31 March 2021 - On the internet, you’ll find many articles that discuss the theoretical effect of wind on cycling speed (plus articles on wind tunnel experiments, often paid for by companies that sell aerodynamic jerseys). But what about actual rides? And what’s the effect of crosswinds? I did an exploratory analysis of about 125 rides around the Ronde Hoep, a polder to the south of Amsterdam.

30 December 2020 - Every year when it’s time for New Year’s resolutions, there’s a spike in google searches for ‘quit smoking’, but an even bigger spike in searches for ‘delete facebook’. An update.

2 October 2020 - The Dutch government plans to change the way in which representatives, including Members of Parliament, are elected. The number of votes candidates get will play a larger role in deciding who gets elected. I’ll explore how this might impact candidates by gender, incumbency, and where they live.

23 August 2020 - The corona crisis has boosted interest in so-called nowcasting. As society changes in unforeseen ways, economists don’t want to wait for the publication of official statistics and look for data sources that provide earlier clues about the state of the economy. A new example of such data is the location data provided in Google’s mobility reports. This data reflects activity levels at locations like shops, supermarkets and workplaces.

28 June 2020 - It’s still unclear what aviation will look like after the impact of the coronavirus and the climate crisis. Meanwhile, one segment has received relatively little attention: business aviation. In this article, I’ll try to explore business aviation at Schiphol Airport. As always, the analysis comes with some caveats.