Author: Justin

Lesson 5: Refugee Crises in the Middle East

Review:

  • War in Syria
  • Exam 1 on Thu

Presentation:

Group Discussions:

  • Which countries in the Middle East would make the best US allies?
  • What US policies might help prevent or minimize impacts on future refugee situations?
    • Economic policies
    • Political policies

Review Topics:

  • Geography of Middle East
  • Theories of Uneven Economic Development
    • Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs and Steel
    • Neill Ferguson – 6 Killer Apps
  • Oil and Conflict – a brief history
  • US in Iraq
  • Saudi Arabia
  • War in Syria
  • Proxy War: Iran vs. Saudi Arabia
  • Refugee Crisis

Assignment:

  • Study for Exam 1
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Lesson 5: Time Series Forecasting

Review:

  • Exploring Time Series Data
  • Schedule
    • This week: Time Series Forecasting (today) and Measuring Forecast Error (Wed)
    • Next week: Review (Mon) and Exam 1 (Wed)

Presentation:

  • Time series forecasting
    • with linear trend
    • with curve fitting
    • demonstrate with a commodity
    • download data
    • calculate moving average
    • insert chart (line or scatter)
    • fit Trendline
    • label and copy linear or polynomial equation
    • use to forecast time period n+1

Activity:

  • Forecast closing WTI Oil Price for Tue Jan 29
  • Forecast closing S&P500 Price for Tue Jan 29
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Lesson 4: Exploring Time Series Data

Review:

  • Python
  • Sheets

Presentation:

Activity:

  • Using the OilPrices data
    • Open in Sheets
    • Go to “Insert > Chart” and produce a “Line Chart”
    • Make a chart like the one below
    • Be sure to label axes and give the chart a title
    • Add the chart to your portfolio
  • Using the PuebloRESales2014 data
    • Open in Google Sheets
    • Select a neighborhood and filter so only properties in that neighborhood are visible
    • Highlight the “Total SqFt” and “Selling Price” columns (Shift-Ctl-Down Arrow helps)
    • Go to “Insert > Chart” to produce a scatter plot
    • Fit a “Trendline” to the data and display the equation and the R² value.
    • Label your chart with the neighborhood name, linear equation and R² value
    • Repeat until you’ve recorded data for 3 separate neighborhoods (you may choose any set of 3 neighborhoods)
    • Add the 3 charts, with labels, to your portfolio
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Lesson 3: Saudi Arabia and the Future of Oil

Review:

  • Oil and Conflict in the Middle East
  • Losing Iraq
    • Iraq War (based on shaky justification, but that’s another story)
      • US-led coalition forces invade Iraq and easily take Bagdhad
      • Seemingly no plan to secure Iraq after invasion
      • Limited understanding of internal Iraqi affairs, politics, culture
    • Paul Bremer
      • Disbanded Iraqi army, etc
    • Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz – axis of neocon nincompoops
    • Obama withdraws US troops
      • Radical al-Qaeda fighters allowed to regroup
      • Form ISIS and begin grabbing territory in Iraq and Syria
  • Rise of ISIS

Presentation:

Assignment:

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Lesson 3: Exploratory Data Analysis with Simple Graphics

Review:

  • Python
  • Repl.it

Presentation:

Activity:

  • Select 6 players from your assigned team
    • Each player should be productive (scores points) but they should also have a reasonable salary
    • Your “salary cap” for the 6-player roster is $36M
    • Try to assemble the most productive 6 players within the salary cap
  • Download 2018-2019 “Game Log” data for these 6 individual players
  • Make histograms in Sheets
  • Make histograms in Python
  • Add results to your portfolio

 

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Lesson 2: Oil and Conflict in the Middle East

Review:

