Category Frances Woolley
Visible minorities: Distinctly Canadian
As far as I know, Canada is the only country that divides its population into "visible minorities" and "non-visible minorities." In this post, I describe how, and why, Canada counts people this way. A person's visible minority status is ascertained by asking: "Is this person….White, South Asian (e.g., East Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, etc.), Chinese, Black, […]
Do ratemyprofessor scores correlate with official teaching evaluations?
"He's a smart guy, almost as smart as he thinks he is…" Review on ratemyprofessors.com The ratemyprofessor.com website comes in for a lot of criticism. Some allege that the reviews are bogus. Others argue that it provides no useful information for students, just laurels for hot, easy teachers. Another common criticism is that too few students post […]
Revealed preferences for longevity
Smoking takes 10 years off your life - but is this a sufficient reason to give up smoking? Why is a long life a better life? The United Nations Human Development Index uses life expectancy as a measure of life quality because: a long life is valuable in itself and… various indirect benefits (such as adequate […]
Of dogs and data
Over the past year or so, cities across Canada have been creating open data portals (see, for example, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax). But Toronto's is special – it has data on cat and dog licences. The data reveal the most popular dog breeds in Toronto in 2011:
Marianne Ferber: A little giant
photo from "Engendering Economics" by Zohreh Emami and Paulette Olson Marianne Ferber was proud to have been a Canadian economist, if only for a little while. The "Canadian" part was due to astute planning by her father, Karl Abeles. Marianne was born in Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, in 1923. Canada was exceptionally hostile to Jewish immigration in […]
Which is the most bike friendly city in Canada?
The 2006 Canadian census asked people about their usual mode of transport to work or school. Only a small fraction of those answering the question reported that they cycle to work or school, and city with the highest percentage of cycle-commuters is….
Why bikes are cooler than cars
The car is in decline. The Economist says so, and so does the New York Times. Cars are boring; bikes are cooler. Here are the top 10 reasons why. 10. Cars are for stuff People from the pre-computer era have books, DVDs, TVs, stereos, big photo albums, board games, and playing cards. They need cars […]
Pictures of Selma-Montgomery
James Dean knows how to tell a story. These days he'll share his thoughts on Burning Man ["But Ed, you and I know you can't run an economy this way"] or on advising the South Sudan government how to set up its central bank. But his best stories are from his days as a graduate student at Harvard in the […]
Is the abandonment of religion greatly exaggerated?
The headlines around the release of the National Household Survey have proclaimed "Many Canadians are losing their religion". Yet it is not obvious this claim stands up to serious scrutiny. Canada's religious profile evolves in two fundamentally different ways. First, people immigrate or emigrate, are born or die. Every new Canadian has their own religious […]
Yup, the NHS did produce some weird data
While writing a short comment for today's Globe, I put together a table comparing the 2011 National Household Survey data on ethnicity with the 2006 data. As the raw numbers didn't make it the Globe article, I'm reproducing them here:
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Recent Comments