Munging NZ COVID stats

April 8, 2020

I wanted to know two things about the NZ COVID counts, which are released by the government at https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-current-situation/covid-19-current-cases/covid-19-current-cases-details#download Here’s the result of my data analysis as of April 9. How many cases had a big delay between return-to-NZ date and report date? (about 5%; up to three weeks) To calculate this, I just added a calculation to the Google sheet: A2-MAX(I2, H2) and did standard analyses on the numbers. I manually fixed cases where the date reported was before the date arrived; in those cases it looks like the month was incorrectly entered.

Be an expert tool user

April 7, 2020

This week’s tip is about tools. I’ve attached a picture of a replica of the ice axe that Sir Edmund Hillary used on his first ascent of Mount Everest. This was at the North Egmont Visitor Centre at the base of Mount Taranaki, a prominent cone-shaped ex-volcano in New Zealand. Sir Edmund’s original ice axe is in a museum in Auckland, and one can buy replicas of it on the Internet.

The Longest Month

April 1, 2020

My notes say that I bought tickets to Athens on March 1. As if things would be normal in two months. The first nine days of March, which I wrote about last time, did seem completely normal. Then we went to Queenstown/Wanaka and Taranaki. As we were at Taranaki, things quickly became not normal. The last 11 days have been a whirlwind, and only in the past few days have I been able to get some research done.

Explore local

March 30, 2020

Since I last wrote, New Zealand moved to alert level 4 on a 4-point scale. Only essential workers may go to work, and “essential workers” is narrowly defined here: mostly supermarkets, pharmacies, and gas stations. Since I’m not going anywhere, I thought I’d send a picture from the archives. I took this picture close to home, in Waterloo Park, September 2019. I have to admit that I prefer being farther afield, but that’s not always an option, for various reasons.

Be intentional about your time

March 23, 2020

Derek’s been doing a great job of keeping in touch with you all. My specific schtick in these emails has been travel-related tips, and that doesn’t work great right now. But let’s start with a picture from the archives. From simpler times (February 15!), here’s a tuatara photobombing a kakariki (NZ parakeet) at the Otoruhangu Kiwi House. Something useful I’ve been doing in NZ is coarse-grained daily activity logging. Being on sabbatical is highly unstructured and, before all the recent news happened, I was concerned that my year might just slip away; keeping track of what I’m doing is a way to introspect about my activities.