Courageous?

There's something I really like about not writing a popular blog - that's that I don't get zillions of comments from people.  Reading these comments always raises my blood pressure ever so slightly, especially if the content strays even slightly towards the Christian.  Organisations and Markets a little while back posted about what they described as the most courageous man in academia, who has written a paper purporting to prove that heterosexuality is superior to homosexuality.

I think the title of this blog makes posting on this paper somewhat necessary.  I think it's a pointless and wrong exercise, and a waste of an economist's time to be writing something like this.  Why does it matter?  What is the point to be proved?  The economist clearly has some odd Christian ideas in his head, and maybe I'm being a little harsh, but I don't see how this kind of writing is going to leave anyone more predisposed towards Christianity - and at the end of the day, for the Christian this is the ultimate aim - to bring honour and praise to Jesus.

Furthermore, as I think many have pointed out in other places (I know New Deal 2.0 commented on this too), even if we stick to biblical principles, a very narrow heterosexuality is superior in that it is not sinful - that is heterosexual sex within marriage.  Then, the teachings of Jesus ratcheted this up about a million notches by saying anyone who even looks at a women lustfully has committed adultery with her.

The point is, none of us are without sin, especially this economist who wrote this bizarre paper.  So it's hypocritical as well as being wrong.  Jesus didn't tell Christians to moralise - that's been proven to be about the best way, over the years, to turn people off Chrisitanity.

That can be well seen by the various comments on this paper.  Firstly, people interpret it as homophobia and thus dub all Christians homophobic - which is not true.  As said, there are many things that are sinful, and nobody managed to avoid sinning.  It's not PC to say homosexuality is a sin, but so are all my lustful glances.  The Christian abides by a moral code (and fails by it too) given in the Bible.  Others take other sources to base their morals on - neither can be claimed to be superior, although liberals of course claim theirs is vastly superior.

The Christian believes that despite his or her sin, that Jesus's death on the cross took the punishment for that, and hence the Christian is forgiven and can know God.  So there's nothing there to start acting superior to others over, no room for complacency, boasting or anything.  Certainly no room for this academic paper.

Instead Christians should be loving, and telling people about the good news - about what Jesus' death can do for them.

Another interesting challenge...

...Oldham Athletic will be charging just £2 for adults, and £1 for kids in their next two home matches. These are matches against Brighton and Hove Albion, and Northampton Town, matches which otherwise would not attract a very high attendance at all. It's a great idea, I'm totally for it - get a full house in, hopefully get some kids hooked on Latics, especially if the team can carry on playing as they have recently (unbeaten in nine league home matches, seven wins).

But it creates havoc for modelling and forecasting. On the other hand, it's a known break. One of the biggest problems with forecasting is structural breaks, if the break affects the mean of the time series being forecast. Before the break, it's generally quite hard to predict one will happen, and then if it can be predicted, the size is another matter entirely. If a break happens, next period when forecasting, one needs to know whether this is simply an outlier, measurement error, or an actual break.

So here, I have quite a lot of information: I know something will happen that can only be described as a break - the two previous big discount matches (Grimsby (free) and Torquay (fiver)) have attracted substantially larger attendances. I further know it will only last for two matches, it is not permanent, but it's not a one-off either. And I'll know the reason why the break has occured.

All in all, it makes for an interesting experiment. Will the attendances be as large as the Grimsby or Torquay matches? A method for capturing a break is to add a dummy variable estimated over some observations in the sample, and extend this dummy into the forecast period. Usually in time-series, the dummy is for the last few observations. However, here as we have some idea from these matches how big the break might be, it makes sense to use this information.

Extending the Grimsby dummy gives a forecast of 11,670, and extending the Torquay dummy just 6,856. I think somewhere inbetween these two examples is more likely. A combination, weighting Grimsby at 0.6 since £2 is closer to £0 than £5 gives a forecast of 9,442, but I think a higher weight should be used, since zero prices have wierd effects. A weight of 0.75 on Grimsby provides a forecast of 10,230, which pleases me.

Come on Oldham!

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.

Econometricians behaving badly...

Edward Glaeser has written a paper about econometricians behaving opportunistically, and how they violate all the assumptions economic theorists have been making for years now about the behaviour of individuals when faced with a set of incentives.

Basically, it's a fallen world, and as a result, people will present bad stuff and cover it up. But it's given me a chance to try and link together my faith and my work a bit, and I've written a response to Glaeser's work, hopefully outlining an alternative method of carrying out econometric analysis which, while not free from opportunism, provides a method for exposing it elsewhere, and providing a transparent way of doing econometrics, if carried out properly. In a lot of respects, econometricians attempting to behave themselves mirror Christians attempting to live in the fallen world before Jesus Christ returns. It's a tentative link, and I'm encouraged that Paul mixed his metaphors quite a bit in his letters to the Corinthians, as I think I've managed that. Have a read, see what you think. Do get back to me with your comments.