBS back in the 1980's. Some of them are on You Tube. Check out his talk about pencils. Very cool.

He was 94 years old, and he lived a really incredible life. It's too bad that more people don't know who he is.

His obituary in the Financial Times.

Seasonally Adjusted Oil Prices to win an Election

2006-10-26T12:06:00.000-05:00

I found this story on a blog (a blog with pictures that I wouldn't recommend anyone looking at because I'm not a fan of porn), with links back to www.usatoday.com that didn't work, and I can't find the original on the USA Today site either. But I love this story.

The emphasis in the article below is mine.

Many Americans look for political manipulation as gasoline prices plunge
By Brad Foss, Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- There is no mystery or manipulation behind the recent fall in gasoline prices, analysts say. Try telling that to motorists. Almost half of Americans believe the plunge at the pump has more to do with politics and the November elections, than economics.

According to a new Gallup poll, 42% of respondents agreed with the statement that the Bush administration "deliberately manipulated the price of gasoline so that it would decrease before this fall's elections." Fifty-three percent of those surveyed did not believe the conspiracy theory; 5% said they had no opinion. Not surprising, almost two-thirds of those who suspect President Bush intervened to bring down energy prices before Election Day are registered Democrats, according to Gallup.

White House spokesman Tony Snow addressed the issue Monday, telling reporters that "the one thing I have been amused by is the attempt by some people to say that the president has been rigging gas prices, which would give him the kind of magisterial clout unknown to any other human being."

Fimat USA oil analyst Antoine Halff says there is no doubt "the downturn in prices is welcome news from an electoral standpoint for the ruling party." But he scoffed at the notion that the president has the power to muscle a global market.

At a suburban Miami Mobil station, where regular was selling for $2.66 a gallon, no one was buying the conspiracy theory. "The decrease of gas prices is simply due to a seasonal adjustment of price," said Javier Gudayal, a 48-year-old attorney. "And that the Bush administration does not have the power to manipulate."

But in Los Angeles, which has some of the highest gasoline prices in the country, motorists wouldn't rule out the possibility of politicians eager to sway the electorate. Twenty-eight-year-old attorney Amnon Siegel sensed more than market forces at work. "I'm sure there's some sort of string-pulling going on," Siegel said.

I'm intrigued by the idea of seasonally adjusting gasoline prices.

I'm really good at seasonally adjusting things. If you want New Home Sales at 900 million, I could get you that answer. That's why at the Census Bureau and other government agencies, once you've set the seasonal adjustment options, you aren't allowed to change them month by month. I remember a time back in late 1992 when we knew that the estimates for New Home Sales were off, but we didn't want to change it before the election for fear that someone would think that we were trying to influence an election. As I pointed out back then, not changing bad numbers also effects the election, but no one was listening, and I was new in DC back then.

So even if someone could fix a bunch of number in a bunch of different time series, what would you have to be able to change so that you could actually influence the price of gasoline? If you seasonally adjust a time series of gasoline prices, and make the current price $2 a gallon, that doesn't mean that it will really be $2 a gallon at the pump. You'd have to be able to sway a lot of different factors to really get the prices to change.

Of course, what the 48-year-old lawyer from Miami really means is that oil prices usually come down after summer vacations are over, and with a mild hurricane season, they fell again. There are seasonal fluctuations in oil and gasoline prices. If we seasonally adjusted the prices, we'd really be paying more for gasoline now, and less for heating oil. Think about that.

ttfn

Cardinals/Mets baseball

2006-10-17T23:44:00.000-05:00

I'm a bit of a Cardinals fan, growing up in a town with a Cardinals farm league team. I admit that I like watching small town baseball better than the big boys. Maybe because I can see the game better. But I do follow baseball some, and especially the Cardinals, I suppose.

I found an article about post-season pitching titled "Seasonal Adjustment". I wonder if my seasonal adjustment software could help them with their pitching line-ups. Just kidding.

