He posted updates yesterday and today explaining why the models were wrong, it’s a very interesting insight into some of the complexities of the problem and how many variables are involved:
>> So I am not optimistic for improvement either today or Wednesday. With smoke production (at a lower level) by the continuing fires, a "stuck" weather pattern, and smoke trapped in a relatively stable lower atmosphere, things just can't improve rapidly.
We’re in the Willamette valley and originally the smoke was supposed to let up last Thursday. That quickly passed and then it was Saturday night. Instead, we got dense, stagnant fog and continued off-the-charts air quality index numbers. But all the while, talk of how the rain was coming today. Well, not looking like rain today.
This has been a slog. Yet only a few towns over, there has been utter devastation from the fires. So we’re incredibly fortunate.
The headaches and scratchy throat have been pretty non-stop but mainly it’s the kids that have me concerned — the indoor air quality isn’t great, but have doing my best to keep the air from getting too bad. (Furnace filter / air purifier / taping the windows / etc).
Yeah, the weather forecasts for air quality have been quite inaccurate. Since Friday, the projections for Oakland CA have constantly been, “it’ll clear up in the next 24 hours.” Only now, Tuesday morning, has the AQI dropped below 100.
It seems like it’s just a harder problem than regular weather forecasting. Nobody has much experience with giant smoke clouds like this one. So I can forgive the weather service some inaccuracy. Just don’t rely on the AQI forecasts for much.
Yep. Predictions are obviously hard, but there's no wind to blow the smoke away, so I don't know why it is routinely predicted to do so 48 hours in the future. There is enough smoke piled up over the ocean (at least to judge from the satellite pictures) that it would take several days of steady winds to clear everything out. Any wind strong enough to theoretically clear the smoke quickly would probably spark new fires instead. And yet even with multiple fires nowhere near containment, the Spare The Air forecast still says "moderate" air in two days. I'll believe it when I breathe it.
The "incident meteorologist" for the North Complex fire was quoted yesterday as saying there was no system predicted that would cause a notable improvement in air quality for the next two weeks. Again, assuming no new fires, which is a stretch given that we're right in the middle of the traditional fire season.
The only forecast I rely on is the National Weather Service. Their site is painfully dated but the accuracy is unmatched.
In my experience these have been completely wrong recently for my neck of the woods (PDX) even at 6-12 hours. Cliff explains in one of his posts that this is because of not modeling the inversion. I’m having better luck with the Copernicus CAMS forecast in Windy
I'm seeing some improvement in Redmond as of 3pm. I can see more distant hilltops than yesterday, sky feels slightly more blue, and looking directly at the sun hurts the eyes more than yesterday. Still extremely smoky don't get me wrong. Looking at the NWS forecasts they mention smoke going forward until Thursday night when we may get a thunderstorm.
How appropriate, a blog post about weather forecasts being inaccurate is itself inaccurate. Same down here in the Willamette Valley, I'd like to be able to breathe again.
Note that Zumper is not a reliable source for median rent data. CityObservatory wrote an article about their data problems a few years ago [1]. Zumper's data is, of course, based on apartments that are for rent and doesn't include currently occupied units. That alone skews high, especially when there is a lot of higher-rent new construction hitting the market. Also, it looks like Zumper's data skews towards higher-end neighborhoods.
For a broader look at the rental market, including occupied units and rent-controlled units, you could just consult ACS data. That says that median rent for all occupied 1-bedrooms in San Fransisco was $1912 in 2017 [2].
I guess it depends on what question you're asking. You seem to be pointing out that you think the real question is: "what is the median rent for anyone living in San Francisco?" whereas Zumper seems to be more answering the question: "if someone moved to San Francisco today, and has zero connections, what rent would they pay?"
Both are valid questions, but I think it's good to set the context for if you're having a conversation about "general median rent" vs "newcomer median rent."
Even then, it's not as clear. First off, median caries the implication that these are all "valid" places, whereas in reality, most apartments that are still up for grabs probably aren't rented for a reason, therefore including them in a median is misleading.
Next up, the data itself needs to be "fresh" for this to work. It could be that cheaper apartments appear on the market frequently, but are rented right away. So as someone new in the city, you could find these cheap places if you looked for a bit, but a single survey will probably not catch these.
A better approach would be to look at the median of all new rented apartments throughout the year. That will give you an idea of what someone who comes to the city will realistically pay.
