weird charts

I just pushed a new paper to arXiv. I realized that a lot of my previous work on robust losses and nerf-y things was dancing around something simpler: a slight tweak to the classic Box-Cox power transform that makes it much more useful and stable. It's this f(x, λ) here: pic.twitter.com/GZsA8BYbEe

— Jon Barron (@jon_barron) February 18, 2025

Something happened in year 774 that was so powerful we can measure the radioactivity in old tree rings. Best guess is a solar flare, 10 times more powerful than the Carrington Event in 1859 that zapped telegraph wires.
Worth considering the effect of the next one.
Details:… pic.twitter.com/jfFRHbDwsL

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 14, 2025

My textbook now includes an updated figure from Carter & McCullough, 2014. It's now generated from the raw data. It's a striking image. The uncorrected effect size is d = 0.62 based on 198 studies. Now, large replications later, we know the true effect size is 0. What a waste. pic.twitter.com/7DvHhFuyjK

— Daniël Lakens (@lakens) June 12, 2023

Los Angeles compared to other cities pic.twitter.com/xsgFobICo6

— BuccoCapital Bloke (@buccocapital) May 29, 2023

The geographic pattern of house price change in the Northeast since the pandemic began is just stunning. Demand is being pushed out of expensive places pic.twitter.com/nks3ZGpWgI

— Adam Ozimek (@ModeledBehavior) May 26, 2023

Adam, a 9-yr old optimizer, is the go-to for training LLMs (eg, GPT-3, OPT, LLAMA).

Introducing Sophia, a new optimizer that is 2x faster than Adam on LLMs. Just a few more lines of code could cut your costs from $2M to $1M (if scaling laws hold).https://t.co/GrMY600lLO 🧵⬇️ pic.twitter.com/bPLCOWcIHZ

— Tengyu Ma (@tengyuma) May 24, 2023

Another example: Take two glasses of equally sweet water and mix them together. Children of intermediate age think that the resulting solution will be sweeter than the originals! Similar results have been found for water temperature. pic.twitter.com/vf1o2ihwMj

— Chris Said (@Chris_Said) April 21, 2023

The Green Revolution in one chart

Food abundance is very good and underrated pic.twitter.com/9K1DzuFqy7

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) January 17, 2023

This map shows how far you can travel from each station in Europe in less than 5 hours!

👉🏼 https://t.co/QLO21YSVsR
pic.twitter.com/nWqFQW2QXu

— Xavi Ruiz (@xruiztru) November 3, 2022

it looks like it really is illiteracy that made people vote PT LOL pic.twitter.com/ZtPwXao5C9

— iabvek (@iabvek) October 11, 2022

The shift to WFH is the largest shock to labor markets in decades. Pre-pandemic WFH was trending towards 5% of days by 2022. Now WFH is now stabilizing at 30%, a 6-fold jump.

In America alone this is saving about 200 million hours and 6 billion miles of commuting a week. pic.twitter.com/XK4WVWXq3f

— Nick Bloom (@I_Am_NickBloom) August 29, 2022

Models are continuing to double down on a severe, prolonged heatwave for California and surrounding states in early September.

European model now suggesting the development of a 600 dm ridge which, if occurred, could bring all-time record high September heat. Stay tuned. #CAwx pic.twitter.com/RjLZFwNP52

— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) August 28, 2022

Finland tracks what percentage of murders were committed by men who were drunk. It has been above 50% for almost the entire time the statistics were recorded pic.twitter.com/vx8Dnf4Pz9

— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) July 31, 2022

pic.twitter.com/2YOlEphjll

— Peter Wildeford 🇺🇸 (@peterwildeford) July 30, 2022

The U.S. lags badly in some international math tests, but in the TIMSS test we crack the top ten. Or at least we did a decade ago. pic.twitter.com/hrs8LnJ1uF

— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) July 29, 2022

On average, time spent
- with family peaks at <15yo
- with friends peaks at 18
- with coworkers peaks at 30
- with children peaks at 40
- with your partner peaks at 70
- alone peaks at the end

fascinating chart (ht @Alex_Radke) pic.twitter.com/6u0aPCer6a

— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) July 19, 2022

people drawing logos from memory pic.twitter.com/KnmKsZyC30

— seanm (@SeanMombo) July 12, 2022

New research shows that children of immigrants were nearly twice as likely to become rich as the children of people born in the United States.