From www.courant.com

Seasonal Adjustment
Glavine, Weaver On Three Days' Rest
October 16, 2006

ST. LOUIS -- Last week's rainout of Game 1 has forced both managers to use their Game 1 starter on three days' rest for Game 5 tonight. That's postseason baseball, where nothing is routine about changing your routine. "This time of year, I think the physical side of it is taken care of by the adrenaline," said Tom Glavine, who will start for the Mets against the Cardinals' Jeff Weaver.

ttfn

Paper accepted

2006-10-02T17:29:00.000-05:00

My paper was accepted at the ICES III conference in Montreal in June. I was already going as an invited speaker, so sometimes I wonder why I wanted the extra hassle of presenting a paper, but I'm sure that it will motivate me to keep working on my research.

After some time off in September to get the kids off to a good start in school, and a trip up to the DC area, October is proving to be quite productive, and I hope to have some new papers on the web site soon.

Extra Income

2006-09-30T17:17:00.000-05:00

I had my interview this week at a university in Nashville for a job as an adjunct professor with the mathematics department. I liked the math department chair. We discussed teaching philosophies and how statistics is different than most of the rest of math. She said that she's getting some pressure from the Business school to offer more Statistics courses. She also said that I might get some consulting work, especially from the Economics department, when they know I'm around. The money is good, better than I could get in DC as an adjunct. It sounds very promising. We'll have to see how it all works out.

Walking Again!

2006-07-08T16:15:00.000-05:00

I went to see my doctor yesterday, almost exactly 4 months after my accident. I've been walking without a boot or a brace now for a couple of weeks, and I was hopeful for the prognosis.
My visit went just like I had hoped it would! My doctor said I don't need another doctor visit or any more physical therapy. The x-rays looked great, she was impressed with my flexibility and strength in my ankle, and she told me once again that the doctor in Luxembourg did a really good job fixing a really tough break.

She said that I should wear my ankle brace when walking on uneven ground (gravel or grass) for another 6 months, and no high heels for 6 months to a year. She suggested that I wear the ankle brace for the rest of my life if I'm doing something that could cause an ankle injury, like sports, rock climbing, etc. I suppose that also covers walking on ice, but I forgot to ask about that part. Hopefully that's not such a big issue in Tennessee.

The problem with being able to walk again is that I've been busy unpacking boxes, and I haven't had as much time as I would like for writing. Do I discipline myself to do some writing every day, or do I just bite the bullet, unpack the boxes, and then focus on writing? My claustrophobia sitting here among the boxes suggests the latter plan.

Cheers!

ICES III and other future conferences

2006-05-17T13:20:00.000-05:00

Since I knew getting to the ASA (American Statistical Association) meeting for 2006 would be difficult for me (even before I broke my leg), I had hoped that ICES III (Third International Conference on Establishment Surveys) could be my first big conference after I had moved back to the States. (I'm still bummed that I missed the Eurostat conference this month, but even more bummed that I'm going to miss the International Symposium on Forecasting in Spain in June. I'd really been looking forward to that one.)

ICES is a great conference, and I have been working on my abstract to see if it would be accepted. Last week, I received an invitation to give a talk on seasonal adjustment! I'm very excited. I'll still submit the abstract, too, but now I'm sure now that I'll be going to Montreal in 2007! It will be a great way to get back into the swing of things as far as my research goes.

Who knows? Maybe I'll make it to the ASA meeting in 2007, too.

Endings and Beginnings

2006-05-08T14:33:00.000-05:00

I realized today that it's been ages since I've written on the blog, and so much has changed since my last post.

At the end of February, my contract was up with HENDYPLAN, and we decided not to renew, but to go back to the States instead. My boss convinced me to stay until the end of March, but then on the 6th of March, as I walked to the bus to go to work, I broke both bones in my leg just above the ankle. I had surgery to fix it that afternoon (13 screws, 1 plate, 3 incisions, and 24 stitches). I was released from the hospital on March 13, but with instructions from my doctor not to go back to work. There was never a cast, so I was able to wash my leg, but it made me nervous to have it so unprotected. He was fine with letting me travel back to the States at the end of March.

