Permanent calendar proposed to eliminate leap day
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on February 29, 2020
“Those born on Feb. 29 know they exist, but the computer at the DMV is skeptical.”
Subheadline for the Wall Street Journal article today about how Leap-Year Babies Fight a Lonely, Quadrennial Fight for Recognition
Today being a day that comes only every four years is special—even more so now that my niece delivered a leap-year baby girl. Unfortunately, this precious little leapling (“LL”) faces a lifetime of calendar kerfuffles with computer systems that do not compute February 29th birthdays. However, a solution is at hand: the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar (HHPC). By HHPC’s reckoning this special day is March 2nd and comes again on Saturday next year and every year thereafter—no need for LL’s parents to wait four years to celebrate her first birthday.
Being that my birthday would always fall on a Monday, I cannot build much enthusiasm for the HHPC feature of any given date always falling on the same day (LL lucked out, though). Other off-putting days are Independence Day being on a Wednesday and Halloween being eliminated due to October ending at 30 days. But the weirdest aspect of HHPC is the “Xtr” week every 6 years. This year of 2020 features an Xtr, for example. Minnesotans do not need 7 more days of winter!
PS. Watch the video to see what would happen, if we did not add a day every 4 years: Eventually summer would become winter!
Major League Baseball experimenting with robot umpires
Posted by mark in sports, Uncategorized on February 19, 2020
After a somewhat successful* year-long trial of automated balls and strikes (ABS) in the Atlantic League, MLB will bring in these ‘robots’ to second-guess their human umpires at nine of Florida’s spring-training games. The ABS system makes use of TrackMan radar technology, already in play for StatCast.
After MLB’s tech-team improves ABS’s reliability and accuracy, it might be worth using, but only if it speeds up the game. Using ABS simply to challenge calls will just make things worse, while eliminating the spectacle of on-field blow-ups by volatile managers like Billy Martin (former Minnesota Twin). When the calls are made by invisible radar, who do you throw the dirt at?
“You turn back (to the umpire and say), ‘TrackMan?’ They say, ‘Yeah,'” “‘Well, I’m not going to argue with you.’ Because it’s the robots.”
Southern Maryland Blue Crabs outfielder Tony Thomas commenting on the experimental use of ABS in the Atlantic League
PS. When the baseball robots get smart enough to call balks, then we’d all best bunker down for them taking over the world.
*Baseball America reporting Imperfections And All, Robo Umps Make Significant Impact
Assessing the threat from Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) via quantitative analytics
“In God we trust. All others must provide data.”
Dr. William Schaffner, a preventive medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, quoted by NY Times on 2/2/20 in their report that “Wuhan Coronavirus Looks Increasingly Like a Pandemic, Experts Say”.
Stay calm and carry on is a good mantra for these unsettled times. But it pays to keep an eye on developments with a critical view on the facts so far as they can be ascertained. Here are some interesting statistics and data-driven observations on the impact thus far and in future of 2019-nCoV from the New York Times:
- Fatalities now come to 425 in mainland China as of Tuesday morning according to this latest news, eclipsing Chinese deaths from SARS (349). For a view of its spread throughout Asia, see the Coronavirus Map via the link above.
- For a very enlightening interactive-graphical view graphics see this in-depth report.
Keep in mind that much remains to be determined. For example, it may turn out that 2019-nCoV for better (less fatal) or worse (more infectious) may turn out to be more like 2009 H1N1 Swine flu than SARS.
You, like me, may be curious about the effectiveness of wearing a mask. From this NPR investigation, I surmise that N95 respirators, such as those made by 3M, work best, but only if fitted properly and worn with great discipline in not touching one’s face. In any case during this flu season, we all need to wash our hands with soap and water often (hand sanitizers don’t work nearly so well by my reckoning) and stay home if we get sick.
For what it’s worth, that’s my take for now. You all must make your own judgments. All I suggest is that you not let fear rule—assess the data and adjust your thinking as more accumulates. But best you be conservative on the safe side.
PS. Those of you who fly frequently are well-advised to check out this advice from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. I am comforted by the statistic of 99.9% particulate removal and thus “the cabin air environment is not conducive to the spread of most infectious diseases” per the CDC. However, as always, it’s best to be careful during times when the flu and/or other viruses run rampant.
Experiment provides fetching evidence about wolf puppies
Posted by mark in Nature, pop, Uncategorized on January 21, 2020
Swedish zoologists reported this month in iScience that Intrinsic Ball Retrieving in Wolf Puppies Suggests Standing Ancestral Variation for Human-Directed Play Behavior. This counteracted widely-held beliefs that wolves do not socialize with humans. It may suggest that ancestors of dogs were primed for domestication.
