Alec Howe

Overview and Background Today's date is December 23, 2020. On January 05, 2021 Georgia will have two runoff elections for senator. The last day of early voting is December 31, 2020. Many counties have no voting on December 24 & 25. Additionally, GA's largest county (Fulton County) will not have voting on December 31st in observance of New Years Eve. Since early voting started on December 14, daily runoff turnout has been well defined by the function Runoff Voting = .94 * corresponding_GE_day_of_voting. I believe that for days on which early voting is available, this trend will continue. Additionally, I believe that the best proxy for Runoff election day will be early in person voting, which has been running at about 103% of GE Election day voting. This data is derived from the website georgiavotes.com . In creating this model, there were effectively two variables I needed to think about. 1) Runoff Early Voting as a percent of corresponding GE Early Voting Day and then 2) Ru

I predict that Biden will finish PA with greater than a 1% MOV over Trump. Additionally, I predict that the vote spread range (Biden - Trump) will fall in between 79,871 to 92,200. The current date is Friday, November 13 at 3:14AM. My excel model can be found here. RESULT 80,555 vote difference (Within Expected Range) Total Votes: 6,915,283 (Within Expected Range) If you bet on the bracket implicitly recommended in this post, what would your ROI have been? PA Vote Margin Market November 13 Price for the 75k-90k bracket: $0.66 = 1/.66 = 50% Return What will be the margin in the presidential election in Pennsylvania? Dems by 1% to 2% price Nov 13: $0.89. ROI = 1/.89 = 12%

I’m self-quarantining. It sucks.             So, I’ve decided to stop moping about and get back to writing. I’m less motivated by a renewed interest in the craft and more by a desire to do something other than play Minecraft. On Sunday, I got back from Vermont after developing a minor cold on Saturday. My parents were not messing around – they promptly sent me to the basement sans hug. It’s now Tuesday and I’ve been informed that I should expect to remain here for at least fourteen days in total. Fair enough; I don’t want to mess around with Covid-19 anymore than anyone else does. But quarantine, or more specifically the social isolation that it comes with, is boring. So here I am.              My current plan is to try and write most days that I’m down here. I’ve found that increases in the quantitative-ness of my academic course load have correlated with a decline in my writing ability. So hopefully I can address that through this exercise. Additionally, the novelty of this

Behind the excitement of new friends and new parties lurks a fundamental conflict in the mind of the American undergraduate: do I learn to better myself or do I learn to get a job? Unfortunately, the classes that support the modern need for quantitatively skilled workers oftentimes do not overlap with those that fulfill the need to understand the human condition. And as STEM jobs have grown increasingly lucrative, the opportunity cost of taking creative writing has grown greater. Are the humanities an anachronism of a bygone era. During his time as President, Obama pushed multiple STEM educational initiatives and constantly reiterated the importance of a mathematically and scientifically literate population. Trump seems to be following in his footsteps. In a recent speech, Trump stated that “the workplace is changing, we need to create new pathways for our citizens to get the best jobs. Greater access to STEM and computer science programs will ensure our [children] have the skills

Purpose I am having a tonsillectomy Tuesday morning, May 15. I wasn't able to find much good data on what to expect on the internet, so I am going to try to relay my thoughts and experience to you through this online journal. Hopefully through this, others who need to go through the operation will be able to have a better idea of what to expect. I'll also hopefully remember to update you with more information in about a year from now, so that you can tell if the surgery actually helped me or not. Sunday, May 13 (T-2 Days) T-36 Hours or so. The trepidation is beginning to set in, but rationally I know that I can handle a week to two weeks of serious pain if it means that I won't have to deal with getting strep constantly. For instance, in the past year (my freshman year at college) I've probably been sick every month to month and a half - call it 6-8 instances in the past 8 months. I went to my pre-op checkup on Friday and everything seems to look good. I am curre

          He always framed it as a positive. “I keep it clean,” he’d say. “I keep it safe.” The others - the ones in the pictures, the movies, the advertisements, the warnings - they were the result of misuse. They were the propaganda of “The System.” He never got around to mentioning what “The System” was, but then again, I never got around to asking. Those who'd suffered, he'd say, they were fiends, phonies, fakes. He told me he'd never had any issues - never got addicted never sat for hours scratching at the demons that lay just below his skin, never been spit on or ostracized or exiled from the family tree. But it was clear to me that his mental health had taken a turn for the stranger. Like one too many sleepless nights spent screaming at the antichrist had forced him into this reality - this constant state of confusion.           He was simultaneously one of the most focused and one of the most distracted men I had ever met. He’d talk for hours about the mechanical