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Lately, we can hear a lot of complaints from Indonesians about how economically hard it is becoming to get through everyday life. While the middle class are getting angry about rising prices, Celios reported that the 50 richest people in Indonesia own an equal amount of wealth as 55 million Indonesians. We certainly feel the economic struggles and accelerating inequality are happening around us…
I am irritated by the way stock market works and how it impacts the way business works nowadays. This post will explain why I feel that way though I have absolutely no idea nor responsibility to offer an alternative. In fact, I surrender to this situation and actually invest some of my money in the stock market. I started investing in the stock market back in 2016. I did not put too much thought…
Fig 1: originally from https://xkcd.com/552/ Correlation does not imply causation is the most famous statement in the history of data analysis. It’s up there with I think, therefore I am in philosophy, E = mc2 in physics, and Hidup Jokowi in Indonesian politics. It’s easy to forget this fact and still confuse correlation with causation. Easy example: city with high number of professors also has…
Statistical Rethinking by Richard McElreath might be the best academic book I've ever read. This is probably because I’ve never read an academic book purely out of interest before, but this one is definitely different. It has good storytelling, irrefutable arguments to convince you to adopt a Bayesian perspective, and it literally teaches you how to do statistics. I’d like to share here why this…
Sooner or later, you will be faced with two options on your career: Will you turn off the fire, or will you stoke the fire further? This is not to be confused with the choice of being safe and risky. Both are mutually exclusives.
It's a bit late for me to realize the level of importance of consistent practice. Practice is by far the most significant factor in gaining skills. It's not talent, it's not genetics, it's practice and it has something to do with how human body and brain works. People often think that practice (or the impact of it) only lasts during the practice itself, for example, you only learn to hit a tennis…
I have been consistently doing strength training in the past 3 years. My main motivation was to build muscle to have a higher Basal Metabolic Rate so that I can eat a lot without gaining fat too quickly. Throughout the process, however, I become fond of the exercise itself and now going to the gym becomes part of my daily routines. At the end of 2023, I came across Outlive , a very well-written…
I play game all my life, with some small period of inactivity during my undergraduate year because of I was too busy playing with friends and created some engineering projects for some small amount of money. I now have two video game console: Play Station 4 and Nintendo Switch. I thought at first I will play my PS4 more than switch because of its more advance graphics and seemingly more serious…
Marketing is one of the most misunderstood area in business. The high budget requested by marketing division combined without the definitive guarantee of immediate return on investment makes marketing budget discussion an everlasting back and forth between marketing and finance. Marketing, along with sales, is the biggest tools for growth for a company. It "promises" the ability to pull customers…
I am glad I stumbled upon this book a few years back. As one of my first serious reads in economics, I was surprised at how two nobel prize winners, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, make their book approachable to econ normies. They did an excellent job to make this book light but full of content and meaning at the same time. The first four chapters of this book explains about left-right…