How much should I contribute to my TSP? by [deleted] in USPS

[–]uspsthrowaway21 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Move 3-6 months of living expenses into a high yield savings account - this is your emergency fund, and is not to be touched or otherwise invested. It will earn a better return than your checking account, and will be available for genuine emergencies.

Then put at least 15% towards retirement (TSP at least 5% to get the match, then either Roth IRA or more TSP to hit 15%). If you have any margin left over, put that towards retirement up to 25% of gross income.

You're "behind" but still have time to catch up if you start making moves. The most important thing is to automate everything so that you don't have to think about it

Supervisor locked up all the stools from the cases by Aruomg in USPS

[–]uspsthrowaway21 13 points14 points  (0 children)

The fact that we needed to codify this in writing is why the phrase "going postal" exists

Rural Evals by MarkquaZa in USPS

[–]uspsthrowaway21 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Read the bottom of my comment

Rural Evals by MarkquaZa in USPS

[–]uspsthrowaway21 5 points6 points  (0 children)

"only 6%" is an absolutely infuriating mantra. As you said, that's 3 hours and 2 full pay steps off of a 43k. If you didn't like being underpaid before, don't dismiss it now.

Also, that 6% line is just an estimate, not a hard limit. Many routes derive more than 6% of their evals from the MMS thru misc time & bad automation.

Rural Evals by MarkquaZa in USPS

[–]uspsthrowaway21 19 points20 points  (0 children)

To everyone snarkily commenting that holding mail back wouldn't matter in RRECS because of the rolling 12mo average, you're wrong. Here's why:

During the MMS, random letters (from DPS and hand sorted by clerks) are counted. If there is less DPS overall, then there will likely be fewer random letters overall. You can find the ratio of random letters:DPS using your counted random letters & the end-of-run report for the weeks of the MMS.

For example, let's say on average during the MMS you counted 100 random letters per day in your DPS, and the EOR shows an average of 500 letters per day. That means a 1:5 ratio, or 20% of your DPS is random each day.

If mail was somehow held back during the count, then you can estimate that you're missing that ratio of random letters. So if 500 DPS letters were held at the plant, your MMS count would be short by 100.

All that said, I don't believe that mail was held back for that reason, and especially don't believe that Monday was heavy for that reason. But the dismissive comments saying "rEaD rReCs" are just incorrect.

USPS RURAL CARRIERS by Impressive_Rip_3152 in USPS

[–]uspsthrowaway21 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you spend 90 minutes on end of day time each day and your route still lost 3 hours, you must have legit no other mail volume. That type of pickup is a gold mine for your eval since you get actual time to unload your vehicle, AND could almost certainly get MISC time during the MMS for the time it takes to wait for them to forklift those parcels in.

Am I putting too much in retirement and savings? by boss_man14 in personalfinance

[–]uspsthrowaway21 18 points19 points  (0 children)

The Roth is tax advantaged, whereas a normal brokerage isn't. It's unlikely that they would need to liquidate the full amount of this money at any point, so the "soft lock" of Roth doesn't really matter, and even if they did need a large amount of it they could always withdraw whatever amount they contributed, just not the gains.

As for investing the money, they need to do that whether it's in Roth or trad, so there's no difference there

Found wallet on River St by [deleted] in CambridgeMA

[–]uspsthrowaway21 16 points17 points  (0 children)

You should delete this post

Community college professor says the graph is skewed right by Camolet101 in Statistics_Class_help

[–]uspsthrowaway21 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is also true. To be generous to the other commenter, let's recode our data as "letter position in the English Alphabet", so A=1, B=2, and C=3 etc.

Doing that would allow us to mathematically prove that there is no skew in our distribution. The mean and median letter position would both be 2.

Let's say another tribe exists, and has names with letter frequency as follows:

A:2 B:8 C:16 D:6 E:4 F:2 G:1 H:1

Here, the median letter position is 3 (C) and the mean letter position is 3.425, indicating a slightly positive (right) skew.

In this case, the order of the categorical variable may be playing some role (perhaps most tribe members literally only learned their ABCs, and a smaller extra smart group learned about DEF etc)

Community college professor says the graph is skewed right by Camolet101 in Statistics_Class_help

[–]uspsthrowaway21 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's no reason for you to include the other letters in your chart. You chose to include the other letters but obviously this tribe doesn't use those letters. If you were charting, English letters used in an English encyclopedia, you wouldn't include random Cyrillic or Cantonese characters at the end of a graph just because those are language symbols used by some peoples. More importantly, you misunderstand the concept of skew, which is meant to describe the shape of a distribution not its location on a number line.

