Category Archives: math

Most Sincere

Posted on November 2, 2022 by Laura Alford, PhD

Is anybody else driving around town looking for the Most Sincere convenience store hoping the Great Pumpkin (or an affiliated diety) will bestow upon them the winning ticket to the $1.2 Billion jackpot? Just me? Hot dog, I hope I’m … Continue reading →

Posted in Continuouse Improvement, Goal setting, karma, math, Saving Money, Statistics, Writing | Tagged $1.2 billion, affiliate dieties, expected value, i feel lucky, jackpot, Jim Carey, lottery, Mary Chapin Carpenter, most sincere convenience store, The Great Pumpkin, there’s a chance | Leave a comment

Older Than Bones

Posted on February 10, 2022 by Laura Alford, PhD

I ran across a FB post about how the Rocky Mountains are taller than the Appalachians. The poster insinuates that taller is better. Someone responds to this post by telling the wannabe Texan that bigger ain’t always better saying that … Continue reading →

Posted in Authors, Children, Education, karma, math, Writing | Tagged 12 lb. bass, 500 million years ago, advanced degrees, Appalachian Mountains, bio-medical engineering, biology, C. E. Anthony, Charlene, Clyde E. Anthony, Clyde Elias Anthony, Designing Women, dinosaurs, elevation, fauna, flora, fossils, half a billion years ago, Hermione, knee cartilage, Leah Swanstrom, pre-dates bones, pre-dates dinosaurs, Rocky Mountains, Sabine Parish, spear fishing, telomeres, the Kraken, The National Enquirer, time turner, topper | Leave a comment

Jump Start Your Day

Posted on January 19, 2022 by Laura Alford, PhD

I didn’t really have any new resolutions or goals this year. Mostly I’d just like to get back to being who I was before the pandemic hit–that girl that got up at 5:30 every morning to exercise, worked all day, … Continue reading →

Posted in Continuouse Improvement, Goal setting, math, Writing | Tagged baby steps, cold showers, hangover, one sentence a day, quantum jumping, Quantum leap, rome wasn't built in a day, writer's block | 1 Comment

Words of Wisdom

Posted on April 13, 2018 by Laura Alford, PhD

Out of the mouths of babes, they say. Last night I was working on my second epiphany of the evening and it unfortunately involved solving 2 equations with multiple unknowns and used summation notation. Lucky for me Babe#1 is majoring … Continue reading →

Posted in accounting, family, LSU, math | Tagged -- that, 12 pack, ain't nobody got time for that, Epsilon, forsaken, help, legal drinking age 21, lsu finance phd, math is hard, mouths of babes, summation notation, super baby genius, wisdom | Leave a comment

Asymptotically Normal

Posted on May 3, 2017 by Laura Alford, PhD

When I first came to LSU (last millennium) we used 3 separate machines to print, fax and copy, had dial up 4200 baud modems, and only the POTUS and other mobsters had satellite phones. Technology has changed so much and … Continue reading →

Posted in accounting, Education, Louisiana, LSU, math | Tagged 3-d printer, 4200 baud modems, asymptotically normal, doom, econometrics, final exams, frissons, Lotus notes, LSU, magic, mobsters, nano-medicine, Noah, Noah's arc, POTUS, saber toothed tiger, satellite phone, Technology | 1 Comment

Asymptotically Valid Co-Variance Estimator

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Laura Alford, PhD

Did you get yours yet? I heard all the hip variance-co-variance matrices are into bondage validity this year. Econometric validity requires two conditions: no bias and consistency. This may be the first time the egg-heads got it right. Back to the … Continue reading →

Posted in LSU, math, Statistics | Tagged 2 stage least squares regression, allforLSU, asymptotically valid co-variance estimator, book learning, consistency, econometrics, egg-heads, endogeneity, foghorn leghorn, Heckman model, henry hawk, homoskedasticity, instrumental variables, non linear process, poisson distribution, propensity score matching, self-selection, thank god I found it, warner brothers cartoons, white's heteroskedasticity | Leave a comment

Faith-Based Econometrics

Posted on January 17, 2017 by Laura Alford, PhD

It’s wrong like bacon fried Twinkies are wrong. It’s wrong like laughing during Schindler’s List. Not caring about the matrix algebra fundamentals underlying the SAS/Stata commands is wrong when I am cultivating a lifelong habit of learning.** Does a girl … Continue reading →

Posted in accounting, Catholocism, Education, LSU, math | Tagged (X'x)^-1(X'y), Beta, cluster, command line, consistant estimators, correlated omitted variable, econometrics, endogeneity, Faith, heteroskedasticity, joint significance, linear algebra, matrix, my life is hell, parameters, regression, robust, sas, self selection bias, stata, theta, unbiased estimators, variables, variance, variance-covariance matrix | Leave a comment

There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Power Nap

Posted on November 28, 2016 by Laura Alford, PhD

We’re all familiar (or should be) with TANSTAAFL, aka There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. I’ve coined a complementary term: TANSTAAPN. Nothing’s free. Not lunch, not gas station car washes, and most certainly not naps in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Louisiana, LSU, math, Politics | Tagged accounting, Christmas, comprehensive exams, dominick the donkey, favorite daughter, libertarian, LSU, Natchitoches, No such thing as a free lunch, no such thing as a power nap, Phd Program, power naps, sleep, TANSTAAFL, TANSTAAPN | Leave a comment

Exponential Decay

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Laura Alford, PhD

Went to lunch with this youngster today. He was unaware that you could start suffering from sleep injuries* as early as the mid-thirties. A sleep injury occurs when you go to bed at the regular time, sleep the same number … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, LSU, math | Tagged aging, exponential decay model, leg day, over 35 | Leave a comment

Log Likelihood

Posted on October 18, 2016 by Laura Alford, PhD

A problem from yesterday: Suppose you observe n iid normal variables from the normal density, X ∼ N(µ, σ 2 ), where σ 2 is known. (A) Find the maximum likelihood estimator of the mean µ. L is for likelihood, where L(θ; … Continue reading →

Posted in Continuouse Improvement, Goal setting, Louisiana, LSU, math | Tagged log likelihood, math blog, max likelihood, nerddom, normal density, normal distribution | 2 Comments