Collected links

1. The Economist on homeopathy in Germany:

   IT MAY not be as ancient as acupuncture, but homeopathy is the closest thing Germany has to a native alternative-medicine tradition.

2. John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight on: “Journalism”

3. XKCD: “When people say “The Climate has changed before,” these are the kinds of changes they’re talking about.”

4. German statistical office (in German): “Promovierende in Deutschland“:
   • They held a survey with 20,000 professors and 20,000 PhD students in Germany.
   • There are currrently 33,154 professors in Germany that can graduate a PhD student (“Promotionsrecht”).
   • The immense number of PhD students (“Promovierende”) is 196,200 of which 111,400 are enrolled at an university. And 99% of those finishing their PhDs are those that are enrolled at an university. (These numbers are obviously inflated by German peculiarities such as counting medical doctorates as PhDs.)
   • 11% of professors have no PhD students, 50% have 1-5 students and 3 percent have more than 20 PhD students. The average is 6 students per professor and that ratio is highest for the engineering subjects.
   • 44% (\(= \frac{87,000}{196,200}\)) of PhD students are women.
   • The modal age is 29.
   • 15% are non-German.
   • 23% of students are in structured programs, 23% of students are doing a cumulative dissertation (economics PhD-style).

5. John D. Cook: “One of my favorite proofs: Lagrange multipliers”

6. Free online book: “Dynamic Discrete Choice Models: Methods, Matlab Code, and Exercises”, by Jaap Abbring and Tobias Klein (through Jason Blevins)