Data Science Articles

• ProPublica’s Misleading Machine Bias

• Coronavirus and the Fallacy of Increasing Sample Sizes, or Incidence Versus Prevalence

  A growing total number of infected persons might seem like a sign of an epidemic, and it could be, but it could also just reflect the…

• What Everybody Gets (Slightly) Wrong About the Monty Hall Problem

  Admittedly, when I first heard the Monty Hall problem, I didn’t believe it.

• Improved Simulation Performance with Recursive Vectorization in Python

  Running a step-by-step simulation can be a time-intensive process if you’re dealing with large datasets, complex modeling logic, slow…

Journalism

• Train Accidents at Highway Crossings Increasing Despite Added Safety Measures

• Few Pipeline Incidents, But Plenty of Fitting Failures

• Hepatitis C Spending Breaking the Medicare Part D Bank

• Little Evidence of Diminished Turnout from Strict Voter ID

• Many Generic Drug Prices Moving in Lock-Step

• Ross Calls Trade Rules Easy to Evade Amid Concerns Over Steel Transshipment Through Canada

• Wave of Foreign Lobbying Filings Following Flynn

• Mexico’s Investments Driving Beef, Crop Exports

• Foreign M&A Delayed More Often by U.S. Review

• Natural Gas Reliance Driving Resiliency Concerns

• Few Labor Violations for Wells Fargo Amid Accounts Scandal

• Businesses Spending Heavily in Missouri, West Virginia Attorney General Races

• Activist Group Reaps Millions Under Federal Program, Provides Little Healthcare

• Puerto Rican Bonds Bought Cheap Following Failed Gas Pipeline

• Auto Crisis Accelerated Mexican Auto Imports That Began with NAFTA

• NAFTA Agricultural Trade Swiftly Becomes a Deficit

• Talc Cancer, Wen Hair Loss Reports Show Weak Reporting to FDA

• Multimillion-Dollar Ballot Measures, Few FCC Filings

• Energy Study Highlights Potential for Nuclear

• Malicious Attacks on Electric Grid Facilities Over-Reported

• Midlife Crises: Age of Convicted Inside Traders Trending Upward

• IHOP, Denny’s Top List of Full-Service Chains Accused of Wage Violations

• Judicial Crisis Network Floods Airwaves for Gorsuch

• Clothing Makers at Risk From Forced­Labor Import Ban

  Mnuchin’s OneWest Eluded Most Penalties During Foreclosure Crisis

  Mnuchin’s OneWest Avoided Force-Placed Insurance Class Actions During Crisis

  OneWest Donated to Calif. Attorneys General Before Case Was Dropped

  Open Records Request Exposes Rare Litigation Finance Document

  Bayer, BASF Top Tariff Exemption Requests

  How Much Did Dodd-Frank Cost? Don’t Ask Banks

  Dodd-Frank Overhaul Could Eliminate SEC’s Reserve Fund Spending

  Blackwater to Faux-Billionaires: Fed’s Exec Pay Data Flawed

  Thousands of Subsidiaries Go Missing From Bank SEC Filings

  Super PAC Spending Replaces Dark Money as Election Nears

  Competition, Generics Not Always Limiting Drug Costs

  Long-Term Discouraged Workers Increase in Growing Economy

  Global Coal Consumption Rising Despite Deep U.S. Cuts

  Little Change in LendingClub Loans Since Madden Decision

  Average Costs of Air Toxics Cases Increasing: EPA Data

  Super PAC Spending Becoming More Bipartisan

  Hospitals Feeling Pinch in States That Don't Expand Medicaid

  Clients of Mossack Fonseca: A U.S. Court Review

  Sanders, Not Trump, Scaring Convention Donors

  Community Banks Stable Amid Energy Market Downturn

  Hatch Demands Audited Financials From Puerto Rico

  Third-Quarter NAFTA Lobbying Turns to Copyright and Digital Trade

  NAFTA Lobbying Grows Steadily in Third Quarter

  Meatpackers Struggled to Sell Import-Labeled Beef

• DIP Loans Still Costly, Dominated by Non-Bank Creditors

• Patients, Researchers Demand Further Prosecution in Duke Case

• Views Mixed on Prison Screening for Hepatitis C

• Economists, U.S. Refineries Defend Oil Export Ban

• Corporate Prosecutions at 10-Year Low

  
  
