thoughts

My colleague is presenting at a conference tomorrow and was doing a run-through in the office today. Whilst I was struggling to pay attention, here are some thoughts that are pretty unrelated to his study that I had while he was running it through and I was desperately trying to pay attention (and, obvoiusly, failing).

Risk averse - Whilst my colleague was explaining the 'kinked' (or more academically known as the... no, I can't even remember that. Something to do with linear gone slightly wrong) graph model, which shows risk-aversion, I wondered how much more risk-averse people are with regards to money at the moment... and how much that is screwing with scientific findings.  And, in fact, how long this will last.  I recently read a comment on a bog or an article about Madoff that said "Now i know why those old ladies keep all their money under their mattresses".  Is this economic crisis going screw up some economic valuations and other studies where people will be crazily risk-averse in terms of money for many many years to come?

Um, that's all I can remember.  But I do remember having other academic thoughts, however I had to run off and do some other stuff, so possibly got rather distracted and forgot what I was thinking.  Also, god I love regression analysis.  That stuff is magic.