We spent the last week down in Chicago; Kelly at a conference while O and I played the part of tourists. During a restroom break at Shedd Aquarium, O found his favorite part of the museum: the lockers. He could have spent hours playing there if his parents weren’t big partypoopers.
More photos and a write-up on the entire trip to follow.
The NYT ran an op-ed piece called “Bulls, Bears, Donkeys and Elephants.”
The summary: if you invested $10,000 in 1929 and only left it in during the Democratic administrations, you would have five to twenty-five times more than if you left it in only during the Republican administrations. The implication is that Democratic presidents do more to stimulate the market and generate wealth.
The piece created quite a buzz on the internet, including some intelligent rebuttals. Most of the discussion centers around how the original NYT graph was interpreted or presented. That is, until a math and statistics geek started digging into the data.
Theodore Gray is one of the co-founders of Wolfram Research, the company best known for its pro mathematics package, Mathematica (we did some basic Mathematica stuff in our college math courses). He created a Mathematica simulation of the the scenario proposed by the NYT and began playing around with factors such as dividends, including the Roaring 20s, and accounting for inflation (ahem, Carter). On a side note, I wonder if Theodore is a baseball fan; this is exactly the sort of number-crunching baseball fans seem to relish.
It’s all fine and good, but the icing on the cake is his conclusion; like any good twist ending, I’m not going spoil anything, so go read it yourself.
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