Today (15 April) is my day for Tote Bags. Like most people
in the world, the UK is currently under lockdown.
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| Michelle Styles's garden |
I have spent more time recently relearning about Auto
regressive moving average models than I should have done – these are the things
which are powering the various models which governments are using to see when
they should be easing quarantines (lockdowns).
Because I was an economics major once upon a time, I had to learn how to
use them with econometrics. They are fascinating but really, they are only a representation
of reality and predictions don’t always work. People can tell you probabilities
but they can’t read the future. And
while they can look at populations as a whole, they can’t look at you as an
individual. For example, what is the probability that you meet someone who lived
in New York City last year. If you live in or near NYC that probability may be
one—definite. If you live in the middle of Wyoming that probability may be very
remote indeed or it may be one because your new next door neighbour moved from
there last August because they decided to do up a ranch they inherited.
There are so many
factors which go into the calculations. Assumptions have to be made (sometimes
they are incorrect). A bit like writing or witchcraft, it is a Dark Art to get
a model to actually work. There are always a huge range of outcomes but people
tend focus on a narrow band. Ultimately though it is all beyond my paygrade and
something I am doing to try to keep sane.
Always remember that
people dedicate their lives to this but garbage in equals garbage out and if
you mess up on the initial assumptions, chances are you are not going to find
the answer you are looking for.
Other ways of keeping sane include gardening and trying to
write. Speaking of writing, the ex-editorial director of Harlequin, Joanne
Grant has been doing a series of free motivational talks – every Monday in April.
She has done 3 so far and they are helping my productivity. You can listen to
them on Facebook. The one thing I liked
was her suggestion of celebrating one positive thing per week (no matter how
small) and setting weekly goals. If you are an aspiring author, a seasoned
author or simply someone interested in writing and how books are created, you
will find her talks interesting.
In other news:
Harper St George’s 2nd book in the Sons of Sigurd
series Falling for Her Viking Captor is
out now on Harlequin. It is tremendously exciting and you can read the start of her book here. https://aerbook.com/books/Falling_for_Her_Viking_Captive-250684.html?identifier=9781488065675
Until next month and hopefully by then most people will be out of lockdown.
Michelle Styles writes warm, witty and intimate historical
romances for Harlequin Historical in a wide range of time periods, most
recently Viking. Her next book Conveniently Wed to the Viking will be published
in July 2020 and is the third book in the Sons of Sigurd series. You can read
more about Michelle and her books on her website at www.michellestyles.co.uk