My first thought, on reading the source of the data, is that the article was probably prompted by a press release from Zumper. I don't know this, but if reporting a record high gets them press for their app, they'll certainly be biased towards finding a record high. What a poorly sourced article.
Zumper has also made a name for itself through its “National Rent Reports”
—more or less monthly press releases that claim to track median rental prices around the country.
These reports have received copious media coverage, from the Bay Area to Seattle to Nashville to Chicago to Boston to LA to Miami to Denver, and so on.
From what I've seen, it's definitely true, most "news" is at least influenced by PR firms. Part of why (now old school) blogs are so refreshing to read in contrast. I remember working at a startup, and our marketing person once asked the engineers to do some quick data analysis to get a soundbite just like this.
I use OSH regularly for prototyping. Their boards are really good quality and I've been happy with them. Sometimes the production times aren't as fast as I'd like, but ordering quantities of 3 usually is very economical.
The CO2 is also an input; it originally comes from the environment, so this is net-zero emissions in the same way that biofuels are. From the article:
Although the bus emits CO2, Team Fast argues that the original CO2 used to create the hydrozine is
taken from existing sources, such as air or exhaust fumes, so that no additional CO2 is produced
- it's a closed carbon cycle in the jargon.
Jed Kolko, former chief economist at Trulia, thinks stories like this are either exaggerated or wrong. His basic claim is that urban revival is limited to childless professionals in their peak earning years. See [1], or any of his posts at [2] for the data and analysis.
Anecdotally, when I lived in an urban condo, half the building was empty-nesters -- couples who raised their kids in the suburbs then moved back to walkable smaller city apartments after the kids left the nest.
The problem demographic is couples with kids. Our urban schools are bad, so they leave the city to find good schools. But people with no kids -- either before children or after they leave for college -- are living in cities.
>>The problem demographic is couples with kids. Our urban schools are bad, so they leave the city to find good schools.
Good urban schools exist, but there aren't enough of them, hence there is intense competition to get into good urban schools. To your point, this then ends up driving more families away from dense urban centers.
> Good urban schools exist, but there aren't enough of them
It's not just that — due to desegregation (itself a good thing!) one can't ensure that one's kids will go to either a good school or one nearby. Parents want the best for their kids, and will do their best to ensure their kids' success (note that Mr. Obama's kids went to Sidwell Friends, not to a public DC school).
It's not just schools. Public transportation (at least in the US) becomes miserable with several small children. Walking 1 mile single or as a couple is fine, but with toddlers it's an exhausting adventure just to get to the grocery store.
High housing costs get even worse when you are paying for 5 people instead of 1 or 2. This multiplication factor also carries over to many other costs so a city block with artisanal restaurants and locally-grown grocery stores just doesn't cut it for family budgets.
But right. A particular demographic of young professionals (which happens to align with both a lot of writers in these sorts of publications and tech workers) are moving to a handful of mostly coastal dense urban centers.
I'm not sure how much of an outlier his interpretation of the data is or if you just don't hear a lot from his perspective because it doesn't support the urbanization narrative.
Well, supposing this is correct...Congratulations to Anthony and the rest of the Kaggle team! Those guys do a great job. Hopefully they get rewarded for it.
I use both R and python quite a bit. I prefer python as a programming language. Here's my take on 'Why learn R?':
(1) R/ggplot is hands-down better for plotting than anything in python. I also think that R is better for EDA generally.
(2) Many smart, knowledgable people use R and publish their code. To learn from it, you need to know enough R to read and modify it.
(3) R has better package support than python in several common data analysis domains. For example, in forecasting and in graph analysis, the best R packages available are much better than the best python packages.
>>“It’s a paradox,” said Valentin Bote, head of research in Spain at Randstad, a recruitment agency. “The unemployment rate is too high. Yet we’re seeing some tension in the labor market because unemployed people don’t have the skills employers demand.
There's no real paradox there. Employment of young people, and therefore normal career progression for that cohort, essentially shut down for 6-8 years. Now the pipeline is a little empty.
>> MUCH cleaner air will push in by 4 PM Sunday over the coastal zone and will just reach Seattle late in the afternoon
>> By 1 AM Monday, air quality will be hugely better in western Washington
As of now (Tuesday) there is no sign of clearing. Here in Seattle we are still in the "very unhealthy" range for AQI.