The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) collected data on the percent of weekly substance and alcohol use-related emergency department visits to total emergency department visits pre-Covid-19, after the White House declared a national emergency, during stay-at-home orders, and after the lifting of restrictions. The headline is that alcohol and substance abuse-related emergency […]
This post looks at the correlation between the prevalence of cigarettes, marijuana, and alcohol on a student’s grades. More specifically, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive (SAMHDA) asked youth respondents, “How many of the students in your grade at school would you say use cigarettes?” They then repeat this question, substituting cigarettes for […]
This post looks at the percent of children 6 to 17 who are engaged in extracurricular activities and also their school outcomes by poverty status. Not surprisingly, children who are in poverty are less likely to participate in extracurricular activities and have worse school outcomes than their more affluent counterparts. Children from affluent families have […]
This post addresses the question: Who claimed the most unemployment compensation during the great recession? This analysis looks at the demographic breakdown–age, gender, race, and educational attainment–of those who made the most claims of unemployment compensation. The Current Population Survey (CPS) measures unemployment compensation as all pre-tax income a person receives from state or federal […]
This post examines what the odds of winning at blackjack are if a player never busts. If the dealer must hit on 16 and stand on 17, the odds of the dealer busting is 28.37%. The player will automatically win 28.37% of the time if he doesn’t hit. Next, the probability of a dealer getting […]
In this post, I am interested in understanding how insights from the energy efficiency industry contribute to understanding the demand for photovoltaics. I argue that the energy efficiency industry, through its performance contracting business, provides insight as to what are the key determinants of whether residents will invest in renewable technologies. In this memo, I […]
This post looks at the impact of exponential growth on projected viewership. I take Liziqi, a Chinese food and lifestyle blogger with over 1 billion views and over 10 million subscribers, as my example of an internet influencer with exponential growth. The point of this analysis is to show that projecting growth using a linear […]
This post examines whether entrepreneurs are influenced by their fathers, mothers, spouses, and siblings. The General Social Survey (GSS) reports statistics on those who are self-employed. The data show that, overall, the percentage of respondents who indicated they were self-employed has not changed perceptibly between 1972 and 2018. Figure 1, below, shows that the percent […]
This post finds that suicide rates (deaths per 100,000 people) are four times higher in rural areas than in large metropolitan areas. Furthermore, men have higher rates of suicide than women across all metropolitan and rural areas. Suicide rates for Asians and American Indians were highest in rural areas compared with Whites and Blacks. And, […]
Recreational reading has been on the rise. In this post, I examine the consumption of recreational books and examine who is reading for leisure. I find that leisure readers tend to be female, older, White, unemployed, high earners (for those who are employed), highly educated, and have no household children. Figure 1, below, shows the […]