Jan 31, 2016
CMNA v0.1.0 Released
Some of you know this, but just about a year now, I have been working on a book called Computational Methods for Numerical Analysis with R . This project, completed in my…
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Archive page 41 of 73
Jan 29, 2016
RFFs Parametric Flood Insurance Proposal
There's a new proposal from RFF for community based flood insurance. In short, rather than individuals purchasing flood insurance at the property level, communities would purchase insurance at the community level. The…
Jan 28, 2016
Flood Preparation Tips for Renters via Roomi Connect
Meghan Larsen at Roomi, a website for apartment renters, interviewed me for an article on preparing for a flood. My two key takeaways are: 1. Have a kit. And this is really…
Jan 28, 2016
The Young Astronauts Program
Thirty years ago this morning, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after lift-off. I was in kindergarten at Horace Mann. My teacher was Mrs. Mitman, and I hope I spelled that…
Jan 26, 2016
Inspiring Books
Marvin Minksy has died. Minsky was a pioneer of robotics and artificial intelligence at M.I.T. for half a century or so. And among other things, he invented the useless machine, a device…
Jan 24, 2016
My Robot, or Announcing DC Closings
I always know when it's about to snow. I get a lot of new Twitter followers. Well, not really. Another account I have, @opmdcstatus gets new followers. A long time ago, way…
Jan 21, 2016
Circling the Drain
On Tuesday night, the Howard County Council heard testimony for a proposal to eliminate the Stormwater Management Fee. I have stayed out of this debate, which has now raged on for a…
Jan 19, 2016
An Inconvenient Poop!
There's a magnificently titled master's thesis out of East Carolina University, "Flood Vulnerability of Hog Farms in Eastern North Carolina: An Inconvenient Poop." Here's the abstract: In the late 1990’s, eastern North…
Jan 14, 2016
Euler Method in R for the Initial Value Problem
During differentiation, the value of whatever vertical shift is present is lost as a result of the elimination of the constant term, which has a derivative of 0. We normally acknowledge this…
Jan 13, 2016
Don't Take the Annuity
The New York Times is wrong. Don't take the annuity. ::embed{href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/upshot/dear-powerball-winner-take-our-advice-and-take-the-annuity.html"} There are several gaping flaws in the logic here. If you win the Powerball, don't take the annuity. There are several…
Jan 12, 2016
Notes on Radon Mitigation
I heard an advertisement for radon kits while driving. I remember when I was about 5-6, there was a lot of worry about radon. Like, newscast interstitials saying, "An invisible gas in…