This left Darin and the girls on their own to finish packing the house. The container came on Friday, 10 March, and it left on Monday morning (13 March), headed for the US! Our pastor's wife (and assistant Chaplain) lined up some guys to help Darin load on Saturday.

We flew back to my parents' house, and then came to look for a house outside of Nashville, TN. We closed on the house on May 2, our furniture arrived on May 4, and internet access started on May 5, so I'm back in business with the web site.

After seeing a doctor in Tennessee in April, I now have a big, black boot for my right foot and leg. It helps me feel more secure when I walk, and I'm starting to put weight on it now, per instructions from my doctor. I could still be on crutches until July, and maybe not able to drive until then either. So though I'm anxious to get started with my new consulting business, I have to be realistic about my schedule. It will take me longer than usual to get the office set up since I will need to depend so much on my husband and children, and traveling will be out for several more months. I'm encouraged, though, by the leads I have already, even before I'm settled in the new house and office.

Besides working on unpacking boxes, I'm also going to finish up a paper on spectral diagnostics and start up work on the book again. This is going to be a really exciting time for me, and I look forward to being able to share more about it on the blog!

ttfn

Seasonal Adjustment Disorder

2006-03-03T12:43:00.000-06:00

My friend Kathy sent me a message about "Seasonal Adjustment Disorder." She was searching for seasonal adjustment web sites, and came across a blog from South Africa in the process.
http://bipolardaily.blogspot.com/2005/09/seasonal-adjustment-disorder-sad.html

I found another mention of it in another blog at
http://seasonal-affective-disorder-sad.blogspot.com/2005/11/history-of-seasonal-affective-disorder.html
"In the United States, the diagnosis of Seasonal Affective Disorder was first suggested by one Norman E. Rosenthal, MD. His work was based on personal observations of his own seasonal adjustment when moving from South Africa to New York. "

I am well aware of the effects of Seasonal Affective Disorder. I noticed a difference in my usual post-Christmas blues being so much farther north this year than I was used to, and now that it is March, I notice the increase in sunshine. I had just not heard it called Seasonal Adjustment Disorder, unless it was one of my friends kidding around with me. Since the blogger is from South Africa, and this Dr. Rosenthal seems to have done his own "seasonal adjustment", maybe calling it Seasonal Adjustment Disorder is a South African thing.

I did a GoogleFight between the two phrases. "Seasonal Affective Disorder" is mentioned 1,430,000 times on the web, and "Seasonal Adjustment Disorder" is mentioned only 1,390 times.

However, I think I have it. I really do. I have six reports to write, and I'm having trouble getting the data I need into a form that X-12 and TRAMO/SEATS can read. I think the best way to describe the situation right now is "Seasonal Adjustment Disorder."

Delay for the papers

2006-01-26T12:20:00.000-06:00

I'm still working on the papers pages, but I had to take a break to deal with some computer problems on the family computer due to the Trojan.Zlob.H. It showed up right at the time when our anti-virus software expired and needed to be updated, and we had problems with the update because of the Zlob. It's been an interesting experience. I'm learning quite a bit about trojans and rogue spyware software.

I do hope to get more papers loaded soon on my web site, and the pages that link to the papers completed after that.

It's up!

2005-12-31T10:51:00.000-06:00

The site is up! After a month of every other evening and random hours on weekends, the pages I wanted are on my site at http://www.catherinechhood.net/. The main reason I wanted the site was to help me answer emails from people, and the most important parts are the FAQ and the papers, and I don't have the paper pages finished yet. Still, a major accomplishment for me in the midst of all the shopping for Christmas and my usual scrapbooking projects.

Hooray!

Catherine C.H. Hood

2005-12-26T07:51:00.000-06:00

I've really enjoyed blogging about our experiences in moving to Luxembourg. I thought that I should set up a blog also to accompany the new web site: http://www.catherinechhood.net/.