Immigration is the key to American exceptionalism. pic.twitter.com/GP3JO1c8oO

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) July 12, 2022

How remote work is changing tech pay: “As remote work has become more of an expectation in 2022, salaries have begun to converge toward the higher-tier metros” https://t.co/tEdVMi3wRf pic.twitter.com/VXtvwhoTri

— Jim Russell (@ProducerCities) July 11, 2022

This is one of the craziest plots I have ever seen.

World GDP follows a power law that holds over many orders of magnitude and extrapolates to infinity (!) by 2047.

Clearly this trend can't continue forever. But whatever happens, the next 25 years are going to be pretty nuts. pic.twitter.com/NwZmW9Xphg

— Jan Leike (@janleike) July 6, 2022

Movies left, NIH right. 🤔

(From https://t.co/0D0vA6b6jC.) pic.twitter.com/t1LxaW5HHY

— Patrick Collison (@patrickc) July 4, 2022

This is about the weirdest temperature distribution in #NYC you'll see. A rapidly moving backdoor front (east -> west) has dropped temperatures in Queens/Bronx down to below 70F (aided by Long Island Sound). Meanwhile, it's still 90F in parts of Brooklyn/Manhattan! #nywx #nycwx pic.twitter.com/PFnu98FxhH

— Nick P Bassill (@NickPBassill) June 1, 2022

In 2021 Alexa continued her reign as the most disastrously declining popular name, falling from 495th to 883rd among girls born, and shedding 46% of births, from 1281 in 2020 to just 698 in 2021. In percentage terms, no other major name fell more than 25% (which was Lauren). pic.twitter.com/EIZXYUbbyn

— Philip N Cohen (@familyunequal) May 13, 2022

Known reinfections had higher Ct values (indicating lower viral loads) with each variant than ones where no record of a previous symptomatic infection existed, here shown in the unvaccinated. 6/9 pic.twitter.com/QRvYQJh9GJ

— Sebastian Funk (@sbfnk@fosstodon.org) (@sbfnk) April 27, 2022

Fintechs tends to have worse delinquency rates than banks in personal loans. Source: @JPMorganAM pic.twitter.com/ROslktYnib

— Snippet Finance (@SnippetFinance) March 7, 2022

Vaccines are the single most important tool in our fight against COVID

However, I’ve worried our approach using a narrow single protein mRNA Vax may limit our ability to keep up w the virus

This new data suggests it might

I’ll explain

1/ pic.twitter.com/G4RU3Y8qo1

— Michael Mina (@michaelmina_lab) April 15, 2022

Isn't Japan somewhat unique since a significant amount of land (major cities esp) is "leasehold," held by the same families for generations. Lessors (users) build for short-term use, maybe a generation or 20 years before expected teardown, and
Japan's population is shrinking: pic.twitter.com/2ApBe5OOfs

— Rob Frances (@RFrances2) April 7, 2022

Real wages and real disposable income aren't a great way of summing up what the purchasing power is of consumers. If you back that chart up to the great financial crisis: pic.twitter.com/zHSU4h8qBG

— Nate DiCamillo (@Nate_DiCamillo) April 5, 2022

Below is the cumulative amount of progress from first grade to twelfth by percentile:

As you can see there is a lot of progress for the best students into and throughout high school. The students in the first percentile don't meaningfully improve their scores after fifth grade. pic.twitter.com/WG5FLepi6C

— Alex (@notcomplex_) February 11, 2024

Two bits of good Covid news today in the UK.

First, adding another two weeks of ONS data means Covid’s infection fatality rate has now crossed below the "2x flu" line.

