Re: Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor]
OK will do. Still, looking forward to your take on the conditions of capital using your statistically superior method. Actually, can't wait. But enough idle banter. dms
Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor]
Sabri Oncu : Heteroskedastic means non-constant variance. If you look at the way the data varies with time, the fluctuations are larger initially and the fluctuations attenuate as the time progresses, although they appear to get larger again towards the end. Moreover, you just have 13 observations. I would never reach any conclusions with that many observations. Q: Is this the same as regression to the mean? Thx H
Re: Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor]
Haven't we beaten this poor pony to death yet? Somebody produced an array of number showing that the Republican Party has consistently had support from a significant portion of the working class-- at least since 1952. Big deal. That's a surprise? We need statistics for that? I note in passing that hey, since 1980 or something the trend is downward. Another non-big deal. Certainly the observation, not a conclusion, but the observation is just as meaningful or not as the observation that the Republicans have had support. And from that we get X number of transmissions about the validity of statistical theory, etc. Personally, I think there is much more to be gained from the concrete analysis of the concrete conditions of exchange, production, overproduction, and profit, here and now, then and there, or any combination thereof. My remark about elections and trends was a throwaway remark, reflecting, in my opinion, the throwaway nature of election statistics. dms - Original Message - From: Hari Kumar [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 7:23 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor] Sabri Oncu : Heteroskedastic means non-constant variance. If you look at the way the data varies with time, the fluctuations are larger initially and the fluctuations attenuate as the time progresses, although they appear to get larger again towards the end. Moreover, you just have 13 observations. I would never reach any conclusions with that many observations. Q: Is this the same as regression to the mean? Thx H
Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor]
Q: Is this the same as regression to the mean? Thx H Hi Hari, Good to hear from you! How is our mutual friend doing? It is not the same as regression to the mean. Regression to the mean is a different concept associated with that those below the mean will do better and move up, whereas those above the mean will do worse and move down, we hope, of course. Best, Sabri
Re: Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor]
dms: Personally, I think there is much more to be gained from the concrete analysis of the concrete conditions of exchange, production, overproduction, and profit, here and now, then and there, or any combination thereof. Hey dms! Tell me how you are planning to conduct that concrete analysis? I once had a student in my partial differential equations class who told me that because we were studying some concrete physical problems, things should have been much simpler. What that young fellow did not realize was that what we were studying were not some concrete physical problems but some simplified abstractions of them. This was why our mathematical tools, however difficult they may be to comprehend, worked. When it comes to real concrete physical problems, our mathematical tools fare quite poorly. Here is another anecdote: I had a very smart Chinese research brother. That is, we were the students of the same professor. He once told me that every year in China thousands of amateur mathematicians used to submit solutions to the Chinese Academy of Sciences of Fermat's then unsolved last problem. Of course, all those solutions were wrong. And my Chinese brother concluded his story with this: You cannot go to the moon by bike! You need a space craft for that... Best, Sabri
Re: Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor]
- Original Message - From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 11:34 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor] Hey dms! Tell me how you are planning to conduct that concrete analysis? Sabri ___ Ask and you shall receive... A CASE OF CURIOSITIES: UNSOLVED MYSTERIES OF OVERPRODUCTION For every capitalist, profit appears as a function of cost-- as the discrepancy between cost and price. The capitalists as a class speak about value added in production, but that value added doesn't appear as a material component of the production process itself. Its materialization assumes form as a price bestowed, granted, by the market exchanging all commodities. It, profit, appears as a gift, a blessing, magic, arbitrary, chimerical, a miracle requiring priests, police, and quick hands. No capitalist can account concretely for the value generated in the production process. There is no accounting line item for the value of things obtained without cost, for value expropriated without compensation. There can't be. The expropriation is concealed within the form of compensation itself, which is of course, wages. And the value expropriated is the surplus value from