  • Syllabus
  • Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
    • agricultural practices spread easily in mideast/eurasia
    • easily domesticated animals were plentiful
    • both facilitated development of technology
  • 6 Killer Apps by Niall Ferguson
    1. competition
    2. scientific revolution
    3. private property rights
    4. modern medicine
    5. consumer society
    6. work ethic
  • for me, there are only 3
    • scientific revolution + modern medicine: freedom to pursue scientific discovery and technology innovation
    • competition: fair competition and appropriate role of government in economy
    • work ethic + consumer society: opportunity for economic mobility
  • geography vs “laws and rules invented by reason”
    • location matters
    • laws matter

Presentation:

Assignment:

 

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Lesson 2: Intro to Data Processing with Python

Review:

  • Syllabus
  • Sheets tutorial video
  • Attendance

Presentation:

  • Data Science
    • Combination of statistics + programming with big data
    • Hot like computer software development in the 1990’s
    • Salaries are high 
  •  Python

Activity:

  • Set up an account (or use your Google or Facebook account) on Repl.it
  • Create a new “repl” Python program
  • Upload your csv file, or copy-paste your csv data into a new csv file
  • You can copy-paste from my code at https://repl.it/@justinholman/ReadCSV
  • Modify the program to read your .csv data file
  • Modify the program to print (to screen) your player data (don’t worry – I’ll show you)
  • Take a screen capture of your Repl.it program with your name on it and add to your digital portfolio file

 

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Lesson 1: Introduction, World Regions and Theories of Uneven Economic Development

Introduction:

Presentation:

  • World Regions
    • Continents
    • Global Sales Territory Partition (typical) in Business
      • Americas – North and South America
      • EMEA – Europe, Middle East and Africa
      • Asia Pacific – South, East and Southeast Asia + Australia/Oceania
    • World Bank Regions
    • The Plaid Avenger (John Boyer) – World Regions
    • regions_vid
    • We will focus on 4 regions/modules
      • Middle East
      • Europe + Russia
      • Asia (South Asia + East Asia + Southeast Asia + Japan)
      • Latin America (South America + Central America + Caribbean + Mexico)
      • We will *not* cover Australia/New Zealand, Central Asia, most of Africa
  • Theories of Uneven Development
    • Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel – Episode 1
      • Summary of Diamond’s arguments
      • Agricultural Revolution in the Fertile Crescent 
      • Domestication of animals
        • Sources of meat, milk, leather, wool, etc
        • Source of muscle power for plowing, transportation
        • Only cows, horses, pigs, goats, sheep are readily domesticated
          • all these animals were available in Eurasia, not so elsewhere
        • Zebras, llama, buffalo, elephant, etc
          • from other continents
          • not too easy to domesticate
      • Spread of agriculture and animal domestication practices, geographically
        • Easy in Eurasia due to latitudinal (east-west) orientation where climate is relatively consistent.
        • Difficult in South America, Africa
      • Technology:
        • advances in tool-making, steel, military weapons, etc
        • enabled by agriculture and animal domestication food surplus
      • Germs
        • Native people in the Americas were susceptible to small pox and other diseases
        • Eurasian people developed immunity to disease due to animal domestication
    • Niall Ferguson, 6 Killer Apps – Ted Talk, PBS page
      • Institutions and culture, not geography, are pillars of economic development
      • Competition, science, private property, modern medicine, consumerism, work ethic
      • Examples of geography not making a difference
        • East-West Germany
        • North-South Korea

Activity:

  • World Map

Assignment:

  • Watch Guns, Germs and Steel – Episode 1 (6 sequential videos, ~55 min)
  • Watch Niall Ferguson, 6 Killer Apps Ted Talk (~20 min)
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Lesson 1: Introduction to Advanced Statistics

Presentation:

Activity:

  • Download NBA “per-game” player data for your assigned team from Basketball Reference
  • Import to Google Sheets
  • Add salary data for each player
  • Calculate total points scored and $ per point scored for each player
  • Clean up data so that it’s in “analyzable” format (no blanks, no spaces, no subtotals)
  • Make a bar chart to illustrate $ per point leaders
  • Export data to CSV format
  • Build Slide in PowerPoint or Google Slides
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