Latest IFR is roughly 60% higher than flu and still falling. pic.twitter.com/KEVdmZejLl

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) February 11, 2022

For a given ATAR low SES students tend to do slightly better academically in first year. A number of earlier studies have found the same thing. 2/ 7 https://t.co/vyDbLj3RHm pic.twitter.com/rKxAGxgbDf

— Andrew Norton (@andrewjnorton) October 6, 2021

Animal welfare is basically chicken welfare pic.twitter.com/c4HUoDjLuA

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) January 27, 2022

These epidemics have proceeded in a similar fashion across states with initial rapid exponential growth that slowed as epidemics grew in size. It appears that states are largely on the same curve, just some are farther ahead on this curve compared to others. 4/9 pic.twitter.com/AxpZCC7Am2

— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) January 20, 2022

Whooooooosh.

Can't get enough of this sort of thing. pic.twitter.com/0clunG4tyw

— Colin Angus (@VictimOfMaths) January 17, 2022

Big study of ~70k Covid cases showing Omicron's far lower severity of outcomes vs Delta

Symptomatic hospitalisation -53%
Median hospital stay length -70%
ICU admission -74%
Mortality -91%

Major effects among both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients.https://t.co/xxxlYanRVL pic.twitter.com/3fsdd1OLIR

— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) January 12, 2022

2021 High/Low Temperature summary for the contiguous United States:

Coldest: -51F at Bottineau, ND 🥶
Hottest: 130F Death Valley, CA 🥵

Most days as Nation's cold spot: Peter Sinks, UT (100 days)
Most days as Nation's hot spot: Death Valley, CA (117 days) pic.twitter.com/PknT3L2vx4

— NWS Weather Prediction Center (@NWSWPC) January 7, 2022

33. Oliver's presentation includes this slide, which shows that as with older groups, vaccine efficacy in 12-15 yos (red line) declines over time. pic.twitter.com/G20EXXvIX7

— Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 (@HelenBranswell) January 5, 2022

Fig 5B: repeat w/ live Omicron previous pseudotype study findings that Om does not induce cell syncytia (cell-cell fusion, which is highly pathogenic/inflammatory).

Fig 5D: confirm much reduced lung epithelial replication (an order of magnitude).

All-in-all Om looks distinct. pic.twitter.com/IJXuEHjZV2

— Devan Sinha (@DevanSinha) December 30, 2021

Almost all the area under the viral load curve is above the antigen test threshold and the viral culture threshold.

I realize this alone is not dispositive, but the blog post has more.https://t.co/FdBZfs3wtM pic.twitter.com/6eOkTQpEPx

— Chris Said (@Chris_Said) December 29, 2021

New from today's @UKHSA report is the finding that Omicron has faster vaccine effectiveness waning vs symptomatic infection than Delta (N for Moderna small)https://t.co/viVjY37rNQ which is a replication of what has been seen in Israel @BarakRaveh pic.twitter.com/ynNM0DlRkv

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) December 23, 2021

blue line: daily COVID cases in the USA

red line: bad reviews of Yankee Candles on Amazon saying "they don't have any scent"

sources: google and https://t.co/oZm6ro0E1S pic.twitter.com/8U2XkH0RT4

— eleanor 🦌🏒 (@zornsllama) December 22, 2021

In neutralization assays, @BalazsLab observes only a 4-fold or 6-fold reduction in titer going from wild-type to Omicron after booster relative to 43-fold or 122-fold after initial mRNA vaccine series (https://t.co/EuHC1fuHWP). 4/14 pic.twitter.com/AidMZkxzUd

— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) December 20, 2021

This study gives one of the most powerful illustrations of technical progress: our increasing laziness.

Throughout the world, as countries developed, the average worker went from spending 50% of their life working in 1856 to around 20% working in 1981. https://t.co/8gs8FWx5Pq pic.twitter.com/5kk6L54hxy

— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) December 10, 2021

Coming to a town near you pic.twitter.com/aS4bsOKblP

— Theo Sanderson (@theosanderson) December 17, 2021

71.9% of cases in London with specimens from 13 December were Omicron.

