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The most financially rewarding subjects to study

4/30/2017

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The dataset, degrees-that-pay-back.csv, is available on Kaggle.

The top 5 Majors in terms of percent change from starting to mid-career salary are:

Math                                      103.5%
Philosophy                            103.5%
International Relations        97.8%
Economics                             96.8%
Marketing                              95.1%

The bottom five majors are:
Education                              49%
Interior Design                     47.4%
Nutrition                               38.6%
Nursing                                  23.6%
Physician Assistant              23.4%

Computer science only just makes it into the top 20 at number 19. However in terms of the top 5 highest mid-career salaries computing does well:

Chemical engineering     $107,000
Computer engineering    $105,000
Electrical engineering      $103,000
Aerospace engineering    $101,000
economics                         $98,600

The bottom five salaries are:

Music                                $55,000
Interior Design                 $53,200
Spanish                             $53,100
Religion                            $52,000
Educaion                           $52,000

The best colleges to graduate from, assuming you want to earn more, are:
Dartmouth College
Princeton
Yale
MIT
Harvard
In the southern region the best college to graduate from, in terms of mid-career salary, is Georgetown
In the mid-western region the best college to graduate from, in terms of mid-career salary, is University of Notre Dame
In the western region the best college to graduate from, in terms of mid-career salary, is Colorado School of Mines
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Armagh Observatory - weather records

4/29/2017

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The weather records can be downloaded here.
Armagh Observatory has been taking manual weather observations for more than 200 years, see this BBC story.
Northern Ireland has a reputation for bad weather, the climate here is cool, often cloudy and quite wet. But on the plus side we don't get hurricanes, snow storms, high humidity or freezing temperatures. 
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The above graph shows the seasonal variation in max temperature. Note that most of the time it is less than 20 Celcius.
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Occasionally in January, February, March, November and December the temperature will drop below zero Celsius but  most of the time it is above freezing.
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Seasonal variation in rainfall is less noticeable than temperature - basically each season can be wet., but winters are usually wetter.
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Sunshine can be a rare thing in Ireland, the seasonal variation is clear.

Evidence of climate change?

The following graphs do suggest changes possibly indicating climate change.
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The above graph shows that since the mid-1970s the number of times the annual max temperature gets above 21 Celsius has increased.
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The above graph shows that since 1990 the number of times air frost days per year is above 45 days has decreased.
​These last two graphs might indicate a warming of the climate.
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2017 Northern Ireland general election, historical data

4/23/2017

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Unionist v Nationalist

In Northern Ireland all elections are a sectarian headcount because there is one question that trumps all others - 'Should there be a United Ireland or should Northern Ireland remain part of the UK?'. If you are a Catholic or from a Catholic background you will vote Nationalist and if you are from a Protestant background you will vote Unionist. The following graphs show how Westminster elections in Northern Ireland since 1983 have seen more nationalist and fewer unionist MPs. This is not because more people in Northern Ireland have been convinced of the benefits of the Nationalist argument. It is because demographics have seen the proportion of Catholics to Protestants move in favour of the Nationalists.
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The 2015 election was the first election since 1983 that saw the proportion of unionist MPs increase. This was due to electoral pacts between unionist parties and apathy amongst nationalists. Without these two influences I think this election would result in an equal number of unionist and nationalist MPs returned to Westminster.

The Good Friday Agreement resulted in a hardening of sectarian voting

The 1998 Good Friday agreement ironically resulted in a hardening of sectarian voting, the more moderate UUP and SDLP were replaced by the more sectarian DUP and Sinn Fein. 
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2017 General Election in NI - predictions

4/21/2017

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The 2015 results
constituency       majority
Mid Ulster          13,617    Sinn Fein
Lagan Valley      13,000    DUP
West Belfast      12,365    Sinn Fein
North Antrim      11,546    DUP
Strangford         10,185    DUP
West Tyrone      10,060    Sinn Fein
North Down        9,202    Independent Unionist
E. Londonderry    7,804    DUP
Foyle                  6,046    SDLP
South Down       5,891    SDLP
East Antrim        5,795    DUP
North Belfast      5,326    DUP
Newry & Armagh    4,176    Sinn Fein
East Belfast        2,597    DUP
Upper Bann        2,264    DUP
South Antrim       949    UUP
South Belfast       906    SDLP
Fer. & S.Tyrone   530    UUP    

The top 13 of these seats are unlikely to change party, which gives the parties:

DUP            5
UUP            0
Alliance       0
SDLP          2
Sinn Fein    5
plus one Independent.

the 5 less secure seats:
In order for Alliance to take E. Belfast they need a large anti-DUP protest vote. I don't think that will happen this time, the opposite might happen. The shock of losing their majority in the last Stormont election might bring out the unionist vote. So the DUP will win here, giving them 6 MPs.

