In Granada, past the houses and hills, I kept expecting to find the sea

#ASHEcon2025 has been awesome! Attended some great presentations, got helpful feedback on my paper, and made new friends I’ll try to recap some of the talks but I forgot to take photos (I did take notes!)

I'm asking o3 to help interpret a report on a topic new to me. When I pointed out that it was hallucinating more than usual (there's no pg 26!), it said that the PDF periodically "ages out" of the chat Is this new? A capacity issue? I’ve now uploaded the file for the 4th time

Who’s going to #ASHEcon2025? I arrive Sun and present on Mon (3:30pm - Environment and Health) It’s my 1st time at ASHEcon! Let me know if you’d like to meet. I’m interested in healthcare access + costs, environment x health, development econ Please recommend sessions/events you’re excited about!

If you're anxious about git operations (rebasing, reverting, cherry-picking, shelving, stashing) or unsure which ones to use, especially in a team repo, Augment (AI code editor) can walk you through the steps (with clear instructions and reasons) or handle the changes for you

How are we already a week into June?

Anyone at Google Gemini who can help my team with a request to increase our API rate limit? We'd like to switch to Gemini but need to test at scale first I submitted a request on Wed morning (ET) and tried following up. No response either time. Help us give you our money!!

🚀 Garner Health is growing! I'm hiring early-career data scientists to join my team (NYC-based, 3 days/week in office). If you're interested — or know someone who might be — check out the job description and application: job-boards.greenhouse.io/garnerhealth...

The stark contrast between my disappointing experience with o3 (yes, I use pro) and others’ makes me feel like the joke’s on me — as if o3 is intentionally, defiantly, and obstinately sloppy, like a teenager testing my attentiveness to see what she can get away with. 🙃

I've enjoyed #PAA2025 so much that I still haven’t made it to the National Gallery (DC) Yesterday, I presented two projects on child health and labor outcomes in developing countries, one in a flash session and one as a paper Hoping to share a quick recap next week of papers I've enjoyed!

I dream of a day when all these social media platforms and tech behemoths — which I assume know more about me than I know about myself — will show me a good ad, sponsored post, or recommendation 🙏 I fear the problem is that I care about boring things that don’t sell 🙃

📈🤔 How do you decide when you have enough evidence to make a decision? When to call it a day vs. gather more data? I’m planning to write about this as I reflect on Q1 projects Till then, I’d love to hear from you: principles you use, surprising experiences, good resources, etc.

📊🩻 As a follow-up, I wrote about breaking into healthcare data roles after receiving questions from soon-to-be graduates and early-career generalists www.alakahalder.xyz/2025/03/20/b... Hope this helps some of you! What advice did I miss?

How does your team or organization approach quarterly roadmap planning? How does leadership involve individual contributors, whether by soliciting ideas, voting on ideas, or in other ways? Per item on the roadmap, how precisely do you define "done"?

It’s OK to cull seemingly good ideas with low impact. I’m not talking about politics, just research projects at work I’m lucky to work somewhere that actively encourages this Yes, it’s disappointing to discover that an algorithm or product isn’t worth building

Many early-career data science enthusiasts ask me how to stand out in startup job applications I wish I could reply to everyone. Instead, I consolidated some advice on resumes and cold outreach, drawing on my experience as a hiring manager and interviewer: www.alakahalder.xyz/2025/03/12/r...

When giving tough, fair feedback (before the point of needing to part ways), I’ve found it makes a difference to show that you believe in the person’s ability to succeed It sounds obvious and yet doesn’t happen as often as I’d expect in practice — why?

If they hadn't told you the dog was drowning, what would you have thought? (Goya, 1820 - 1823, Museo Del Prado, Madrid) www.museodelprado.es/en/the-colle...

Depressing ProPublica article re: prominent Montana oncologist I'm unfamiliar with the law. Can someone explain why it's unclear if the suspicious deaths are being investigated? Is the evidence insufficient? Are investigators unable to disclose more? Why was his license renewed?

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Beautiful but too crowded on Presidents' Day to be truly enjoyable. Why do I keep visiting museums on public holidays? I was too grumpy to look up at the ceilings -- I always look at ceilings! -- and missed The Coronation of Hebe Next time...

I didn't get around to reflecting on 2024, and suddenly it's February, so I'll compromise by sharing a few pieces I enjoyed seeing last year: - Dull Gret - Two Crabs - Bust of Nefertiti - An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump

Mid-December. Fluffy hydrangeas and surprise tomatoes.