  

• IRS More Aggressive in Closing Whistleblower Cases, Data Shows

• Flint EPA Class Action Might Turn on Discretionary Function

• USGS Study Finds 25 States at Risk For Lead Leaching into Homes From Wells

• Bill Would Ban Trading by Insiders in 8­K Filing Window

• Canadian Banks Could Hold Lesson for U.S. on Energy Downturn

• Community Banks Continue to Stabilize in 2015

• Corruption Prosecutions at Lowest Point in 20 Years

• Debate Over Quotas Divides TPP Sugar Deal

• No Sign of EPA Pick Pruitt Filing Cases Against Oklahoma Companies

• First Hawaiian SCOTUS Clerk Rises Despite Diving Enrollment

• IRS Enforcement Waning With Fewer Employees

• Panama Fallout: BVI Ignored as Money­Laundering Haven

• Trade Agency OKs Duties on Steel Plate from Three Countries

• Debate Over Quotas Divides TPP Sugar Deal

• U.S. Eases Sugar Import Curbs; First Quota Increase in Decade

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  Lax SEC Regulation and the Biotech Market

  Selective prosecution, regulatory loopholes and mercurial industry stocks create hectic investor conditions

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  Every Which Way but Regulated: The ‘Free Market’ Trucking Industry

  Trucking deregulation drove down wages across the industry, increased crime, and helped enable current day economies of scale that only serve to undermine labor standards in favor of cheap goods.

• The Decennial Market Crash

  The 2007 financial collapse, being the third large-scale market crash in three decades, was evidence that laissez-faire economics and deregulation had finally returned the economy to the decennial market collapse cycle of the pre-war era.

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  Stop Subsidizing Big Pharma

  Questions arise when a philanthropy gets a $3.3 billion windfall from selling their intellectual property

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  Neoliberalism at 30,000 Feet

  Airline deregulation has wrought service cuts, endless fees, and reduced worker pay.

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  Profiting Off of Misery: Privatized Criminal Justice in the Victorian Era

  Private prisons today are nothing more than a return to the monstrous rackets of the past.

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  Bad Science

  Free-market academic research policies have unleashed medical quackery and scientific fraud, forcing consumers to pay premiums for discoveries we’ve already funded as taxpayers.

  Alternate version for AFT's On Campus

• What If These TED Talks Were Horribly, Unspeakably Wrong?

  TED's lack of substantial peer review and its emphasis on what is new, what isn't divisive, and what is entertaining rather than accurate or well-researched means that horrendous nonsense can get a wide audience of the rich and powerful.

• The Real Reason Music's Gotten So Loud

  iTunes' SoundCheck won't end the so-called "loudness wars." It'll just give listeners a way to counter some musicians' undying instinct to "turn it up to 11."

• The End of Interns

  An interview with Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation on the ideological corruption of unpaid labor

• The Unrealistic Idealism of Online Manifestos

  Finding creativity by quitting your job and chasing dreams may not always be feasible.

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  Downtown Eastside Gentrification and its Discontents

  Did a well-meaning reality show reinvigorate Vancouver's anti-gentrification movement?

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  Why Computers Alone Can't Eliminate Corruption in Redistricting

  Choosing an algorithm that defines the boundaries is, in itself, a political decision that can never be value-neutral

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  Privatized Prisons: A Human Marketplace

  Having a monetary value tied to human incarceration and justice creates a deeply perverse incentive that should not exist in the world of criminal justice

  Related: Interview from Tommy Schnurmacher radio show on private prisons and guaranteed occupancy rates in private prison contracts

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  Demented Agitprop: The Myth and Madness of Agenda 21 Conspiracy Theories

  A look behind the groups that believe bike lanes and smart growth are here to steal our land and send us all to the gulag

  Review of Demented Agitprop from El Dink, UK e-book magazine

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  The Anti-Environmentalist Roots of the Agenda 21 Conspiracy Theory

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  Small Towns and the Private Prison Bubble

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  Let Us Now Praise Ugly Buildings

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  For Once-Obscure Music, a Golden Age of Reissues

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  How the Plummeting Price of Cocaine Fueled the Nationwide Drop in Violent Crime

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  All Hail Anonymity

  Real-name policies won't end the introvert's experience of the Internet, but it might end the Internet's experience of introverts.

