Assorted Links

1. You know that Pythagoras's theorem? It was in fact discovered by the Babylonians a 1000 years before Pythagoras was born
   
   
2. How the Layout of Urban "Cells" Affects The Function and Success of Neighborhoods
   
   
3. China has passed the mark of 100 cities above 1 million people and this is good
   
   
4. Interesting paper showing that long commutes undermine school performance of students
   
   
5. Great title for a paper: "Lost in transportation: Information measures and cognitive limits in multilayer navigation"
   
   
6. In case you lost the chance to see the solar eclipse last week, don’t despair. This interactive globe shows when the next eclipse in your country will happen
   
   
7. Scientists Used CRISPR to Put a GIF Inside a Living Organism’s DNA
   
   
8. Future life expectancy in 35 industrialised countries: projections with a Bayesian model ensemble

Posterior distribution of projected change in life expectancy at birth from 2010 to 2030

Assorted Links

1. Challenge: try to guess how family income affects children’s college chances
   
   
2. Twenty rules for good graphics , by Rob Hyndman
   
   
3. David Levinson on 'On why bike lanes might appear underutilized'. Not eaxctly a new post, but really good
   
   
4. The Carbon Map
   
   
5. Global Talent Flows: the migration patterns of inventors, via Amine Ouazad 
   
   
6. Moore’s Law might be coming to and end soon … or maybe it just need to be reformulated, again
   
   
7. A great interactive explanation of Ordinary Least Squares Regression, by Victor and Lewis
   
   
8. Google Street View gets you inside the quads of many Colleges at Oxford University
   
   
9. The urban-rural divide that bolstered Trump isn’t just an American thing; it’s prevalent in Europe, too

credit: Rick Noak, WP

World population and human capital (webcast)

Heads up:

Prof. Wolfgang Lutz (IIASA / Wittgenstein Center) will deliver a public lecture on 'world population and human capital in the 21st century', next week (November 3, 2014 17:00 GMT). This event is also being live webcast on here. The event is organized by the the Oxford Martin School and will be followed by a panel discussion with other demography professors from Oxford.

Prof. Lutz and his team are in the forefront of incorporating educational attainment in population projections and have many influential papers in Nature, Science, PDR, etc.  Highly recommended event! 

ps. By the way, you might like this interactive population pyramids of population projections and education composition.

[Image Credit: Lutz and KC, 2011]

Global Ph.D.s Gender Gap (2010)

Scientific American has recently published an interesting chart showing the gender gap in Ph.D.s across different countries. It's amazing how the distribution varies so much between different fields of study. You should check the interactive version here.

Assorted links

1. LSE Report - Cities and Energy: Urban Morphology and Heat Energy Demand
   
   
2. Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through Facebook  (via MR)
   
   
3. 18th-century London paintings meet Google Street View
   
   
4. Did General Motors lead an automotive conspiracy to undermine streetcar lines in the US? Apparently not
   
   
5. The 10 world cities with the highest murder rates
   
   
6. Are UK migrating to the US and becoming lawyers in Illinois? This and other spurious correlations.
   
   
7. Free Statistical Software, SAS University Edition (thanks Bernardo Queiroz for the tip)
   
   
8. The first ever government census of schools in Mexico: “The Theft of the Century”
   
   
9. Range of average lengths of PhD dissertations across the disciplines

[click on the image to enlarge it]

[image credit: Marcus Beck]

Assorted links

1. Where the World's Unsold Cars Go To Die. Amazing pictures.
   
   
   
2. The 10 Algorithms That Dominate Our World
   
   
3. Statistically speaking, Brazil is the favorite to win the World Cup 2014. Seriously.
   
   
4. What job will you get with that degree? 
   
   
5. How the partial ban on cars in Paris reduced air pollution. Tianjin is doing the same.
   
   
6. A special issue dedicated to inequality in Science Maganize (ht Raquel Guimarães)
   
   
7. How much square-footage $1million can buy in world's most expensive cities
   
   
8. Bicycle sharing systems - Global Trends in Size
   
   
9. Cycling around the world 

Higher education in BRIC countries: a demographic perspective

The future of higher education in BRIC countries: a demographic perspective. A new paper published by Raquel Guimarães in the Brazilian Journal of Population Studies (REBEP).

