- I’m reading about lots of obscure methods of explaining the variation in multiple variable combinations, like principal components analysis and partial least squares regression. Or at least, they are obscure to an economist; I imagine they are taught more frequently in other fields. I had to laugh at this Stata help note on partial least squares: “This program is provided for educational purposes. It is difficult to recommend the PLS composites for any serious empirical work (see Rönkkö, McIntosh, and Antonakis (2015).” #movingonthen
- Talking with a doctor friend last weekend, I can’t speak to how true this is, but replace ‘clinician’ with ‘teacher’ and ‘hospital’ with university and you have a conversation I’ve had many times: “We don’t have great clinicians in (xyz speciality) at (supposedly one of the best hospitals in the country). They don’t incentivize you to be a good clinician. You’re rewarded based on your research dollars and sometimes patients suffer. Only schools like (by some estimation the best medical school in the country) produce good clinicians because they have the resources to devote to them, but the school doesn’t care about you if you want to be a good clinician. They’re just biding their time until they can push you out.”
ERIN K. FLETCHER 