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Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

I mean, if you're going to stick to the two-consecutive quarters definition, then you would be saying that we were in a recession, and are now out of one. Third quarter GDP estimates stand at 1.9% growth.

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Estimates or reported? The recession based on two consecutive quarters is on reports not estimates of what is to be reported.

Reported as of current monthly figures. Estimates are even higher.

Keep in mind that the "two consecutive quarters" is just snapshots of the monthly data at 3 month marks. They get revised over time.

It's completely possible that data from Q2 will be revised upwards and there won't be two consecutive quarters of negative GPD in the future. The Q2 data has already been revised upwards once.

GDPNow has it at 2.9% even

That's too noisy given inflation is 6.6%.

Real GDP

We've only recently seen nominal GDP declines in 2008 and 2020.

I know it's real GDP. I'm saying this number is noisier when inflation is high because you only ever measure nominal GDP and then deflate.

Well what don't you believe because you're using 6.6% inflation as your reason for skepticism, but that's what GDP is deflated by?

They believe the error bar on that inflation number must be pretty wide, presumably.

But by that logic, error bars increased because the number went up? Idk if that’s how statistics works.

Errors in counting generally go as square root of the count. So yes, as number goes up so does the deviation.

Inflation readings being higher have nothing to do with a higher count.

Exact same amount of data points for inputs as 2% inflation.

It’s not about the amount of measurement points, uncertainties in dollar amounts tend to scale as sqrt. When you error propagate that you see that inflation uncertainty scales with inflation.

Very simple model

Inflation=v1/v2

D(inflation)=sqrt((D(v1)/v2)^2+(v1/v2^2 D(v2))^2)

Suppose

D(v1)=c sqrt(v1)

D(v2)=c sqrt(v2)

D(inflation)=c sqrt(v1/v2^2+v1^2/v2^3)= c sqrt(inflation+inflation^2)/sqrt(v2)

So can be seen that the leading term for uncertainty in inflation is linear with inflation.

Then we are out of recession?

Find a new word for whatever you're describing because the rest of us are speaking the same language.

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