Abstract:

In regard to the development and reform of higher education (HE), recent and projected evidence suggest that enrollment growth is likely to be slower than it is at present (or even negative) as a result of ageing populations. The case of the BRIC countries is particularly interesting for the study of the impact of demographic changes on HE because these countries show considerable diversity regarding their demographic transition. This paper explores how demographic changes are likely to affect the demand for higher education in BRIC countries. I argue that these countries are now facing a great expansion of enrollment but, given declining fertility levels, diversification of the HE clientele will become a common strategy. But diversification of the student population will place a new and complex set of demands on HE institutions, and equity in higher education in the near future will depend on how HE systems are structured in these countries.

Related Links:

• The Geography of Nobel Prize winners
• Age Structure, Education and Economic Growth
• Geodemographics and spatial interaction: an integrated model for higher education

Peer effect + Neighborhood effect

The interaction of Peer and Neighborhood effects of Bart Simpson, aka 'The Cone of Ignorance' (via FlowingData).

[Image Credit: FlowingData]

The Geography of Nobel Prize winners

The distribution of Nobel Priz winners in maps and charts, by Max Fisher /Washington Post.

[Image Credit: Max Fisher/Washington Post]

Assorted Links

1. The world's tallest slum (via Pedro Souza)
2. Observing the Earth with Incredible Satellite Photos
3. Tweet City: Building Heights by Number of Tweet
4. Things I'd rather be doing
5. The Gap Between Schooling and Education
6. Is Regional Policy a Waste of Time? (via Leo Monasterio)
7. Driverless vehicles are not going to solve congestion problems
8. A scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998
9. How much of your salary would you need to spend to rent a room in London?

[Image Credit: FT]

Women's Fertility and Educational Level

Some not so new evidence showing that the old relationship between class and birth rates has been inverted (via MR). There is a good debate on this topic contrasting period fertility rates with cohort fertility rates here.

[Image Credit: Pew Research Center]

Related Links:

• Media Exposure and Reproductive Behavior
• The coming baby boom?
• Fertility and Mortality estimates for small areas in Brazil
• Record Share of New Mothers Are College Educated

Demographic papers published on Science and Nature

It's not everyday you see demographers publishing on journals like Science and Nature. So here is a short list with some of the papers published since 2000.

ps. Massive presence of @IIASAVienna and @WiCVienna researchers!

• (2013) Pervasive Externalities at the Population, Consumption, and Environment Nexus, by Partha S. Dasgupta, Paul R. Ehrlich
  
  
• (2012) Demography's Role in Sustainable Development, Many authors
  
  
• (2011) China’s Demographic History and Future Challenges, by Xizhe Peng
  
  
• (2011) The Demography of Educational Attainment and Economic Growth, by Wolfgang Lutz, Jesus Crespo Cuaresma, Warren Sanderson
  
  
• (2011) 7 Billion and Counting, by David E. Bloom
  
  
• (2008) Health and Urban Living, by Christopher Dye
  
  
• (2008) The coming acceleration of global population ageing, by Wolfgang Lutz, Warren Sanderson, Sergei Scherbov
  
  
• (2006) The Demography of Growing European Identity, by Wolfgang Lutz, Sylvia Kritzinger, Vegard Skirbekk
  
  
• (2005) Average remaining lifetimes can increase as human populations age, by Warren C. Sanderson, Sergei Scherbov
  
  
• (2003) Europe's Population at a Turning Point, Wolfgang Lutz, Brian C. O'Neill, Sergei Scherbov

and my two favorites:

