Peter Phillips, data generating processes, and the big bang...

Peter Phillips delivered the third of his Clarendon Lectures in Oxford last night, and revealed that actually, he does believe life is random. He fitted his random walk to the 600 million year dataset as an expression of his belief on how life is. Needless to say, I disagree with him. The Bible tells us God created this world for a reason, for Him and His purposes. Why do I believe the Bible? Because it has an internally consistent message from the first page to the last, which is God's plan for the universe. He created it, He created man, but man rebelled. But this didn't take God by surprise. He said He would punish man, but promised He would send a Saviour for man. This Saviour was Jesus, predicted by many Old Testament books, notably Isaiah. This Jesus chap can be traced in history without the Bible as a man who attracted many followers, yet died suddenly a criminal's death. The four Gospels in the New Testament explain who Jesus was, and why he fulfilled the predictions in the Old Testament for him, showing he was this promised Saviour. Jesus said "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life", amongst other things. Then the rest of the New Testament fleshes out Jesus's death and resurrection and what they mean: basically, Jesus was God, and that by believing in Him, we are saved from God's punishment.

So to put it simply, I think there's a lot of order in this world.

On to data generating processes. Do they exist? Some people suggest they don't. What I mean is, do mechanisms exist that generate what we see in the economy, in the world at large around us? When we see GDP growth is 0.4% this quarter, year-on-year, is there something generating this? I think there is. It's something very hard to discover in its exact form, if not impossible. But it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And I quite like understanding as much as possible about such things; God's given us a world that is good, and set in place such laws of nature, laws of motion, and other such laws of economics, so to speak.

Finally, the big bang. Scientists in Mexico reckon with a new telescope they can look back to what happened at the beginning of the universe. That's great, cos it's exciting to find out more about this world God's created. Will scientists finding out exactly how the world came into being threaten my belief in God and that He created it? No. Just as a scientist can analyse in great detail a cup of tea, giving me a fantastic chemical breakdown of it, these scientists will give us yet more information on this world around us. But the scientist cannot tell me why I made my cup of tea from analysing the tea alone. He has to ask me why I made it. Just the same with this world. Let's ask God why He made it. As I talked about above, it's all in the Bible.

Is life a random walk? And Oldham's fortunes...

Yesterday, in his first Clarendon Lecture in the Economics Department at the University of Oxford, Peter Phillips suggested that a time series could provide the conclusion that life is a random walk. Well, I guess given he talked about estimating numbers for models on particular data series and questioned what these numbers mean, that in fact he wasn't really trying to substantiate in any way the claim that life is a random walk.

Of course he's fitting an econometric model to the world, and that doesn't necessarily shed any light at all on the true underlying data generating process. It was data on the number of species in exitence, going back 600 million years. Of course I don't think that life is a random walk, I don't for one moment believe that the various underlying processes generating this 600 million year data set really suggest everything is random.

Nevertheless, that's what people who deny the existence of God are forced to believe - it's all random. However, through the existence of a man who lived 2000 odd years ago we have God's revelation to a disbelieving world, captured in a book that's internally consistent as to exactly what this Jesus chap was up to. God isn't random, He has a plan, and He's made it known to His world. Will you take a look? Check out here if you want to.

On to Oldham Athletic. I was dissatisfied with my model, and applied an ad hoc solution, contrary to how I believe econometric modelling should take place, although consistent with the idea that the best ways to do econometrics are not the best ways to forecast. Originally the forecast was about 5,700, but with a variable to capture the visit of local rivals, the forecast was raised to 6,179, which I still thoughts too low. However, the model was giving forecasts in the right ball-park, whereas I was way out: the actual attendance was 6,001. Again much lower than I'd have expected, but continuing the trend this season.

But Oldham won 2-0 against local rivals, continuing their good form in the league now to 1 defeat in 12 matches, and 7 wins along the way. Surely soon, if this form continues, attendances will rise?