Given the small sample size—only 13 wolves—I am not so sure. But I always feel better after encountering puppies like Flea pictured in Gizmodo’s engaging report on the Swedish study. I look forward to more rigorous research on wolf puppies and hope to be picked as a tennis-ball tosser.
“When I saw the first wolf puppy retrieving the ball, I literally got goosebumps.”
Christina Hansen Wheat, a co-author of the study and a researcher from Stockholm University.
Achieve New Year’s resolution to reduce stress at your work-desk
With the page turned over to 2020, office-workers worldwide must bear down again and do even better than ever before. If you did really well in last year, that just raises expectations for a similar improvement over the next 12 months. Naturally stress levels rise and performance drops off into a downward spiral. But, no worries, a solution is at hand: Simply pick up a small plant, preferably fool-proof such as these fine fifteen recommended by House Beautiful. Then, per a study by Japanese scientists*, whenever you feel worn down, take a 3 minute break to gaze at your plant and, when needed, care for it. Based on the results from experiments on over 60 participants, you will become more relaxed (as measured by pulse rate) and relieved of anxiety (based on scoring).
“Nature can serve as an antidote to over-stimulation or “attention fatigue,” as well as boost cognitive performance.”
Cory Steig, Health and Wellness Reporter, Make It, CNBC, 3/3/20, “This 3-minute, $3 habit could lower your stress and anxiety at work”.
It works for me. In any case, happy New Year! Don’t let the stress get to you.
* Toyoda, et al, “Potential of a Small Indoor Plant on the Desk for Reducing Office Workers’ Stress”, 12/19/19, HortTechnology.
Testing the adage that if you drink beer before wine then you will feel fine
Just in time for the partying hearty for Christmas today, my son-in-law Ryan, a chemist with 3M, alerted me to a statistical study published after last year’s holiday season by the The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that questioned the advice of grape or grain but never the twain. Naturally, being a drinker of these undistilled alcoholic beverages, I wondered if my tendency to drink beer before dinner and wine for the meal would pass the test. But being a wonk for design of experiments, I was most curious to see a randomized controlled multiarm matched-triplet crossover trial—pictured below for this experiment on the order of addition for beer and/or wine.
Based on results from 90 participants, including a control group, “neither type nor order of consumed alcoholic beverages significantly affected hangover intensity (P > 0.05)”. What really mattered was the total consumption, although, interestingly, hangover intensity did not correlate to breath alcohol concentration (BrAC). However, the authors warn that
“The fact that we did not find a direct correlation between maximal BrAC and hangover intensity should not be misinterpreted as an invitation to drink until the cows come home. Likely, this correlation overall does exist but is not directly apparent in the narrow range of peak alcohol levels studied here.”
It’s disclosed at the end that Carlsberg provided the beer (premium Pilsner lager recipe from 1847) free of charge “for the sole purpose of utilization in this study”. Although I trust the author’s disclaimer of any bias, perhaps further study is warranted with stronger beers such as a Belgian trippel. Maybe wine would then be best drunk first. To be continued…
Business people taking notice of pushback on p-value
Posted by mark in Basic stats & math on December 15, 2019
As the headline article for their November 17 Business section, my hometown newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, picked up an alarming report on p-values by Associated Press (AP). That week I gave a talk to the Minnesota Reliability Consortium*, after which one of the engineers told me that he also read this article and lost some of his faith in the value of statistics.
“One investment analyst reacted by reducing his forecast for peak sales of the drug — by $1 billion. What happened? The number that caused the gasps was 0.059. The audience was looking for something under 0.05.”
– Malcom Ritter, AP, relaying the reaction to results from a “huge” heart drug study presented this fall by Dr. Scott Solomon of Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
As I noted in this May 1st blog/, rather than abandoning p-values, it would pay to simply be far more conservative by reducing the critical value for significance from 0.05 to 0.005. Furthermore, as pointed out by Solomon (the scientist noted in the quote), failing to meet whatever p-value one sets a priori as the threshold, may not refute a real benefit—perhaps more data might generate sufficient power to achieve statistical significance.
Rather than using p-values to arbitrarily make a binary pass/fail decision, analysts should use this statistic as a continuous measure of calculated risk for investment. Of course, the amount of risk that can be accepted depends on the rewards that will come if the experimental results turn out to be true.
It is a huge mistake to abandon statistics because of p being hacked to come out below 0.05, or p being used to kill projects due to it coming out barely above 0.05. Come on people, we can be smarter than that.
