Monthly Archives: September 2017

My INFORMS 2017 Presentations

Sunday, 8:00-9:30am, SA37, Linking Delay Announcements, Abandonment, and Staffing: A Behavioral Perspective, Room 352B

Monday, 8:00-9:30am, MA04, Mind The Gap: Coordinating Energy Efficiency and Demand Response, Room 320A

Tuesday, 4:35-6:05pm, TE04, Utility Ownership of Decentralized Combined Heat and Power, Room 320A

The two energy papers of my dissertation were invited. The call center paper was scheduled for presentation with the other finalists in the in the Service Section Best Student Paper Competition.

Real News 20170913

MIT to offer economics+computer science degree. Good for all sorts of online marketplaces that match buyers and sellers.

Owners of the Tesla 60kWh version of its Model S and Model X actually have the same battery as the 75kWh vehicles but the battery has been purposely limited or “damaged” to provide only 60KWh of mileage. Is is really less expensive for Tesla to build more expensive batteries for all cars (including the lesser version) than to create and keep two inventories of car batteries? Probably.

NFL Picks- Week 2 of 2016

Using a model developed with Wayne Winston, I post the NFL bets I would make against the spread each week. My model uses scores from previous weeks to predict the results of the current week of games. Here are my 2014, 2015, and 2016 betting results, where I am a combined 310-307 against the spread, including a terrible 2016-17 campaign that went 105-133 in an unpredictable year.

Now, it is week 2, so I only have one week of results with which to build my model. And it’s based on scores alone. So it only knows the scores of week 1, and, for example, it does not know that New England is typically a really good team. Nonetheless, the model has been profitable when run over the last 30+ years, even in week 2. Given that, here are the predictions for week 2:

Rounding the Bases 20170908

Boston Red Sox Used Apple Watches to Steal Signs Against Yankees. Look… don’t cheat. In sports, in card games, in board games, in school. Just don’t cheat. (Sign stealing WITH YOUR EYES is part of the game. No electronics. No binoculars.)

In fantasy football, teams out of contention cannot just dump their stars on the waiver-wire for playoff teams to pick up. So why can the Pirates?

Good use of insurance.

Book Review – The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F___

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*#$
by Mark Manson, 2016

I don’t normally go for books with intentionally catchy or provocative titles, but I had read some decent expositions on Mark Manson’s website. The main point of the book is that you can care about a small number of things in life, so don’t go wasting your effort on unworthy ends. Mark also hates entitled people. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with the book, it’s certainly not a “must read”. I listened to the book on tape, which was well-read (by someone other than the author!).

Interesting side note: The book mentions the story of Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist for female education. About a week after hearing this, Maria told me that Malala was giving a large lecture at DePauw. Interesting coincidence, since I didn’t know about her before.

Energetic 20170907

Would you have to leave your car in the sun to charge all day? And here’s part 2.

The DOE study found cheap natural gas to be the greatest driver of baseload power plant retirements, followed by flat power demand, environmental regulations and the growing penetration of renewables on the grid. Perhaps most notably, the study did not find renewables to be a threat to grid reliability.

Duke Energy having trouble building anything other than renewable power in North Carolina.

Rounding the Bases 20170901

More Joey Votto: 5 walks in 5 plate appearances, seeing 43 pitches.

Dusty Baker “throwing caution to the winds”. This is crazy to me:

While pitch counts are crude metrics, only 10 teams have allowed a starting pitcher to exceed 120 pitches this season; only two teams have allowed it to occur on multiple occasions.

So close to epic, Kevin Huber.

What it feels like to get hit by a pitch.

That was Robin Ventura’s hilarious excuse for famously charging the mound after being hit by Nolan Ryan, who got Ventura in a headlock and started pounding away. “He threw so hard, it hurt so much, I didn’t know what I was doing, so I just took off after him because of the pain,” Ventura said. “I got about halfway to the mound, came to my senses and said, ‘What am I doing charging Nolan Ryan?’ But I couldn’t turn back then.”

How inevitable is it that college football will expand their 4 team playoff?