Lake Pflugerville (Nov '24)

Do op-eds in major newspapers convince people to change their minds? Is there research about this?

If you think that insurance companies with the right incentives could do much more to help match you with the provider best suited to treat you rather than the average doctor you currently see, then you might be onto something (pending further study).

You cannot have: a) Low healthcare costs b) No consumer cost sharing c) Doctors do everything they think benefits patients d) No insurer oversight

My answer to "From a game-theoretic perspective, when should political candidates stake out extreme versus moderate positions?" received a gold prize in Quora's 3nd Knowledge Contest in Economics, judged by @skominers.bsky.social. I had fun writing this! qr.ae/p2jDr9

Late November in the Carolinas

Useful read for patients and families. If you have the opportunity, research your NPs! They increasingly fill care gaps but inexperienced ones cause serious headaches www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Can't wait to visit again 🥰 In the meantime, I'm looking forward to upcoming Interintellect meetups and book talks in Austin!

Sharing for friends in NYC: 🗣️ Income Inequality: Robert Kuttner and Tyler Cowen in conversation, moderated by Jeff Greenfield 🕢 Sun, Nov 17, 2024, 7:30 pm ET www.92ny.org/event/income...

🧭 Austin @interintellect.bsky.social meetup at Easy Tiger 🍻 We discussed how to pick a city to live in, AI safety research, genome sequencing, music festivals, connectomics, ways of learning, value-based care, elections around the world, anywhere vs. somewhere people, and more 👋 See you all in Dec

Baked some fluffy buttermilk cookies to try and finish off an endless bottle of buttermilk. They're tastier than they look! Could have been more generous with the cinnamon sugar I have way too much batter left and need to figure out the best way to freeze it

We are now streaming! Cities and Development Workshop 2024 Starting with Yue Yu's study of urbanization and road upgrading in Uganda. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpxB...

Sometimes I’m surprised by how much time I spend proofreading, formatting tables, creating more accessible and appealing charts, etc. Any suggestions for being more efficient, besides practice? For one, I don’t yet trust LLMs to copy edit (besides typos) or give excellent feedback on data stories

Sunday at Tejas Park in Liberty Hill, on the western tail of Lake Georgetown

Or, put differently, about 2.5% of all trips in the US were by public transit. Waymo robotaxis, already, account for 1.3% of all trips taken by either non-NYC public transit or robotaxis.

I may need this calendar for 2025 (h/t: my sister)

Are you using Whisper to transcribe for research? You better take a look at this

Anecdotally, physician friends have said that writing and reviewing patient notes post-care helps them think through cases and make good clinical decisions, even though it's time-consuming. How can LLMs be used in a way that promotes active engagement? www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

The Texas Book Festival schedule (16-17 Nov, Austin) is live Free and open to all I went for the first time last year and had a lot of fun! texasbookfestival.org/schedule/

Aren't these the cutest spoons? - Miya (miyacompany.com), Palmer Square, Princeton No, I didn't buy any. I've restraint but no grace. I'd chip these immediately

Last weekend in Princeton! Now that I live in Texas, I appreciate the tall trees and autumn foliage I once took for granted

My answer to "When might price controls be appropriate or inappropriate in healthcare markets, and why?" received a gold prize in Quora's 2nd Knowledge Contest in Economics, judged by @skominers.bsky.social! www.quora.com/When-might-p...

Not a hard requirement, but the best piece of advice I received is pick a question where any outcome is interesting. “Does x affect y” should be exciting whether the answer is yes, no, or sort of

I've noticed that students (maybe profs too) often try to write code that never breaks down: drop any missing values/obs. that don't seem to fit the data structure, have a bunch of "capture" or "try" statements, etc. This is a recipe for disaster. You should instead be trying to break your code!

One thing we do that I think is kind of crazy is throw students into their own research after coursework; ie a senior thesis or third year paper. Students almost always flail when this happens. Way better to do an apprentice model: work with others on a paper first, then do your own.

ungatedresearch.org is a wonderful public good being developed by Martin Abel and Susie Godlonton. It's a website with links to the latest ungated version of papers published in several economics journals. Especially valuable in LMICs where many scholars don't have access to the journals.

"Bangladesh’s once-promising economy, built on the world’s second-largest garments industry, needs at least $3 billion of emergency aid from the IMF — and could soon become a bailout candidate... And the threat of sectarian violence is growing." www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

🍃 Late September in Austin Neighborhood park is in pretty shades of chartreuse Saw my first green stink bug. I didn't know it at the time, got rather close, left unscathed