Good morning folks!  yes, it’s been a while, I know.

Just a bit of an update for my very few readers .  I’ve just relocated to the San Fran bay area for the significant other.  So far, I’m loving it!  So much to do here, great weather, I can’t complain.

I’ve also started taking a computer science class through Harvard.  Boy, am I loving it!!  Wrote my first few simple programs in C this week.  It’s really funny how much one can focus with the task at hand is so fun.  Doing these problem sets for the class remind me of some math courses I took a while back.  I’d be excited to get started on homework.  I’m thinking this won’t be my last compsci course.

’til next time, folks!

I had the interesting experience of attending a Seattle tech talk with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Unfortunately I was too scared to ask him if he felt $70 billion was a fair value for the FB IPO estimate, or if he needed any analysts to help him justify such a number.

But what I though was interesting that he said, beyond all that geeky coding and infrastructure talk, was that he believes the rate of people “sharing” stuff via Facebook will double each year, so within 5 years people will be sharing 32x as many things compared to today.

Is that even possible? ~1024 things/day being shared/liked/commented. We’d have to be FBing nearly every minute.

What I think is more accurate is an exponential growth of a person sharing, then as one gets older, the activity tapers, slows down, and maybe even fall to zero/very rare. What would be important would be to look at that age where exponential growth happens and see how that is growing.

Just quick thoughts post-talk. I enjoyed it, plus the free pizza & booze. Although I wish I could have gotten some free swag…

Has anyone else heard of BitCoin, and the incredible inflation it has seen?

This dude has put all his money into BitCoin – not smart, I would say.  Especially when news like a run on BitCoin hits. (If you have no clue on what BitCoin is, read.)

So while I laugh at the guy who invested all his money that is now gone, I reflect back on a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago.  Can we use this virtual currency to study monetary economics?  BitCoin has the potential to provide us with an interesting avenue to understand another type of currency.

But what I am imagining more is looking at virtual worlds and video games (disclaimer: I have no direct experience with video games) to build scenarios to “test” on live people interacting with the world/game.  Currently, there are trading simulators that follow the market where one can see how his/her virtual portfolio would fair in real life.  Add that aspect to a virtual economy and see how quantitative easing programs could affect it.

Just an idea.

Please refer to this list if I have not gotten back to you in a timely manner:

This will not be a post on retirement age and the economics of social security or retirement planning.

It’s more posing a question: who coined the term “retirement home?” It’s not those who retire instantly go off into a home.

Please, when/if I retire, put me on a plane with a one-way ticket to Tahiti, or Crete, or the French Mediterranean. I think I’ll be fine rotting away there.

Just a thought, err, question.

An interesting post from the Library of Economics and Liberty regarding the hate towards the field of economics.

I’ll conceed to the point Mr. Caplan makes regarding mathematics used in economics.  I still like math, though.

I made a pitstop on the way to the library to Blaz!ng Bagels (that name will be left uncommented).  But here is their logo:

Best Bagels East of New York, huh?  Since when is Bellevue east of New York?

I thought perhaps that it’s just an expansion from a New England company that I was unaware of, so I googled them and came to find their site.   And nope.  Only other location listed is in Redmond.

I guess if you keep going east from NY, you’ll eventually get to this area…

In the midst of studying for a DiffEq midterm, I decided to distract myself with even more diffeq studying.  Perhaps you remember this lovely post from which I received some good discussion.  I guess I am developing a “history” of distracting myself from math with more math.

I presented myself with a more interesting problem: what is the level of caffeine in my bloodstream at any given point in time?

I’m having trouble modeling this, so perhaps my fellow diffeq nerds out there can come out of the woodwork for me.  This will be sitting in my head for a while so please, help me put myself out of my misery!

So here are the variables (I either googled them or knew them off hand):

Amount of caffeine in 1 30 mL shot of espresso: about 100 mg
Initial consumption of coffee: 16 oz drink with 2-30 mL shots of espresso
Time it takes to consume: 15 minutes (chug!)
Rate of caffeine absorption into bloodstream: 99% of caffeine is absorbed in 45 minutes (only rate I could find), although can reach a peak within 15 – 120 minutes
Rate of caffeine processed out of bloodstreem: half life of ~3 hours

Let C(t) = amount of caffeine in bloodstream at any period of time in hours
C(0) = C₀
dC/dt = rate in – rate out

rate in = 200mg/16 oz * 16oz/15 minutes = 40/3 mg/minute with a maximum of 15 minutes

Now I think this is where I’m tripping myself up:
rate out = C/2^t/3
concentration / half life of three hours

So then:
dC/dt = 40/3 – C/2^t/3
but then that leads me to
C(t) = 40/3*e^2t/3/ln(2) * ò(e^2-t/3/ln(2)dt) + c*e^2t/3/ln(2)

Ugh.  This is where I gave up.  Well I tried drawing it out, but I kept focusing on “ok, so I consume about an ounce a minute.  So that first ounce will be absorbed by the 46th minute, to which my body will start getting rid of it before the second ounce is absorbed.”  I guess I shouldn’t dwell on it.

One positive that’s coming out of – I can have fun applying diffeq to stuff that actually matters.  Come on, physics? really? There are much more interesting problems than when a ball will fall if tossed straight upward from the ground at an intial velocity of 96 ft/second… <cough>

The “Nobel” prize for economics was announced today – received by three economists for their research in labor economics and search theory (very poignant).

One of them is actually a behavioral economist, and I looked up his book Behavioral Economics and its Applications on Amazon.  Here is what I came across:

Do the math – How absurd! 25 cents for a $44 book.  When, if you look right next to this ad, people are selling the book used for significantly more:

Why would anyone use Amazon buyback?

The irony of this being on a behavioral economist’s book page…

Awesomeness!

Via http://fashionablygeek.com/