wage-labor. Everything has its price and everything has a cost. In the confusion of the two every capitalist experiences glee and misery, triumph and despair, meat and poison. Cost is the disease and price is the cure. And vice versa. All of capitalist production tends, by necessity, to become overproduction. To the individual capitalist, overproduction is an unfortunate byproduct of attempts to reduce the costs of production, or the misreading of the markets. In reality, only through overproduction can the surplus value expropriated through wage-labor be transformed into a relation of profit to the capital it mobilizes; only the maximum production forcing all surplus values into the markets provides even a minimum return. The realization of a portion of the expropriated value requires the circulation of all values. This process contains the capitalist dream of value added, sure. And it contains within the dream a reality of devaluation, of a productive apparatus too expensive, not in the costs of production in relation to market prices, but in the relation of profit to capital as a whole. Case 1: Steel-- Overproduction in a Down-sized Place. When confronting a decline in the rate of profit, capital's usual course is to call on the army to rearrange certain relations of debt, of wages, of the existing profits themselves. Behind every free market there's a death squad ready for deployment. But in 1973, the US military was fully occupied licking its wounds after a ten year tour of Southeast Asia. The military was in no shape to come to the phone. So capital turned to the next best thing, oil, to do the rearranging. OPEC answered on the first ring. Oil prices spiked and all the profits of all the exchanges in all the markets entered that great pipeline belonging to the seven sisters. And their banks. And a funny thing happened on the way home from the bank. The inflated price of oil took its toll on behalf of the petroleum companies, sure. But the cascade of petrodollars, the general price inflation accompanying the inflated price of oil propelled manufacturing industries to accumulate hard assets, to expand the fixed asset base of production with the depreciating dollars realized in the markets. Between 1973 and 1980, the net stock (measured on the historical cost basis) of manufacturing fixed assets doubled. Manufacturing profits did not do quite as well in general, peaking in 1978 at $89.7 billion before falling back to $76.3 billion in 1980, a gain of 75 percent from 1973. Profits for the durable goods industry collapsed, rose to a peak of $45.5 billion in 1978, and collapsed again to $18.3 billion in 1980, below 1973's $25 billion. Profits for the primary metal industries, i.e., steel , peaked in 1974 at $5.0 billion but dropped to $2.6 billion in 1980. For the entire period, this sector's profits averaged $2.4 billion per year, essentially showing no growth from 1973 on a year to year basis. The market mechanisms of price had done half a job, on employment levels and living standards. But half won't do. Capital hit the redial button on its phone. The steel industry accounted for, then as now, approximately 3 percent of total energy consumed in the US. This time, when the phone rang, it was OPEC 2, and it was calling collect. The industry was asset heavy and profit short; capacity large and utilization small. It wasn't that OPEC caught steel short. Rather, OPEC 2 caught the industry going long. In 1980, the US steel industry production capacity was estimated at 155 million net tons. The utilization rate was 53% as shipments measured 85 million net tons. Net shipments shrank to 60 million net tons in 1982. The industry recorded losses
Re: Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor]
Hey dms! Tell me how you are planning to conduct that concrete analysis? Sabri ___ Ask and you shall receive... And I just took a look at what you sent. It is full of statistical obscurantism and inferences from them, possibly some of which are wrong because with your comments you demonstrated your lack of understanding of the tools you are using quite nicely. You cannot go to the moon by bike! You need a space craft for that... Best, Sabri
Re: Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor]
Please go right ahead and do a better analysis of the two industries in question using your spacecraft.. Challenger or Columbia? - Original Message - From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2004 12:15 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor] Hey dms! Tell me how you are planning to conduct that concrete analysis? Sabri ___ Ask and you shall receive... And I just took a look at what you sent. It is full of statistical obscurantism and inferences from them, possibly some of which are wrong because with your comments you demonstrated your lack of understanding of the tools you are using quite nicely. You cannot go to the moon by bike! You need a space craft for that... Best, Sabri
Re: Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor]
Please go right ahead and do a better analysis of the two industries in question using your spacecraft.. Challenger or Columbia? Neighter Challenger or Columbia. In my language it is called: Ananin Ami! If you don't know what it means, go and check a Turkish dictionary! Best, Sabri
