“The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) today released international banking statistics at end-September 2014. International banking activity continued to expand in the third quarter of 2014. The $493 billion quarterly expansion in global cross-border claims boosted the annual growth rate to about 5% at end-September 2014 from 1% at end-June 2014. The increase in cross-border… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: January 2015
Hubble’s High-Definition Panoramic View of the Andromeda Galaxy
Maanya Sachdeva – “Have you seen the largest picture ever taken? For the record, it’s a mammoth 1.5 billion pixel image (69, 536 x 22, 230) and requires about 4.3 GB disk space. Oh, and it’ll take your breath away. On January 5, NASA released an image of the Andromeda galaxy, our closest galactic neighbour,… Continue Reading
The Cobweb – Can the Internet be archived?
The New Yorker – Annals of Technology. January 26, 2015 Issue. The Cobweb Can the Internet be archived? By Jill Lepore “…The Web dwells in a never-ending present. It is—elementally—ethereal, ephemeral, unstable, and unreliable. Sometimes when you try to visit a Web page what you see is an error message: “Page Not Found.” This is… Continue Reading
Educational Attainment in the United States: 2014
Release Number: CB15-TPS.03 – “This table package provides Current Population Survey statistics on academic achievement by demographic characteristics, such as age, sex and Hispanic origin. It also includes detailed information on years of school completed, showing how many years of education adults have completed for each level of attainment. A variety of historical time series… Continue Reading
Training Students to Extract Value from Big Data
“As the availability of high-throughput data-collection technologies, such as information-sensing mobile devices, remote sensing, internet log records, and wireless sensor networks has grown, science, engineering, and business have rapidly transitioned from striving to develop information from scant data to a situation in which the challenge is now that the amount of information exceeds a human’s… Continue Reading
Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification
“Eyewitnesses play an important role in criminal cases when they can identify culprits. Estimates suggest that tens of thousands of eyewitnesses make identifications in criminal investigations each year. Research on factors that affect the accuracy of eyewitness identification procedures has given us an increasingly clear picture of how identifications are made, and more importantly, an… Continue Reading
Transforming the business through social tools
“After years of rapid and increasing adoption, the use of social technologies has become a common business practice. Now the responses to McKinsey’s latest survey on these technologies indicate that in certain functions (namely, sales and marketing), companies are applying social tools extensively and becoming more digital organizations overall. We asked executives about their companies’… Continue Reading
Paper – Why Critics of Transparency Are Wrong
Gary D. Bass, Danielle Brian and Norman Eisen – “From political polarization to a failure of leadership to weak campaign finance laws, there are a number of perceived reasons as to why Congress fails to do its job. But a growing chorus of political commentators, and even some prominent political scientists, now point to long-established… Continue Reading
New Working Papers – Bank for International Settlement
Working Papers: Global dollar credit: links to US monetary policy and leverage Secular stagnation, debt overhang and other rationales for sluggish growth, six years on Credit booms: implications for the public and the private sector Trilemmas and trade-offs: living with financial globalisation Understanding the role of debt in the financial system Continue Reading
Attorney General Holder Announces Updates to Justice Department Media Guidelines
“Attorney General Eric Holder announced [January 14, 2015] expanded revisions to the Justice Department’s policy regarding obtaining information from, or records of, members of the news media. The updated policy was announced via a memo by Attorney General Holder to all Justice Department employees . “These revised guidelines strike an appropriate balance between law enforcement’s… Continue Reading
Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias?
Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia. Shane Greenstein, Feng Zhu. Working Paper 15-023. October 10, 2014. “Britannica and Wikipedia are sources that aspire to provide comprehensive information. They both face similar challenges over the length, tone, and factual basis of controversial, unverifiable, and subjective content. Such… Continue Reading
Does income inequality hurt economic growth?
Focus on Inequality and Growth – OECD – December 2014. Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs. “Widespread increases in income inequality have raised concerns about their potential impact on our societies and economies. New OECD research shows that when income inequality rises, economic growth falls. One reason is that poorer members of society are… Continue Reading
