Earlier quoted context omitted.
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why blame the player
It’s not supposed to be a game.
Suspicious discontinuities (2020)
21–30 of 294 posts
Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)
#22Haha, I recall seeing a similar plot with a "suspicious discontinuity" when I looked up data on home appraisal price vs sale price. I remember asking the loan officer why the contract was forwarded to the appraiser before they did the appraisal, because that might bias their assessment. She gave me a funny look and replied "that's kind of the point."
Yeah of course, the appraiser is a person who is paid to write down the predetermined number. The US federal government should nuke this industry as part of their crackdown on "junk fees". Either the appraiser serves a legitimate arms-length purpose or their whole line of business should go away.
I could see a third option as a "lemon detector". That is, instead of their output being a number, it would be a binary, intended only to limit downside risk in the worst cases.
I think in practice this is indeed the role they play. If I'm "overpaying" by 20%, the appraiser will probably still "write down the predetermined number", but if I'm overpaying by 100% and taking out a mortgage to do it, there's a pretty good chance that the bank's appraiser is going to sink that deal.
Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)
#23I went to school at a relatively late age and started in community college. The school/state had a policy where any independent income earners making less than 35,000/year would not pay tuition. A single dollar over that would require paying full tuition of ~$60/unit or about $750 a semester. One year I worked a little more overtime during the holidays than usual and realized with a week to go in the year that I'd go…
An instructive image of the welfare trap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Welfare_trap.png
People making $30K on welfare would need to make $81K at an actual job to have the same income after tax.
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap
Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)
#24A friend of mine from a farming family in Europe once told me a story that his family would wait until the year one of his siblings was due to go to college and then invest in new farm machinery. Their reported net income for the year would reduce or go negative and the sibling would get to college effectively for free on a hardship tuition grant.
At least in America, they usually look at the past 2-5 years of income to avoid these types of shenanigans.
In Canada, they use gross income instead of net income for student grants.
Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)
#25> It's generally believed that this is caused by a discontinuity in youth sports:
> 2. Within a given year, older kids are stronger, faster, etc., and perform better
I've seen a few youth ice hockey games and by god it's just unfair; there's a kid like a foot taller than the rest. I'm kind of surprised there isn't some system that buckets kids by size , it can't be fun for the small kids to get elbowed in the neck every time they bump the tall guy.
Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
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From the article: > Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for…
FWIW that's from an American setting, whereas the story above was from Europe. I agree with the principle myself, but as a citation it's barely relevant.
Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)
#27Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)
#28> It's generally believed that this is caused by a discontinuity in youth sports: > 2. Within a given year, older kids are stronger, faster, etc., and perform better I've seen a few youth ice hockey games and by god it's just unfair; there's a kid like a foot taller than the rest. I'm kind of surprised there isn't some system that buckets kids by size , it can't be fun for the small kids to get elbowed in the neck ev…
I remember playing basketball as a kid and being very entertained beating kids that were much taller than I was. Sure, they had the height, but they lacked so many fundamental skills and sometimes it was clear they didn't think they had to work very hard or do practice drills because they were tall.
Fun fact, the ball and hoop don't care about any of that. It lets me steal it from you and it lets me put it into the hoop. The scorekeepers even add two to the scoreboard!
Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)
#29Haha, I recall seeing a similar plot with a "suspicious discontinuity" when I looked up data on home appraisal price vs sale price. I remember asking the loan officer why the contract was forwarded to the appraiser before they did the appraisal, because that might bias their assessment. She gave me a funny look and replied "that's kind of the point."
Yeah of course, the appraiser is a person who is paid to write down the predetermined number. The US federal government should nuke this industry as part of their crackdown on "junk fees". Either the appraiser serves a legitimate arms-length purpose or their whole line of business should go away.
I think it's really a problem of different incentives.
Somebody (A) at the bank does not want to give out loans that are well beyond a properties value.
Somebody (B) _else_ at the bank is actually the one giving you the loan and makes money from you getting it.
So A requires B to have an appraiser so they can't completely run away writing loans. From talking to some real estate agents, the appraiser will only fudge so much for you. An appraiser might agree that the house is worth 750k even if they actually think its 699k but if you try to get a 700k loan for a 350k house they'll write down 350k in their appraisal.
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IIRC, the government's crack down on "junk fees" is mostly that you can't advertise a price and then inflate it later with fees. So as long as the bank states that they require an appraiser and their in-house cost is $X; it doesn't count as a junk fee. But if the bank says that the loan is going to cost say $5k in overhead and then later says it doesn't include appraisal fee then it be a junk fee.