Archive for category pop
Pianogram of Piano Man
With its bizarre German-captioned photo of a full shopping cart cut in half, this literally off-the-wall Flowing Data blog on physical infographics got me going on displaying data using apropos figures or objects.
Just to show that it’s not just das deutchlanders who apply figures in clever ways see the clever “colour” matching guide inside this suckUKtm (!) tea mug.
Further internet-searching on “infographics” brought me to these intriguing ‘pianograms’ including one, appropriately enough, of Piano Man by Billy Joel.
P.S. Coincidentally Billy Joel (not my cup of tea) just announced yesterday his return to Minneapolis for a concert, despite swearing off any further touring. Check out a wicked Starcastic graph of his many marriages and their progression toward younger and younger women. Then, to be fair, see this story about how Billy Joel’s three wives stole his heart and his money.
Extreme brews and better ones that stay within more-reasonable limits
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on October 26, 2014
While in Antwerp last week I sampled many good beers but none as good as the Trappist-brewed Orval pictured.
The locals love it so much that demand far exceeds supply from the ever-shrinking ranks of monks who brew it at the monks at the centuries-old Abbey of Notre Dame d’Orval. It is lip-smacking good, or as the Belgians in this Dutch-speaking region say—smakelijke.
On the flight home I watched several episodes of Brew Dogs, which features a pair of zany Scots who go for extreme craft beers. For example they took a blond Belgian ale and freeze distilled it many times to a level of 55 percent alcohol by volume (ABV)—a new record for beer. However even with it being infused with nettles from the Scottish Highlands and fresh juniper berries, this over-the-top brew must go well beyond the bounds of good taste.and … then put in a bottle created by a taxidermist.
A few years ago I headed over the border to Hudson, Wisconsin* to pick up a bottle of the then record-holder for ABV at a now-paltry 22 percent**—Dogfish Head’s World Wide Stout. With some coaching from my number one son, I poured it into a brandy-glass and sedately sipped it. I rate it zeer smakelijke. However, I am happy to go for far more reasonably high ABVs of 8 percent or so that come with tripel Belgian abbey ales. A few mugs of that provide a very good buzz. Proost!
*Many great beers do not achieve distribution in Minnesota due to liquor not being allowed for sale on Sundays and especially not growlers of craft-brews—all this being defeated again in May by State Senate. It seems that hell will freeze over and the Vikings will win the Superbowl before we can drink on Sundays. Until then it’s on Wisconsin.
**See this beer well down the BeerTutor.com list of strongest beers in the world.
Japanese tribologists confirm that banana peels are slippery
We all know that banana peels are slippery, but who suspected this would be worthy of study. I suppose that given there’s a field of study (tribology) that focuses exclusively on the rubbing of surfaces, it stands to reason that the friction of fruits would come under scrutiny. The Japanese researchers who studied banana peels were singled out for an IgNobel prize for an achievement that made people “LAUGH, and then THINK.” It turns out that learning what makes these fruit coverings (aka “epicarps”) so slippery might lead to better lubrication of artificial joints.
It really is amazing how much a banana peel does to reduce friction. Check out the data shown in this report by Business Insider. As noted here in a Science News blog a floor littered with peels is not good for monkeying around, being nearly as slippery as ice, which us Minnesotans can readily appreciate. It would be funny, though, to see someone try this. Ha ha—someone already did as you can see in this Mythbuster’s clip of slips.
Online courses attracting cheaters?
According to the authors of the recently published statistical study “No More Excuses-Personality Traits and Academic Dishonesty in Online Courses” (Journal of Statistical Science and Application, V2 (2014) 111-118) cheaters now run rampant across most college campuses. With the number of undergrads taking classes online—4.3 million and growing fast, opportunities for academic dishonesty are expanding. Surprisingly, this experiment showed less cheating in the virtual than in the traditional classroom settings; indicative, perhaps, of those going online being more motivated to learn, rather than just achieving credits. This is good to see. Also, I was happy to learn that this and other similar studies found Americans being less accepting of cheaters and applying higher standards for honesty than most other nationalities. Along those lines, US News and World Reports in this June posting advises students to “Think Twice Before Cheating in Online Courses,” particularly when being proctored by webcam. The lady pictured with a cheat-sheet written on her arm might never get the chance to roll up a sleeve. That’s just too bad.
