Eric Reasons

There's a lot of graphs and stats that the news is throwing at people right now. So much so, that you can get information overload trying to make sense of the statistics that have meaning. To quote my old Econometrics professor, "There are three types of lies: 'Lies', 'Damned Lies', and 'Statistics' ". I should also lead with the caveat that I'm an engineer and data nerd by trade, but I'm not an epidemiologist. I welcome feedback from those who have more experience than I do. The most important question we're trying to answer (at least here in Michigan), is "How are we doing?", and "When can we reopen our economy?". With respect to those questions, here's my take on the most important data, and some caveats about what these data are telling us. The four most cited data in news stories are: Total Number of Cases Daily New Cases. Total Number of Deaths Daily New Deaths This post will talk about #1 and #2 ...

We should remind ourselves that, this Memorial Day weekend and the weeks that follow, we are subjects in a grand experiment to see how good we are at social distancing as stay-at-home orders are being slowly lifted. The state's stay-at-home order was never meant to keep you, individually, safe from infection. It was meant to keep hospital's safe from being overwhelmed by too many of us needing them at the same time. In Michigan, the daily new cases of COVID-19 are higher today than they were when we locked down in late March. We are testing whether or not we can open up (with all of our new precautions and protocols) without spiking the rate of spread, but make no mistake: it *is* an experiment, and we *are* the test subjects. Please don't get careless as things start to open up. We need to get our economies back on track, but we are still a long way (and a vaccine away) from being out of the woods. Stay vigilant, folks. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. As has always been the...

An old friend recently reached out to me (and presumably others) and asked us what advice we'd give our younger selves, particularly at ages 20, 30 and 40. After writing my response to him, I thought it worth posting myself as well.  The substantive bulk of my response to him follows: ----- The difficult thing is that I really wouldn't change a thing about who I am, so any call for advice feels a bit like a time-traveler scenario where my advice to a younger self would affect the outcome of my present life, and I'm not sure I'd risk it. My experiences shaped me, including the glaring mistakes, and I wouldn't trade places today with anyone on Earth. But, for the sake of argument, let's assume the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics here, and thus assume I won't mess my own (present) life up. Wibbly-Wobbly. Timey-Wimey. It is also important to note that the question is "What advice would you give your younger self?". The a...

I didn't post one damned thing in 2016. Sometimes you're too busy living life to write it down. But this has been a very important year for me. And scrolling back through the facebooks and instagrams has shown me just how little of the important things have been actually captured. I suppose that I always understood how fleeting social media was, but it didn't really hit me how little of what I had been sharing is actually preserved in any meaningful way. (More on that at the very end of this piece.) So, for 2016's one and only post, I'll try and give a synopsis of what has been one of the most meaningful, wonderful, sometimes difficult, but ultimately the best year of my life... so far... I started out the year with some serious skiing in January--a sport my girlfriend introduced me to just this last winter... The lodge is the most important aspect of skiing. In February, I prepared for my second nose surgery, which was ultimately very successful in r...