Blog – HStern

Pirating the Book of Kells (like a viking)

The Book of Kells is an extraordinary 9th century gospel book and also the subject of a pretty good animated movie.

Robust relative paths

By now, most data scientists have learnt not to use absolute paths in their replication packages, and for good reason: absolute paths guarantee that the code will not run on…

Excel’s lambda function is misnamed

I don’t like Excel, but I can acknowledge that it has gotten a lot better over the last five years. One of my favourite new features is the lambda function that was added in…

Misleading productivity charts

Comparing productivity between countries is difficult. Variations in the systems of national accounts, data availability, and purchasing power must all be considered and…

Peanuts for working

I eat peanuts for lunch every day and am often called upon to defend this practice. Although the reasons are, to me, completely obvious, I have not yet been able to convince…

An easier way to generate seaborn ridgeplots

While their Joy Division inspired t-shirts and posters have given some people the impression that they’re not a serious visualization tool, ridgeline plots are an effective…

Computing producer surplus from a parametric supply curve

This is problem 12.5 from Nicholson and Snyder (2017). The textbook solution used a linear approximation but it is actually a good example of a parametric integral. Since…

Valid inputs in multiple keyboard layouts

Most of the time, inputting keys in the wrong keyboard layout will result in gibberish — but not always. I thought today I would try to find the longest input sequences that…

Following New Economics Papers with RSS

The option to subscribe to REPEC’s NEP service is hidden but still available. This post provides a list of available rss feeds.

Predoc Data Task: Labor Market Analysis

Here is my solution to the sample labour market analysis task published by PreDoc.org.

Predoc Data Task: Data Manipulation

This is my solution to the sample data manipulation task published by PreDoc.org.

Examining the Score Distributions of the GRE and GMAT

It’s somewhat strange that GRE and GMAT score percentiles are almost always presented in table form rather than visualizations. Plotting makes the distributions much easier…

How Fast Did Barbara Blackburn Type on Letterman?

In 1985 Barbara Blackburn appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in one of the most disastrous late night segments of all time.

Integrating R Graphics with Neovim and Nvim-R

The Nvim-R plugin extends a lot of RStudio functionality to Neovim but the default plotting experience leaves a lot to be desired.

Infinite Fizzbuzz With Generator Functions

Anyone can write a solution to the FizzBuzz problem, but what if you need it to run indefinitely?

Understanding the FHSA

The FHSA does not combine the benefits of the TFSA and RRSP. It has unique advantages that make it completely different from any other registered account.