I found this chart interesting. It is the On Peak Weekly Average (Day Ahead) for SE Mass in the NE ISO from 2004-2007. It does need to be indexed to natural gas prices in NE but look at 2006, 2007. The exponents of the power law equations of all the years (except 2005) are fairly close. 2005 had Katrina which really spiked the prices at the end of the year. I expect that when I index the prices to nat gas, the chart will be even more behaved. You can also see that the highest and lowest weeks don't quite fit. They could be partitioned out to make the fit better. Also, there could be different ways to analyze this data.

new coal plant tracking

http://www.netl.doe.gov/coal/refshelf/ncp.pdf

Dismal Numbers Indeed Part 2

While doing some other work, I wanted to see the average household income by census region. Being in wonderful East North Central, I focused on that region. This website is the source for my chart.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/cfapps/STEO_Query/steotables.cfm?periodType=Annual&startYear=2005&startMonth=1&endYear=2009&endMonth=12&tableNumber=4

Sad, we were a solid 4th and now we are 6th going on 7th. We have had the lowest average growth over the period.

Very Interesting Book!

Someone sent me this link. If you don't read anything else, read Chapter 2. It has some great insights that really made me think. The transistor forecast method was very interesting. My company is in the business of selling electricity which customers don't really use/need (actually lethal if they tried). Also, the comments around rain dances being all about the dance and not the results was also very interesting. It all starts with the ultimate objectives, not the methods to meet the objectives.


http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/Long-Range%20Forecasting/contents.html

Offense vs Ranked Unranked

Not much different rsquared wise and the error is about the same. Still, I am more inclined to believe the impact on offense than I am the defensive numbers when trying to estimate a teams performance against ranked teams when using unranked statistics.

Unranked vs Ranked Defenses...

I wanted to see how much of the defensive statistics against unranked teams matters when you play a ranked team. Using cfbstats, I can split the data by games against ranked/unranked teams. It has data back to 2004 and I filtered out teams which didn't play at least 3 ranked teams that year. On average, ranked teams score about 10 more points than unranked teams. Using regression, the r squared is 32% so basically the non ranked statistics matter just not as much as maybe you would think. The standard error is almost a touchdown so their is a lot of randomness that needs to be understood. We would have to figure out what part of the statistics may give us clues to how well a team will do against ranked teams as compared to unranked teams. Here are the charts and regression stats...

Here are some sample teams through the years. Some things stick out. USC defense is basically just as effective against ranked teams as unranked teams. Anyone know why or is it just randomness? LSU is about average except the 2007 team was just as effective against ranked as unranked. Overall, LSU appears to be quite stingy on defense regardless of who they play. WV had some weak defenses in 2005-2006 but the # of games is so low it is hard to tell. The other years were about average so maybe it is just randomness.