An Embarrassment of Riches: Forecasting Using Large Panels

The increasing availability of data and potential predictor variables poses new challenges to forecasters. The task of formulating a single forecasting model that can extract all the relevant information is becoming increasingly difficult in the face of this abundance of data. The two leading approaches to addressing this "embarrassment of riches" are philosophically distinct. One approach builds forecast models based on summaries of the predictor variables, such as principal components, and the second approach is analogous to forecast combination, where the forecasts from a multitude of possible models are averaged. Using several data sets we compare the performance of the two approaches in the guise of the diffusion index or factor models popularized by Stock and Watson and forecast combination as an application of Bayesian model averaging. We find that none of the methods is uniformly superior and that no method performs better than, or is outperformed by, a simple AR(p) process.Bayesian model averaging; Diffusion indexes; GDP growth rate; Inflation rate

An Embarrassment of Riches: Forecasting Using Large Panels

The problem of having to select a small subset of predictors from a large number of useful variables can be circumvented nowadays in forecasting. One possibility is to efficiently and systematically evaluate all predictors and almost all possible models that these predictors in combination can give rise to. The idea of combining forecasts from various indicator models by using Bayesian model averaging is explored, and compared to diffusion indexes, another method using large number of predictors to forecast. In addition forecasts based on the median model are considered.

Can anyone stop Hillary? An embarrassment of riches

"Ist Hillary Clinton die Nominierung als demokratischer Präsidentschaftskandidat noch zu nehmen? In den landesweiten Umfragen führt sie mit 25 Prozentpunkten vor ihren schärfsten Rivalen, den Senatoren Obama und Edwards, und im Vorwahlkampf ist ihr noch kein Fehler unterlaufen. Unter den Demokraten kann die ehemalige First Lady auf die schlagkräftigste Wahlkampforganisation, das beste Netzwerk und die meisten Spendengelder zurückgreifen. Zusätzlich verleiht ihr Ehemann ihrer Wahlkampagne staatsmännische Glaubwürdigkeit. Doch anders als Obama und Edwards schafft es Hillary Clinton nicht, die Herzen ihrer Anhänger zu begeistern: sie wird respektiert, nicht aber geliebt. Weil Clinton so stark polarisiert, ist sie zudem die Wunschgegnerin vieler Republikaner. Nichts motiviert konservative Wähler so sehr wie der Name Clinton auf dem Stimmzettel, und so könnte von ihrer Nominierung am Ende ein anderer profitieren: ihr bislang größter Konkurrent im republikanischen Lager, der ehemalige New Yorker Bürgermeister Rudy Giuliani." (Autorenreferat

An Embarrassment of Riches: Data Integration in VR Pompeii

It is fair to say that Pompeii is the most studied archaeological site in the world. Beyond the extensive remains of the city itself, the timing of its rediscovery and excavation place it in a unique historiographical position. The city has been continuously studied since the 18th century, with historians and archaeologists constantly reevaluating older sources as our knowledge of the ancient world expands. While several studies have approached the city from a data driven perspective, no studies of the city have taken a quantitative holistic approach on the scale of the VR Pompeii project. Hyper-specificity has been the order of the day, leaving our knowledge of the city structure incomplete. The VR Pompeii project at the University of Arkansas aims to address this by performing, in concert, topographical network analysis of houses and neighborhoods, convolutional neural network identification and categorization of wall images, and analysis of space usage through subject tracking and electroencephalogram (EEG) data. Coordination of this data to maintain search-ability for non-technical scholars is a major challenge. To this end, the purpose of this research has been to design and then implement a database that allows for all of the VR Pompeii project data to be accessed together, with room for expansion, while maintaining a simple user interface to empower non technical users to ask questions that no researcher has been able to ask about the ancient city of Pompeii

An Embarrassment of Riches: American Religious Pluralism as a Threat

Religious diversity is a sign of the vitality of American spirituality, but it presents a challenge: a thoughtful believer will most likely recognize that religious Others hold beliefs that contradict his or her own and will confront the fact that there is apparently no better evidence for his or her own beliefs than for those held by the religious Other. Thus the religious Other can easily become the disconfirming Other. An Embarrassment of Riches examines the various responses open to the believer challenged by the disconfirming Other, from self-deception of New Age spirituality to rigid fundamentalist opposition.https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shupress_bks/1004/thumbnail.jp

Symmetries, Horizons, and Black Hole Entropy

Black holes behave as thermodynamic systems, and a central task of any quantum theory of gravity is to explain these thermal properties. A statistical mechanical description of black hole entropy once seemed remote, but today we suffer an embarrassment of riches: despite counting very different states, many inequivalent approaches to quantum gravity obtain identical results. Such ``universality'' may reflect an underlying two-dimensional conformal symmetry near the horizon, which can be powerful enough to control the thermal characteristics independent of other details of the theory. This picture suggests an elegant description of the relevant degrees of freedom as Goldstone-boson-like excitations arising from symmetry breaking by the conformal anomaly.Comment: 6 pages; first prize essay, 2007 Gravity Research Foundation essay contes