• (2010) Remeasuring Aging, by Warren C. Sanderson and Sergei Scherbov
  
  
• (2011) Global Human Capital: Integrating Education and Population, Wolfgang Lutz, Samir KC
• Interactive Age and Education Pyramids by Country

[Image Credit: Lutz and KC, 2011]

Assorted Links

1. Why don't Americans ride trains?
   
   
2. Top 200 QS World University Rankings 2013
   
   
3. Red Bull Stratos FULL POV 
   
   
4. The Map That Lincoln Used to See the Reach of Slavery
   
   
5. Egard Blanco and his team at MIT mapping the logistics of megacities
   
   
6. One interesting study I would like to see apllyied to Brasilia/Brazil (via Flowing Data)
   
   
7. Rules for Teachers in 1872 and 1915: "you may under no circunstances dye your hair"
   
   
8. The average destination of international flights from every country in the world
   
   
9. Hidden Animals in the London Underground Map

Bicycles access and school enrollment

Análise Real (a Brazilian economics Blog) called my attention to this paper by Profs. K. Muralidharan and N. Prakash where they analyze an Indian program "... aimed to reduce the gender gap in secondary school enrollment by providing girls who continued to secondary school with a bicycle that would improve access to school."

By the way, their results show the Cycle program has impressive results when compared to more traditional programs (i.e. conditional cash transfer). 

This paper is going to the top of my reading list! Here is the paper. And here is a video briefing on the study.

Assorted links

1. Unbelievable “nail houses” around the world
   
   
2. PAA 2014 - call for papers
   
   
3. Violent Crime Hotspots in London
   
   
4. Undesirable trends in the labor force participation rate 
   
   
5. Life can't get any better than this
   
   
6. Beijing Subway - morning rush hour
   
   
7. What Brazilians mean when they say...
   
   
8. Stratifying PISA scores by poverty rates
   
   
9. The Africa-Driven Demographic Future of Earth
   
   
10. New York City Transit System Morning Peak Flow, 1954 (via Transit Maps)

[click on the image to enlarge it]

Returns to College Education

A nice piece by Catherine Rampell on The Return on College Around the World (ht Raquel Guimaraes). You may download the OECD report here: Education at a Glance 2013.

[Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. via Economix]

Assorted Links

1. The world's busiest airline routes (Rio-São Paulo ranks in second)
   
   
2. A list of R packages, by popularity
   
   
3. What is behind the differences in school performance? PISA
   
   
4. What are the big trends shaping transport? (via D. Levinson)
   
   
5. The relationship between fertility rates and female education
   
   
6. A map showing recent protests in Brazil (via Ricardo Dagnino)
   
   
7. 22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From Each Other
   
   
8. Mapping Twitter demographics

Geographies of world university rankings

Jöns, H, Hoyler, M (2013) Global geographies of higher education: The perspective of world university rankings, Geoforum, 46, 45-59.

Abstract:

This paper contributes to emerging debates about uneven global geographies of higher education through a critical analysis of world university rankings. Drawing on recent work in geography, international higher education and bibliometrics, the paper examines two of the major international ranking schemes [...]. Our analysis illustrates how the substantial variation in ranking criteria produces not only necessarily partial but also very specific global geographies of higher education. In comparison, these reveal a wider tension in the knowledge-based economy between established knowledge centers in Europe and the United States and emerging knowledge hubs in Asia Pacific. An analysis of individual ranking criteria, however, suggests that other measures and subject-specific perspectives would produce very different landscapes of higher education.

[Image Credit: Jöns and Hoyler, 2013)]

Chart of the Day

A nice piece on The Economist covering India’s demographic challenge.

As some studies have pointed out, the key element in discussing the so called 'demographic dividend' of a country is education, and more education. And of course, in the end, education and aging are crucial for productivity levels.

[Image Credit: The Economist]

Chart of the Day

(click on the image to enlarge it)

[Image Credit: US Census Bureau]