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Russia has Invaded Ukraine
edjusted340

As it relates to China, I think they care very much...but China cares because it wants to see the world's reaction to help gauge their own plans for Taiwan. I think Russia's feelings toward Ukraine very much mirror China's feelings towards Taiwan. China would very much like to take over Taiwan, and if Russia "gets away" with taking over Ukraine, it's a good bet that China v Taiwan will be next.

But otherwise, yes, I agree that "China primarily cares about preserving its trade relationships with Russia and the West."

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7ryan_b
The Taiwan point is very interesting, but I think China has a powerful strategic interest even if we ignore it. Specifically it looks to me like the sanctions will drive Russia entirely into the Chinese financial sphere, and radically increase their dependency on commerce with China. If Russia's relationships with other countries are also subordinated to Chinese interests, and I strongly expect that they will be, it looks like China will rapidly dominate all of Asia in a way similar to how the US dominates North America. There are also several specific things which will impact the China v. US balance of power. As an example, Russia already bought 70% of its semiconductors from China, but now with the sanctions this will have to be ~100% with much weaker bargaining power so China's growing semiconductor industry gains a captive market to sustain it. In tandem with China's virtual monopoly on rare earth mineral refinement, this likely means a net advantage in computation.
Should rationality be a movement?
edjusted50

Sorry if this post wasn't meant to be newbie-friendly...what is EA?

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4Raemon
EA is "effective altruism". (And yeah this thread basically assumes a lot of context)
What math do i need for data analysis?
edjusted10

Yep. I think the best lessons I've learned revolve around actually *trying* to second guess myself. I'd crunch some numbers, feeling confident that I did everything right, only to realize that my assumptions or logic or something *other* than the mechanics of number crunching was off or wrong.

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What math do i need for data analysis?
edjusted20
I would say that logic is actually more important than math
can you elaborate? :)

I kind'a sort'a thought learning data analysis would give me "magical powers" to glean insight from data....like I could just throw a bunch of data on a spreadsheet, run some formulas and functions, and voila...enlightenment. But there's a LOT that goes into deciding things like what kind of data to use, what to exclude, *how* to process the data, how to *interpret* the data *and* the results, etc. The formulas and statistics is just a small part of the... (read more)

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1Yoav Ravid
Yup, thanks :) basically you say that pretty much all rationality skills (Logic, knogledge of biases and heuristics, etc...) are needed or beneficial to know how not to make mistakes while handling the data - right?
What math do i need for data analysis?
edjusted10

I would say that logic is actually more important than math, though my knowledge of "data analysis" is very limited. Again, basic statistical knowledge and math is useful...things like what is/how to calculate standard deviations, correlation, regression, etc.

I've taken this class, and while it's specific to Google Sheets, looking at the syllabus might give you some clues about what to study: https://courses.benlcollins.com/p/data-analysis-with-google-sheets

Also, non-math-related concepts like how to clean and organize data is very important, though I never even though about it until I started learning about data analysis. After all, garbage in, garbage out.

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1Yoav Ravid
I began going through some basics on khan academy, and plan to then learn statistics and probability there. i think I'll wait with learning data analysis at least until after that. can you elaborate? :)
What math do i need for data analysis?
Answer by edjusted20

I think I was in your shoes last year. I *thought* I wanted to learn "data analysis", took an online course, and became way over my head and also realized that I probably didn't really know what "data analysis" meant.

It sounds like, at the minimum, an intro to statistics course might be useful. I don't think there's much math, but more ways of thinking about things like what "probability" means, was really helpful for me as a foundation for learning other related stuff.

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1Yoav Ravid
Yup. definitely the shoes I'm in, glad to find beforehand that i might not want to take them for a walk ;) Though i actually would like to learn the math (and math needed for it before that), not just the thought process - do you have any suggestions? or even know just the prerequisites?