Category: My Work

  • Covid Update: 8 September

    Last time we looked at the state of the Covid-19 pandemic in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois we had some encouraging signs. In particular we had evidence of a potential slowdown in New Jersey, Delaware, and Illinois and I wrote that I would not be surprised if we saw a peak in new…

  • Covid Update: 31 August

    A brief bit of housekeeping, your author will be taking a brief holiday during which I won’t be posting. But I should return to posting next week. Last week we looked at some relatively good news in terms of the spread of Covid-19 in the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois. We…

  • Big Beer

    A few weeks back, a good friend of mine sent me this graphic from Statista that detailed the global beer industry. It showed how many of the world’s biggest brands are, in fact, owned by just a few of the biggest companies. This isn’t exactly news to either my friend or me, because we both…

  • Covid Update: 23 August

    Last week I mentioned how there was some initial evidence showing the rapid, near-exponential spread of the virus was beginning to slow down. One week later, where are we? The good news is that those initial signals do appear to be true, i.e. not noise. You can see it if you look at the very…

  • Covid Update: 16 August

    In last week’s update we looked at how in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois the numbers of new cases of Covid-19 were trending in the wrong direction. This past week they continued to do much the same. This week I want to begin with New Jersey, because last week I noted how the…

  • Ranking the Red Sox Prospects

    My regular readers will know that I am a fan of the Boston Red Sox, an American baseball team located in Boston, Massachusetts. I would consider myself a bit more involved than a casual fan in that I keep tabs on the team’s prospects. For those unfamiliar with baseball, the sport works by keeping development…

  • The Pandemic of the Unvaccinated

    Get your shots. It’s pretty much that simple. But for just under half the country, it’s not getting through. So I went looking for some data on the breakdown of Covid-19 cases by vaccinated and unvaccinated people. I found an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a non-profit that focuses on health and healthcare…

  • Covid Update: 9 August

    Late last week I provided a brief update on the Covid-19 situation in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois. Today I wanted to circle back to my statement that I’d update everyone again early this week. Of course, we had to wait until states began reporting their Monday data to get a better sense…

  • Covid Update: 5 August

    Note: This was supposed to post Friday morning. But it didn’t for technical reasons. Throwing it up late because I’ll probably wait until Tuesday and the release of Monday data to do another update. And I want people to have the latest charts for the weekend. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to…

  • Get Your Shots

    I’ve heard a lot about vaccine hesitancy and resistance lately and I mentioned this on Monday. Subsequently, I thought I would try to make a graphic to try and help people understand where some of these excuses fit on the spectrum of rational to irrational—with claims of people being magnetised off the chart in the…