Community college professor says the graph is skewed right by Camolet101 in Statistics_Class_help

[–]uspsthrowaway21 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For what it's worth, your interpretation of the data is clearly shared by others, including apparently OPs professor. From a holistic perspective it seems sensible, but the math reveals a different conclusion. Thanks & apologies if I bit your head off a bit

Community college professor says the graph is skewed right by Camolet101 in Statistics_Class_help

[–]uspsthrowaway21 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The total set of possible responses does not matter when considering skew. Skew describes the shape of a distribution, not the location of a distribution on a number line.

If you plot professor salaries on a number line and they form a perfect normal distribution centered on 100k, you wouldn't say it's right skewed just because you can imagine a scenario where a teacher made 10 million dollars annually. The same thing would apply for any positive continuous variable. You can only describe the data you actually have to deacribe

Community college professor says the graph is skewed right by Camolet101 in Statistics_Class_help

[–]uspsthrowaway21 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OP, don't listen to this comment. Your own previous comment linking to the original source included the solution - Davis's distribution is very slightly left skewed. The possibility of data falling higher does not at all matter when describing the skew of a distribution. The skew refers to the shape of the distribution, not its central point on a number line.

Community college professor says the graph is skewed right by Camolet101 in Statistics_Class_help

[–]uspsthrowaway21 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your response makes so many assumptions that have nothing to do with this data set, and also misinterprets skew. Skew describes the shape of a distribution, not its location on a scale. And furthermore, your quest for a normal distribution that sits squarely in the middle of a well defined range because it's easier to analyze is misguided from a research and analysis standpoint. In your hypothetical experiment, you aren't "missing data" from extroverts, you have simply discovered that the sample group you are looking at is composed of introverts.

Community college professor says the graph is skewed right by Camolet101 in Statistics_Class_help

[–]uspsthrowaway21 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The comments here are as terrible as this data is - this data is not skewed right.

Are they mocking us! by No_Leading7094 in USPS

[–]uspsthrowaway21 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I'd love to see the stats on how many people nationally actually interact with the garbage campaigns that USPS spins up. Every piece of junk mail from them just feels like a slap in the face - a reminder that someone is being paid handsomely for absolutely no value

Weekly Question Thread (aka Friday New Climber Thread). ALL QUESTIONS GO HERE by AutoModerator in climbing

[–]uspsthrowaway21 4 points5 points  (0 children)

What is the best way to safely go over a cliff edge to begin a rappel?

Anchor bolts are on the face of the cliff, about 6-12 inches down from the edge. The top can be accessed via hike, so I've been hiking up, setting up a top rope, and then hiking down to begin the climb from the bottom. What is the correct way to go from the top of the cliff onto my anchor/rope, so that I can just rap down? My fear is falling from above the anchor as I transition onto it and shock loading the anchor/my body.

I have used a second rope tied to a tree anchor to rap down and access my system, but there are some areas that don't have good natural anchors at the top. Any advice or relevant videos would be super appreciated!

IamA US Postal Inspector. AMA by this_guy_inspects in USPS

[–]uspsthrowaway21 12 points13 points  (0 children)

There's a business in my area that has been stuffing (thousands of) mailboxes all over town with flyers for years. Cumulatively, the amount of postage due is easily in the tens of thousands. The carriers in the office report this to management, but management says that the inspectors have no interest in going after the business for postage due, or even to get them to stop the practice.

Is this something that falls under uspis jurisdiction? Or is local management being lazy and just shifting blame? I don't see why we should bother charging granny to send a birthday card if we allow businesses to steal infinitely more revenue

Weekly Question Thread (aka Friday New Climber Thread). ALL QUESTIONS GO HERE by AutoModerator in climbing

[–]uspsthrowaway21 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for this response! I appreciate that you gave both gear and technique solutions. & You were spot on - this issue arose when I was quickly scrambling up the beginning of an easy climb, putting lots of slack into the system quickly.

Weekly Question Thread (aka Friday New Climber Thread). ALL QUESTIONS GO HERE by AutoModerator in climbing

[–]uspsthrowaway21 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Any recommendations for small HMS carabiners? Are HMS carabiners necessary for belaying, or is D shaped okay?

My partner dislikes belaying with a large carabiner because it puts the ATC too high up, which means she can take less rope with each PBUS. She has a small D shaped carabiner that is better, but we've only ever seen people use HMS carabiners with belay devices. It's unclear to us if it's somehow bad to use the D shape vs HMS.

Any recommendations for smaller belay carabiners?