walking around in cities, part 1: some statistics

Rebeccmeister@lj mentioned this study of cities and relationship between their economic output and their walkability. I've got some interest in urban planning and the study seemed have plausible and well-presented statistics, so I thought I'd dig into it. Which I did, and found that – as expected – the answer isn't as clear-cut as the study's authors would have you believe. So, I was gonna write that up... and it occurred to me that only a handful of my readers could make any sense of what I was writing about, so I wrote a simple introduction to the statistical method the study uses.

The result is kinda long. So, I've broken it up into sections:

( the claims )

( my initial impressions )

( So, what's this regression thing this study relies on? )

( The skeletons in the study's closet )

( What it means (I think) )

a different sort of flying rock

while taking a short walk, i happened to notice that the moon was near a red star. my guess, since the red star was in an odd place, was that it was mars. i checked found that i was right... and that both were near ceres and vesta.

so, i got out the binocs and looked for them. i think i found one, probably vesta, since it's two magnitudes brighter. if i remember, i'll drag the telescope out tomorrow and try again. (the moon is a bit low on the horizon for good seeing right now.)