Shocking research—young men prefer a jolt of electricity over doing nothing
Two-thirds of University of Virginia male students preferred a shock to doing nothing, whereas only one-quarter of the women did. This finding by psychologist Tim Wilson, which I read about in the Wall Street Journal,* does not surprise me in the least—young fellows always seek excitement that causes immediate pain or potential catastrophe for their life and limb. The more micromorts, equal to a one-in-a-million chance of death, the better, at least so far as men are concerned.
According to WSJ’s 7/18/14 article “Risk Is Never a Numbers Game,” micromorts (MM) were devised in the 1970’s by Stanford’s Ronald A. Howard to quantify the chances of death for any particular activity. Each day on average the typical American faces a 1.3 MM probability of a sudden end from external causes, that is, not a natural demise. The authors, Michael Blastland and David Spiegelhalter, bring up all sorts of morbid statistics. What interested me was not the murders and other deathly events brought on through little or no fault of the individual, but rather the discretionary doings such as horseback riding (~1 MM) and mountain climbing (12,000 MMs!). If you like heights but the latter sport exceeds your tolerance for risk, consider parachuting at a far safer level of 7 MMs or be really conservative by simply going on a roller coaster at 0.0015 MMs.
Whenever I see statistics like this, I wonder if one shouldn’t just strap on a helmet, grab a mattress, blanket and pillow, go down into the basement with the supplies left over from the millennium Armageddon and curl into the fetal position over in the southwest corner where tornadoes do the least damage. That being very boring, I’d first set up a battery with leads for giving myself a shock now and then.
Not the usual boring statistics conference—attendees called to duty for developing an optimal blend of beers
Earlier this month I attended the 5th European Design-of-Experiment User Meeting in Cambridge, England, which, considering the topic being statistical design of experiments, turned out not to be as dull as one might think. All the credit for the pizzazz goes to our colleagues across the Atlantic—PRISMTC; in particular Paul Nelson and Andrew Macpherson. They conjured up an in-conference experiment that developed an optimal blend of three local beers (all made by Milton Brewery and sold in bulk by Polypins (36 pints) from £56, Firkins (2 polypins) from £84), a pale ale called Cyclops (30-80%), a bitter under the label Justinian (20-70%) and a dark mild named Medusa (0-50%). Prior testing by these two boffins of stats and zymurgy (that is, the study of yeasty concoctions) led them to constrain the ranges of the three brews to the ranges shown in parentheses.
Paul and Andrew laid out a clever design that, via balanced incomplete blocking, restricted any one taster to only 4 blends, while testing enough combinations often enough to provide adequate power for discerning just the right formula. The fun bit was them asking us conference-goers to provide the necessary data prior to an atmospheric dinner at Magdalene (for some reason pronounced in English as “maudlin”) College.
This limitation on beer was one departure from a similar mixture experiment on beers that I ran* with my two sons and son-in-law as the tasters (little chance them going along with such a sensible restriction). The other wrinkle was them requiring all of us to taste a strip of paper that ferreted out about a third of the tasters being “super tasters”—those who immediately recoiled from the bitter taste (many thought it just tasted like paper).**
It turned out that the bitterest blend, in contrast to the mildest of the beer mixtures, was not greatly liked. I think this must be an acquired taste! You can see this on the triangular, 3D response surface graph of the predicted response—the lowest corner being the B:Bitter. Surprisingly, mixing in some A:Ale makes a relatively tasty brew—these two beers synergize, that is, provide much better results than either one alone. But the tastiest blend of all is the peak at the C:Mild corner, with 30% of Cyclops, 20% of Justinian and 50% of the Medusa, some blends on a ridge through the middle of the triangular mixture space look promising.
Three cheers for three beers and hats off to the brilliance of Paul and Andrew of PRISMTC for pulling off this fun, clever and informative taste test. See their full, illustrative report here.
*See Mixture Design Brews Up New Beer Cocktail—Black & Blue Moon
**Check out this BBC report and short video on testing for super tasters
Odd statistics from the United Kingdom
I’m enjoying a weekend in London prior to a conference in Cambridge next week. I was happy to see in the news that the Prime Minister David Cameron is under investigation by the UK Statistics Authority for biasing figures on in his party’s favor. Evidently the British are more vigilant than the USA on out-and-out self-promoting misstatements.