The main opposition in Upper Bann is from the UUP, I don't think they will do well in this election so this will be another win for the DUP, bringing their total to 7 MPs

South Antrim was very close in 2015 with the UUP majority less than 1,000 (about 2.6% of the total vote). I think it will be very close again but this is maybe the UUP's best chance of getting an MP. This brings the UUP up to 1.

South Belfast is unusual in that all of the big 5 parties have good support. If the DUP and UUP do an electoral pact and the UUP does not run here then the DUP could win, bringing their total to 8.

Fermanagh and South Tyrone will be won by Sinn Fein, I think the SDLP vote will slip further, it has been on the decline for some time with much of it going to SinnFein:
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The Sinn Fein voters are still angry with Arlene Foster so will come out to vote. I don't think the Unionists will ever win in this seat again, the demographics are not in their favour. This brings Sinn Fein up to 6.

So my prediction for the final numbers is:

DUP             8
UUP             1
Alliance        0
SDLP           2
Sinn Fein     6
plus one independent unionist​
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Has Sinn Fein decided to turn it's back on Northern Ireland Devolution?

4/20/2017

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The following quote from a senior member of the DUP suggests some people believe so.
Nigel Dodds: We need a willing partner - some of us fear SF have decided the time for devolution is over

I analysed Sinn Fein tweets over the Easter period, from 25 tweets over the Easter weekend:

Irish unification/reunification was mentioned 13 times
Brexit and the EU were mentioned 5 times
the talks process was mentioned once
Stormont was mentioned zero times

The DUP are mentioned twice, on both occasions they are mentioned with the British Government as if the DUP and the British Government are the same thing. On both occasions the sentiment is negative. It is not surprising that a Republican or Nationalist party talks about reunification of Ireland, escepcially at Easter, but the Sinn Fein Twitter account definitely gives the impression of a party that has given up on the devolution route and instead is returning to their roots - a 'united' Ireland with or without Unionist engagement or approval. Just as the unionists have done little or nothing to win over soft nationalsits to Unionism, Sinn Fein have had zero success in convincing unionists they would be better off in  United Ireland. 
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North Korean missile and nuclear tests

4/17/2017

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There has been a sharp increase in the number of missile tests since the last leadership change. There have not been any nuclear tests so far this year.
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MOMA - doesn't like female artists

4/12/2017

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The data comes from a dataset available on Kaggle. 

Number of male artists = 9826 (82%)
Number of female artists = 2193 (18%)

So if you are  female artist how can you maximise your chances of having your work displayed in MOMA? 

First you should be American, the top ten nationalities for female artists in the dataset are:

American                    1046
German                      139
British                          107
French                          66
Japanese                     55
Austrian                        44
Italian                            40
Canadian                       38
Dutch                             36
Nationality unknown      34

Or put it another way: American represents 65% of the total top ten - the figure for male artists is 51%. It also helps if you are dead - 77% of the female artists in the MOMA collection are dead compared to 60% for male artists.
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Trump Twitter - word clouds

4/10/2017

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The word cloud below was generated from Trump's personal Twitter account for Tweets in March:
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I generated this second word cloud from his twitter account earlier in the year:
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In March there was less about Fake News and the Media and more about health care/ Obamacare, jobs and Russia.
​The following blog post explains how to generate these word clouds.
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The gender pay gap and the problem with averages

4/8/2017

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Let's say we have a small fictional UK based company call ABC Inc. This company employs 13 people, 1 senior manager, 4 middle managers and 8 junior staff. The rate of pay for the different positions is senior = 40,000, middle = 30,000 and junior = 20,000. Let's say the senior manager is male and 3 of the four middle managers are male, the junior roles are 4 female and 4 male. The average pay in this case is:

male average = 26,250
female average = 22,000

So men are paid more than women in this company? No - for a given role all employees are paid the same. The problem here is the lack of female employees in middle and senior positions.
We can force the averages to converge just by re-arranging the distribution of male to female employees. For example let's say one of the male middle managers leaves the company and one of the female junior employees is promoted to fill that position. Now the averages are:

male average = 25,714
female average = 24,000

Averages are misleading because not everyone understands what they mean, in particular the main stream media struggle with statistics. There is sometimes an incorrect belief that if the average salary for women in a company is less than the men that means women are paid less than men for doing the same job. That may be true sometimes but as the above example shows it is not always the case. Rather than focusing on just average pay it might be better to focus on the ratio of male to female managers.
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Don't jump to conclusions...

4/6/2017

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The following bar chart shows total number of recorded bird strikes on aircraft for each year.
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It is clear that the graph is going up from 1990 to 2014. Does this mean that a given flight now has a higher probability of suffering a bird strike than 20 years ago? The above data can't answer that question, we need more context. In this case we need to know the number of flights per year. It is possible that for some reason bird strikes are now more likely but it is also possible that the probability of a bird strike has dropped since 1990 but the total number of flights per year has significantly increased.
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