Archive for June, 2020
Fun with colors
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on June 26, 2020
Download one of these color-identifier apps to your cell phone for some summer ‘staycation’ fun. Stop and measure the roses!
I did so with the top-rated Color Grab. It reported “Brilliant Rose” and “Golden Yellow” for the flowers in my vase.
The ‘heads-up’ about Color Grab came from Oliver Thunich—a master statistician who teaches DOE for our German affiliate Statcon. He came up with an innovative way to demonstrate mixture design for optimal formulation by blending three juices: clear apple, passion fruit, and pink grapefruit.
Using Design-Expert® software Oliver developed an experiment with 20 recipes that varied the ingredients in an optimal way to model the resulting color in RGB (three responses).
Based on the results, I came up with the ideal formulation (flagged on the 3d graph) to produce a Pure Red color with as little of the expensive passion fruit as possible.
My high point in coloring came in kindergarten when the teacher sent me home after coloring with a black crayon on black paper—just too dark by her reckoning. However, now that I know that color can be engineered, I may pick it up again. In any case, I do appreciate an array of red, green and blue (i.e., RGB) and all that’s in between, especially in a floral display.
P.S. A hummingbird just flew up to my home-office screen window—just a foot away from where I sit. It would be interesting to see what the color identifier comes up with for this iridescent-feathered friend.
Positive news for troubling times: People really do like to help others
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior on June 19, 2020
Being Minneapolis based and seeing all the strife these last few weeks, it was heartening to see that this Large-Scale Experiment Shows People Want to Help Each Other, Even When It Costs Them Something.
“It [prosocial behavior] means doing something for someone else at a cost to yourself. One example would be paying for the person behind you’s order at the coffee shop. Or right now, wearing your mask in public. It’s a cost to you; it’s uncomfortable. But you contribute to the public good by wearing it and not spreading the virus. From an evolutionary perspective, it’s kind of perplexing that it even exists, because you’re decreasing your own fitness on behalf of others.”
– David Melamed, Associate Professor of Sociology at The Ohio State University, lead author of “The robustness of reciprocity”, Science Advances, 6/3/20
The experiment, which involved 700 people, showed prosocial behavior persisted no matter what the mix of motivators. It is very sweet to see anyone of any age, from toddler to senior, help one another. I don’t know of many things that give me more satisfaction than lending a hand. Come on everyone, be nice—you will feel better for it! It’s time we turned all the frowns upside down.
Baking bread breaks up boredom of being home bound, but baffles many
Market research firm Nielsen reported sales of baking yeast surging by over 600% when the coronavirus cooped up most of America in March. It seemed like a good idea to pass the time. However, as I can attest, getting a loaf to rise can be frustratingly hit-or-miss. The Wall Street Journal described botched breads as “hockey pucks”—my words exactly when describing too-frequent failures with machine-made bread.
“We’ve all decided to bake bread, but a lot of us are ending up with hockey pucks.”
Annie Gasparro and James R. Hagerty, “We’re All Baking Bread Now (And Many of Us Are Failing at It)”, Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2020 (updated web post)
It turns out that multifactor design of experiments (DOE) provides an ideal way to troubleshoot baking problems. See in this show-and-tell* how I successfully applied DOE to rise above (pun intended) the hockey pucks. that provided.
All the best for your baking. We all need some levity nowadays, which can be accomplished with the proper leavening (dough!). Enjoy!
*Published by Quality Progress: “Augmented Ruggedness Testing To Prevent Failures”, Vol. 36, Nº 5, 2003, pp. 38-45, and posted by them for subscribers-only in this archival site.