Overall London cases are already reaching the maximum values ever seen in the pandemic. pic.twitter.com/CJF5kQqBpl

— Theo Sanderson (@theosanderson) December 16, 2021

Under existing control measures, we project a wave of infections resulting from Omicron that exceeds the January 2021 levels, for all four scenarios.

In the optimistic scenario, hospital admissions are projected to remain below Jan 2021 levels. pic.twitter.com/LpZIp4NQxA

— Dr Rosanna C Barnard (she/her) (@BarnardResearch) December 11, 2021

I wanted to share one more figure from the #Omicron pre-print that I think offers some additional support for the idea that mRNA boosting doesn't just increase the total neutralizing response but instead "broadens" it to enable Omicron neuralization: pic.twitter.com/WPejn0d0ro

— Balazs Lab (@BalazsLab) December 16, 2021

30 behavioral scientists designed a
54 condition “megastudy” testing different
4-week digital programs to increase the gym visits of
61,293 @24hourfitness members
574 forecasters failed to predict what worked
TODAY our results are out in @Naturehttps://t.co/9UHuCs5LXz pic.twitter.com/32PapTLTwd

— Katy Milkman (@katy_milkman) December 8, 2021

This graph shows relationship between time, viral load and transmissibility - and why Sensitivity against PCR looks horrible, even if the test is 100% sensitive to catch infectious people.

The infectious period is days. PCR is not specific for this & stays pos for weeks

10/ pic.twitter.com/215oVqkLwB

— Michael Mina (@michaelmina_lab) September 15, 2021

I've redrawn this concept here. We have viral abundance on the x-axis in arbitrary units of 0% to 100% and population immune pressure on the y-axis also in arbitrary units. Viral adaptation is plotted by color and is just abundance × immune pressure. 4/19 pic.twitter.com/TAZgbEmGHG

— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) November 22, 2021

Grenfell et al. 2004 (https://t.co/1uq4qZvP2f) lays out the conceptual foundations for thinking about this problem. This figure is a bit hard to parse, but basically vaccination will increase population immunity and move rightward on the x-axis. 2/19 pic.twitter.com/L7odPQAPEH

— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) November 22, 2021

I referenced this graph from the book A MATTER OF TASTE:

Everything in fashion is cyclical except for the decline of formality, which is structural and unrelenting.

The pandemic merely accelerated the process by which athleisure would conquer the world. pic.twitter.com/pEE6iLxtH4

— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) November 23, 2021

Worth noting that launch cost per kilogram to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) had stagnated for 30+ years before SpaceX and other private rocket companies came along. pic.twitter.com/VVVXids66B

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) July 22, 2021

'Extreme poverty: how far have we come, how far do we still have to go?'

The new post by @MaxCRoser is out https://t.co/hTtqRvq155

This is one the charts from this article. pic.twitter.com/oWmimzYaUY

— Our World in Data (@OurWorldInData) November 22, 2021

and then here's suicides, homicides, and accidental poisonings for Massachusetts in the long run. I like MA because 1) clear increase in organized crime in the relevant period, 2) not confounded by changing coverage areas like the all-US data. pic.twitter.com/gkUGyZXro6

— Lyman Stone SF Mar 10-13, SLC Mar 13-14 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 (@lymanstoneky) November 6, 2021

Now you know: What an extremely strong causal relationship looks like in social science: Education and earnings for full-time workers ages 25-34 (R2=.16, unless you draw the line through the means, then it's .97) pic.twitter.com/EQPUS8EjyP

— Philip N Cohen (@familyunequal) October 23, 2021

Regional Victoria converges into a line at 95%.#Covid19VicData #CovidVic #COVID19nsw #COVID19Aus pic.twitter.com/XoE7TEz2Mm

— Dr Behrooz Hassani-M (@behrooz_hm) October 25, 2021

Year-over-year inflation will likely remain elevated into 2022 given the higher monthly inflation seen this summer. 8/ pic.twitter.com/nFelFxuf3L

— Council of Economic Advisers Archived (@WHCEA46Archive) October 13, 2021