Author: Mary Pat Campbell

How to pick the least wrong colors

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://matthewstrom.com/writing/how-to-pick-the-least-wrong-colors/

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Stripe’s dashboards use graphs to visualize data. While the color palettes we use are certainly passable, the team is always trying to improve them. A colleague was working on creating updated color palettes, and we discussed the challenges he was working through. The problem boiled down to this: how do I pick nice-looking colors that cover a broad set of use cases for categorical data while meeting accessibility goals?

The domain of this problem is categorical data — data that can be compared by grouping it into two or more sets. In Stripe’s case, we’re often comparing payments from different sources, comparing the volume of payments between multiple time periods, or breaking down revenue by product.

The criteria for success are threefold:

  1. The colors should look nice. In my case, they need to be similar to Stripe’s brand colors.
  2. The colors should cover a broad set of use cases. In short, I need lots of colors in case I have lots of categories.
  3. The colors should meet accessibility goals. WCAG 2.2 dictates that non-text elements like chart bars or lines should have a color contrast ratio of at least 3:1 with adjacent colors.

Author(s): Matthew Ström

Publication Date: 31 May 2022

Publication Site: Matthew Ström

New York loses $19.5 billion in population exodus, IRS confirms

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.thecentersquare.com/new_york/new-york-loses-19-5-billion-in-population-exodus-irs-confirms/article_c805dfd6-dde6-11ec-8d0e-4f667cd41881.html

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The Internal Revenue Service this week released more troubling data for New York, with the federal agency showing more high-earning taxpayers leaving the state.

Tracking returns filed in 2019 and 2020 showed that 479,826 people left New York for another state or country in those years. Over the same timeframe, just 231,439 people moved to the state. That means the state suffered a net loss of 248,387 residents.

And, of course, those people took their money with them. The IRS figures show the moves generated an economic exodus of more than $19.5 billion.

New Jersey and Florida were the biggest beneficiaries. More than 84,500 people moved from New York to New Jersey and took $5.3 billion. By contrast, only 37,127 New Jersey residents moved to New York and brought $2.2 billion in income.

….

Wirepoints, in its analysis, noted New York suffered the worst net loss of income of any state, with the $19.5 billion representing a 2.5 percent decline in adjusted gross income. 

Author(s): Steve Bittenbender

Publication Date: 28 May 2022

Publication Site: The Center Square

Current Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761

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In addition, drug overdose and poisoning increased by 83.6% from 2019 to 2020 among children and adolescents, becoming the third leading cause of death in that age group. This change is largely explained by the 110.6% increase in unintentional poisonings from 2019 to 2020. The rates for other leading causes of death have remained relatively stable since the previous analysis, which suggests that changes in mortality trends among children and adolescents during the early Covid-19 pandemic were specific to firearm-related injuries and drug poisoning; Covid-19 itself resulted in 0.2 deaths per 100,000 children and adolescents in 2020.1

Although the new data are consistent with other evidence that firearm violence has increased during the Covid-19 pandemic,5 the reasons for the increase are unclear, and it cannot be assumed that firearm-related mortality will later revert to prepandemic levels. Regardless, the increasing firearm-related mortality reflects a longer-term trend and shows that we continue to fail to protect our youth from a preventable cause of death. Generational investments are being made in the prevention of firearm violence, including new funding opportunities from the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, and funding for the prevention of community violence has been proposed in federal infrastructure legislation. This funding momentum must be maintained.

Author(s):

Jason E. Goldstick, Ph.D.
Rebecca M. Cunningham, M.D.
Patrick M. Carter, M.D.
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Publication Date: 19 May 2022

Publication Site: New England Journal of Medicine

Firearm Mortality by State

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm

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1 The number of deaths per 100,000 total population.

Source: https://wonder.cdc.gov

States are categorized from highest rate to lowest rate. Although adjusted for differences in age-distribution and population size, rankings by state do not take into account other state specific population characteristics that may affect the level of mortality. When the number of deaths is small, rankings by state may be unreliable due to instability in death rates.

Publication Date: accessed 31 May 2022

Publication Site: CDC

Price of Crude Jumps as EU Foolishly Doubles Down On Sanctions

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://mishtalk.com/economics/price-of-crude-jumps-as-eu-foolishly-doubles-down-on-sanctions

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“This is surely unworkable – a carve out for Hungary, which allows its refineries to enjoy sky rocketing margins on sales elsewhere in the EU because of their access to Russian crude. It’s almost laughable,” said Jeremy Warner.

It seems the carve out for Hungary was “workable” after all, with predictable results.

Russia, China, Hungary, and energy producers are the beneficiaries of these terribly counterproductive sanctions.

This is my “Hoot of the Day” but it’s early. I may easily need bonus hoots. 

Author(s): Mike Shedlock

Publication Date: 31 May 2022

Publication Site: Mish Talk

ACTUARY VERSUS DATA SCIENCE

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/insights/2022/may/actuary-versus-data-science.html

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The number of candidates sitting for entry level exam P and exam FM decreased over the last decade. Figure 1 below shows the total attempts for Exams P and FM halving over the past decade.

This represents an average decline of 7% per year across the two exams. This shows a major change from 2013 when the Actuarial Profession was consistently ranked #1 in national job lists and the number of candidates sitting for exams was growing year over year. For reference, Actuary is currently ranked #20, behind software developer (#5) and data scientist (#6).