* “Know the SCOR for Multifactor Strategy of Experimentation”
A century after prohibition began, Minnesota still limits beer
Beer and statistics are a pairing that began in the early 1900s with Gossett and his work at Guinness brewery to develop the t-test. Fisher’s landmark book The Design of Experiments featured an innovative arrangement of beer-destined (presumably) barley in field trials at the Rothamsted station in 1927. George Box, who invented response surface methods in 1951, gained further fame by hosting Monday night beer sessions that inspired adoption of statistical methods by budding scientists. Therefore, beer is a suitable topic for a blog on statistics, particularly one that maintains a wry tone. That’s my position and I’m sticking to it.
Today Utah increased their allowance for alcohol content in beer, leaving my State of Minnesota as the last in the nation to limit grocery stores to 3.2 percent by weight (equivalent to 4% ABV—alcohol by volume—the standard measure reported by modern brewers). Minnesota did loosen up restrictions on microbreweries to allow food trucks. The State also eliminated the ban on selling liquor on Sunday. However, it’s annoying that beer (other than the 3.2 swill), wine or other alcoholic beverages cannot be bought when shopping for food.
It was a Minnesotan, Andrew Volstead, who authored the Act that enforced of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the sale and drinking of alcohol. The Volstead Act passed on October 28, 1919 when the Senate overrided President Wilson’s veto. The Cullen-Harrison in 1933 led to the legalization of 3.2 beer on April 7th–now known as National Beer Day. Later that year the 21st Amendment repealed prohibition, but many States held on to 3.2 beer as a compromise for those like Volstead who remained committed to temperance.
I look forward to the day when Minnesota opens up the sale of “full point” beer and 3.2 becomes a relic of the last century. Nevertheless, it’s good to remain mindful of the effects of higher ABV beer on the brain, which I’m reminded of by this tableau of favorite coozie, can and bottle on my desk at home. (My granddaughter Laine taped up the warning sign.) Not finding Brain’s Bitter (Cardiff, Wales) or Skull Splitter (Orkney Islands) readily available, I am currently drinking Founder’s Mosaic Promise—a single-hop ale at 5.5% ABV brewed in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s tasty! Cheers for real beers!
Excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers.
– Cliff Clavin, Cheers
Enlightenment by an accidental statistician under the Great Comet of 1996
Posted by mark in design of experiments, history on October 21, 2019
A small, but select, group of people came Friday to University of Wisconsin, Madison for the celebration George E. P. Box’s 100th birthday, including his second wife Joan Fisher, whose father Ronald invented modern-day design of experiments (DOE) and the whole field of industrial statistics. Box, who doubled down on Fisher by his development of response surface methods (RSM), went by the name “Pel”. This nickname stemmed from the second of his middle names “Edward Pelham” (E. P. not standing for Elvis Presley as some who admired him thought more apropos).
In my blog on March 30, 2013—just after his death, I relayed stories of my two memorable encounters with Box. Friday marked my first visit to UW-Madison since I last saw him in 1996 for his short-course on DOE. Looking over Lake Mendota from the Memorial Union Terrace brought back memories of the incredible view during my class, when Comet Hyakutake peaked in spectacular fashion before rapidly diminishing. I rate Hyakutake on par with Hale-Bopp that came a year later, just as I view Box and Fisher as the luminaries for DOE.
Inspired by the Centenary, I ordered a copy of Box’s autobiography—The Accidental Statistician, which he completed in the last year of his life. I look forward to reading more about this remarkable fellow.
The video presented by Box at the time of publication—March 2013—provides a sampling of the stories he told to inspire experimenters to be more observant and methodical:
- How a monk discovered the secret to making champagne,
- What to make of seeing bloody Mr. Jones running down the street pursued by Mrs. Jones with a hatchet (good one for this Halloween season!).
Prize-winning research only scratches the surface
Just in time for the super-dry, winter season, when us Minnesotans become terribly itchy if we do not diligently apply moisturizer, the Annals of Improbable Research awarded their 2019 Ig Nobel Peace (ha ha) Prize to researchers who discovered that people enjoy scratching their ankles. While one might get pleasure initially from giving in to an itch elsewhere, the satisfaction soon fades. But ankles do not rankle when it comes to scratching.
For all the details from the team of authors, including the Director of the Miami Itch Center, Gil Yoispovitch (italics mine), click this NIH Public Access posting of The Pleasurability of Scratching an Itch: A Psychophysical and Topographical Assessment.