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  The Folly of Bourgeois Sustainable Food

  Is it possible for gluttony, purity, and morality to coexist with affordability? Or is this utopian vision a myth?

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  There is Power in an IT Union

  There is power in a union for the information technology industry, one of The Atlantic's own developers argues, even though programmers often resist collective organizing

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  Welcome to Fabulous Roswell: The Rise of Postmodern Tourism

  What Chernobyl, Las Vegas, and a Santa Claus theme park in Finland tell us about the value and absurdity of travel

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  In an iTunes Age, the Case for Vinyl

  
  

  Downtempo Pop: When Good Music Gets a Bad Name

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  Miami Terror Machine: Who Is Francisco Chávez Abarca?

  He admits to planting bombs in hotels and colluding with others on the bombing of Cubana Flight 455, but maybe he's just a patsy in a game of cloak and dagger and disinformation to tarnish the good name of admitted terrorist Posada Carriles?

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  BrandStrong

  After resigning in disgrace from the charity he helped found and losing his sponsorship with Nike, Lance Armstrong now must cope with the leak of his new memoir—excerpted here.

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  Our Future National Pastime

  Predictions for the baseball season ahead from someone who hasn’t paid attention to sports statistics since the 1992 Orioles.

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  Les Bêtes Fromages

  America adores its clichés about France—skinny women, good sex, and “surrender monkeys.” Well, it’s about time we respected France’s history of conquering and oppressing the world.

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  The Ghost in the Machine Is a Jerk

  Everyone has computer problems—only a chosen few are driven insane by them. A defense of daily paranoia.

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  Just Criminalize It

  California looks to legalize pot in November—and that, in many ways, would be a crime. An argument against political causes involving dreadlocked alien masks.

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  Cuban Kremlinology

  Tourism has saved the island's economy, but the combination of tourism and socialism makes for an odd mix.

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  How to Become a Playwright

  The Non-Expert attempts to help a young thespian realize his misinformed dreams.

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  The Savior of Newspaperdom

  Unless the newspaper honchos invent some brilliant ideas, the broadsheet is dead. A last-ditch brainstorm.

• The Power of the Three

  This week we reveal the secrets of the mighty triumvirate that rules the universe. But you didn’t hear about it here.

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  The Transient, Digital Fetish (Toronto Star version)

  The Transient, Digital Fetish (Original)

• The Week After

  Barack Obama’s inauguration next week will be full of significant, historical events. But what about the seven days to follow?

• Programming in English, or Translate :: ParseLib :: English

  Computer code may not be gobbledygook, but that doesn’t make it art. A survey of the field of programming-cum-poetry to find the ghost (of Hamlet’s father) in the machine.

• Being Christopher Hitchens

  Living as a once-Trotskyist megaforce, now war-toting superstar can take its toll. Particularly when your personality subdivides into pro wrestlers.

• The Intramural Sports of Kings

  The signup sheet in the break room wants you and your co-workers to meet at the park on Saturday for a game of softball. For some it may just be fun, but for others it’ll be pure competition.

• The Mnemonics of Mnailguns

  ‘Tis the season for home renovation, but unless you have a degree (or years experience) in carpentry, a cheat-sheet is required for survival.

• Washington City Paper - 2009 Fringe & Purge

• TMN Mp3 Digest

Projects

• Github repos
• Lawdiff: Tracking word/phrase similarities across state bills
• Twitter.com/TurnsOfPhrase
• View from Your Window game

Plays

• The Apocalyptic Optimist was written and produced as part of the eXtreme eXchange’s political theatre shows, November 1st and 2nd, 2008 at the Roundhouse Theatre in Silver Spring.
• Tempting Doctor No at the Politically Fringealicious edition, July 27th, 2007, at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre
• A Political Menagerie at the Roundhouse in Silver Spring September, 2006, with a remount at the H Street Playhouse in 2008
• An Immodest Proposal at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in 2007
• The Misanthrope, a one-man show, was written and performed for the 2006 Fringe Festival at the Red & the Black
• Realty and Personalty was written and performed for the Capital Fringe Festival in 2006.