Brad DeLong provides a great graph from Bill Nordhaus’s latest research. Nordhaus estimates the price of computation has fallen a trillionfold in 60 years.
“You could say that this administration is uniquely well qualified to chase after corporate evildoers. After all, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have firsthand experience of the subject.” Paul Krugman is on fine form.
Applied mathematicians are using the diffusion of euros to study how epidemics spread. The New York Times quotes Dietrich Stoyan, from the University of Freiberg: “This is a historically unique opportunity. I hope that studying this process will help people studying epidemics. We know when this ‘epidemic’ broke out [January 1, when the coins were launched across Europe].”
In typically unhelpful fashion, the Times doesn’t provide the URLs of the websites it mentions in the article (why is The Guardian just about the only newspaper that tries reasonably hard to do this?). I found both the German site and the Dutch research site. Both sites welcome participation. What a great thing for teaching students about statistics.