One hypothesis is that data scientists and similar job openings are drawing potential actuaries away from the profession. To investigate this question, we queried fifteen colleges, actuarial clubs, and their recent graduates to see if this trend was noticeable, with key learnings summarized below:

Candidates at schools with Society of Actuaries (SOA)’s Centers of Actuarial Excellence (CAE) recognition are more than twice as likely to remain on the actuarial career path. Further, the strongest programs appear to attract other majors due to the top-tier program and resources

Recently established data science majors are pulling some students away from actuarial science and quite a few interviewees perceived that the popularity of the actuarial science program is declining

For international students, there is a general perception that it is harder to get an actuarial job that provides working visa sponsorship, while most data science jobs still provide sponsorship

The mixed results between the first two findings suggest that the strongest college actuarial programs are becoming stronger while schools with fledgling or small programs may be struggling. For example, actuarial career fairs tend to be successful only after achieving a level of scale so that they are well attended by both prospective hires and recruiters.

Author(s): Eve Sun, Mark Spong, Roger Yuan

Publication Date: May 2022

Publication Site: Oliver Wyman

Drug-Overdose Deaths Reached a Record in 2021, Fueled by Fentanyl

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/drug-overdose-deaths-reached-a-record-in-2021-fueled-by-fentanyl-11652277600

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Drug-overdose deaths in 2021 topped 100,000 for the first time in a calendar year, federal data showed, a record high fueled by the spread of illicit forms of fentanyl throughout the country.

More than 107,000 people in the U.S. died from drug overdoses last year, preliminary Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released Wednesday showed, roughly a 15% increase from 2020. The proliferation of the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl has been compounded by the destabilizing effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on users and people in recovery, according to health authorities and treatment providers.

The U.S. has recorded more than one million overdose deaths since 2000, and more than half of those came in the past seven years.

….

The agency has counted about 103,600 overdoses for 2021 but believes the number is several thousand higher due to suspected overdoses that haven’t yet been confirmed by local death investigators, Dr. Anderson said.

Author(s): Jon Kamp

Publication Date: 11 May 2022

Publication Site: WSJ

Why Elon Musk thinks civilization could crumble without more babies

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.deseret.com/2022/5/26/23142871/elon-musk-population-falling-birthrates-japan-south-korea-us-fertility-italy

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Elon Musk thinks human civilization will fall apart unless people have more babies — and he’s expressed particular worries about Italy, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan. But he has some concerns about the United States, too.

For weeks, Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, the acquirer of Twitter in a $44 billion deal and a father himself, has been tweeting about birthrate declines in America and abroad.

“At risk of stating the obvious, unless something changes to cause the birth rate to exceed the death rate, Japan will eventually cease to exist,” Musk tweeted on May 7, according to TheStreet. “This would be a great loss to the world.”

Author(s): Lois M. Collins

Publication Date: 26 May 2022

Publication Site: Deseret News

Fact-check: Do ‘more people die from hands, fists, feet, than rifles’?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-more-people-die-120052963.html

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“More people die from hands, fists, feet, than rifles. Guess we should ban limbs now…,” reads the May 25 post. Underneath, a graphic titled “Number of murder victims in the Unites States in 2020 by weapon used” shows rifle deaths at 455 and deaths from “personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.)” as 662. The post includes a link to a website called Statista.

….

FBI data from 2020 does show that more people died from injuries sustained from other people’s fists, feet and hands than from rifles. But there’s a little more you should know about that data before you use it to draw conclusions.

Author(s): Jeff Cercone of Austin American-Statesman

Publication Date: 30 May 2022

Publication Site: Yahoo News

A Resilient Future

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://theactuarymagazine.org/a-resilient-future/

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If we consider how risk events unfold in reality, they usually occur through a sequence of interacting factors (see Figure 1). For example: A control does not quite work as intended because the usual supervisor is not available, and coincidentally a staff member has unintended access to a system from which they are able to extract personal information. On any other day, those conditions might have been different and resulted in another outcome. The reality, therefore, is that risks emerge as a result of a complex series of interactions among a large number of factors, and small changes in conditions can lead to significantly different risk outcomes.

Risk events also often involve active participants who learn and adapt their behaviors accordingly. Cyber is a good example—the attacker generally is trying to outthink their adversary and stay one step ahead. All of this means that past performance is not necessarily a reliable predictor of the future. There are too many things that can be subtly different, leading to hugely different outcomes.

Author(s): Neil Cantle

Publication Date: May 2022

Publication Site: SOA

Census: Illinois cities combined lose 104,000 people in 2021

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.thecentersquare.com/illinois/census-illinois-cities-combined-lose-104-000-people-in-2021/article_5a261c26-dc63-11ec-8881-f30cf9c72ea4.html?utm_source=Master+List&utm_campaign=e66598c836-MICHIGAN_B2C_NEWSLETTER&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d03ba9ddf1-e66598c836-74692253

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Cities and towns in Illinois lost more than 104,000 people in the 12 months up to July 1, 2021, according to new U.S. Census data released Thursday. Nearly half of Illinois’ losses were from Chicago.

The report for the entire country shows populations continue to shift to towns in the South and West regions of the United States.

“Arizona, Texas, Florida and Idaho all had several places among the 15 fastest-growing cities or towns,” the report said.

Of the 15 largest cities, New York lost nearly 305,500 people. Chicago lost 45,175 people, which was larger than Los Angeles’ loss of 40,537 people. Chicago is the third most populous city behind New York and L.A..

Author(s): Greg Bishop

Publication Date: 26 May 2022

Publication Site: The Center Square