Today was my first true day of studying. It went pretty well, I got to cross three things off my study list:
– Finish answering Econometrics section from June comps
– Email answers to Paul (a professor) for review/suggestions
– Type out notes from meeting with Carl (my committee chair) and send for review and comments
It took me longer than I thought it would to get my head around the material. Granted, econometrics is among the toughest stuff on comps and the section that doctoral students spend the most time stressing over. I started out by reading my early responses to questions and thinking, “Wow, this sounds really good. But I wonder what she is talking about?” It was sort of like nudging my brain out from hibernation. (A stuffy head, victim of the excess NOLA dust, did not help.) A few things I’d really like to sort out:
– What exactly is the estimation procedure with a truncated model?
– A really, really, really clear explanation of the differences between sample selection bias and endogeneity — (with reference to the sampling problems cited in my paper on low birth weight and violence in Peru)
and finally,
– Why is my child obsessed with knocking heads? ouch.
Randy | 27-Oct-05 at 7:46 am | Permalink
I can help with the final question… you need to limit Will’s viewing of professional wrestling to less than an hour a day!
Allen | 27-Oct-05 at 8:44 am | Permalink
What Randy said…or the extra material on Lord of the Rings about Viggo’s head-butting camaraderie.
Can’t help with the other questions, though. Happy to smile & nod, if that helps…
Anonymous | 27-Oct-05 at 10:03 am | Permalink
Augh….
Your two econometric questions sound very familiar to debates I sit in on between our Statistician and my Public Health Econ P.I. Wish I could be of help but I probably understand about as much as you do. 😉 Have you gotten to Tobit and two part regression models yet? I find public health economics really interesting and the brain power involved in the analyses – impressive!
Good luck girleeo!
– Deneil
Holly | 27-Oct-05 at 10:13 am | Permalink
Yep, I’ve met Mr. Tobit and his friends, Logit and Probit. Probit tends to be the more popular one these days, but tobit is really helpful in models that don’t have normal distribution (particularly things like medical expenditures where there is a heaping at zero… OLS would give you negatives which isn’t right, hence tobit.) The two-step Heckman models trip me up a bit, though. Which is part of my confusion with the truncated model, I think…? Anyway. Those public health economists are seriously scary folk. At least half of our econometrics classes involved a few minutes where everyone dissolved into laughs because we were so totally lost. 🙂 From what I understand, you really don’t get this stuff unless you hit on it in your disseration or use it in a postdoc (where you really learn it). I really like my Econometrics professor; he doesn’t seem to mind my very frequent office visits.
As for Will… he is just a wild man. Maybe he *is* sneaking late night wrestling while we sleep? That would explain his WWF-style running around our legs. He also really likes the words “BOOM!” and “POW!” lately… hmmm…
Randy | 27-Oct-05 at 3:20 pm | Permalink
If he starts screaming Bam, we know that we can blame Emeril!