On a more frivolous note, here are some stats on people in these parts that I found in this recent news on the weird by UK’s tabloid the Express gleaned from the soon-to-be-published book Numberland by Mitchell Symons–a principal writer of early editions of Trivial Pursuit and author of That Book of Perfectly Useless Information, The Book of More Perfectly Useless Information, and Where Do Nudists Keep Their Hankies?:
- A girl reportedly called Thelma Ursula Beatrice Eleanor (spelling TUBE) was born in 1924 on a Bakerloo line train at Elephant and Castle. (I took the Bakerloo line today while bopping around London.)
- The average British adult moves home every seven years. (That seems a bit inconvenient for the parents.)
- One of ten British adults admit to wearing the same item of underwear three days in a row. (I thought it smelled somewhat musty while jammed into the steamy-hot Bakerloo.)
- In 1705 John Smith was hanged for burglary at the Tyburn Tree. After he had been hanging for 15 minutes, a reprieve arrived and he was cut down. Amazingly, he was revived and managed to recover. As a result, he became known as John ‘Half-Hanged” Smith. (This just chokes me up.)
Conqueror paper dominates in flight test
After seeing this record-breaking airplane flight I bought a ream of the Conqueror® CX22 paper used for the construction of the amazing flying machine. Would it produce the same outstanding results from weekend warriors?
I put this to the test on Sunday with my son-in-law Ryan, my son Ben and his friend Josh. Of course none of them could throw like the champion “pilot” and Arena Football League quarterback, Joe Ayoob, who vaulted the hand-folded paper aircraft 226 feet, 10 inches on Feb. 26, 2012 at McClellan Air Force Base in California. Also, the simple dart template used for making the airplanes could not compete with the design of “the paper airplane guy” John Collins. However, after blocking out the difference between throwers (Ryan being the standout), I found a significant advantage to the heavier (26.6 pound) and stiffer Conqueror paper over a standard 24-pound stock we use at Stat-Ease made by Navigator).
The picture tells the story (click it for a close-up view)–the Conqueror shown in red far exceeding the standard stock (black points), with one exception highlighted at the upper left. It turns out that Ben ‘accidentally’ spilled beer on his buddy Josh’s airplane. That’s the way things go on the weekend competitions—whatever it takes to win.
Read this as fast as you can but be prepared for a test to follow
Once upon a time I sped through Melville’s lengthy novel “Moby Dick.” If I recall correctly, it has something to do with a fellow missing one arm who goes chasing after the devilish whale that bit it off. Nowadays my eyes tire more quickly so I appreciate the advantages of electronic readers such as Kindle that serve me up columns of enlarged text with only a few words per line. Then I needn’t work too hard looking back and forth. What really works well is keeping one’s eyes fixed and moving the text along the focus. This is called rapid sequential visual presentation, or RSVP.
Recently I got the heads-up from Scientific American*about a smart-watch from Samsung that comes equipped with an RSVP app called Spritz. They claim that their “Optimal Recognition Point” (ORP) technology increases reading-speed on-average by half-again, from 220 to 330 words-per-minute. My only question is how anyone can hold their wrist steady long enough to digest much. I’d hate to run into anyone walking down the street while absorbed in a particularly fascinating book. Texting is bad enough.
Then again it’s one thing to see a lot of words and even process them through your head, but yet another thing to comprehend fully what’s been read. That’s the point of Annie Murphy Paul of The Weekly Wonk in this blog that questions the claims of Spritz. If I read her correctly (ha ha), she suggests that subject-matter expertise is the real key to effective reading—not just doing it faster, but also with greater comprehension. Excepting pulp fiction that requires little intelligence (gotta love it!), that makes a lot of sense to me.
Nevertheless, I’m anxious to see RSVP come to Kindle so I can try reading more in the short periods of time that I can free up and/or last before becoming eye-weary. Maybe then I will re-read “Moby Dick.” I have this vague recollection of the whale being white, but that just doesn’t seem right.
Minnesota town tops nation for highest median wage after cost of living adjustment (COLA)
Take a look at this intriguing report by NPR’s Planet money on How Far Your Paycheck Goes. Being a native and resident of Minnesota, our town of Rochester caught my eye atop the right side of the graphic on incomes. My guess is that the dominant employer—the Mayo Clinic–pays a lot of money for its medicos, who then get a lot of bag for their buck being in a relatively rural region.
On the other side of these “what it feels like” income-comparisons Washington DC fares very poorly after the COLA. Based on these economic statistics it seems that the optimal strategy for a job seeker would be to get a federal-government job, for example—working on HealthCare.gov–allowing the work to be done at a distance and then take up residence in Danville, Illinois where money goes a long way in comparison.