Archive for category pop
Odds of winning the lottery versus being impaled by an icicle
The odds against winning today’s $1+ billion Mega Millions come to over 300 million to 1. According to these statistics from the National Weather Service, the chances in being hit by lightning strike in any given year are far greater—about 1 in a million.
Being in the dead of winter, I’m more worried about the icicles hanging over our walkway.
I cannot find any ‘official’ statistics on the odds of dying from one of these frozen daggers, but it must be on par with winning the lottery.
Though it makes far more sense for me to invest in a helmet rather than the Mega Millions, I bought 5 tickets just to participate in the dream. It’s fun doing something irrational every so often!
To get the math on the odds and tips on improving them (such as: pick at random!), see this post by Davidson College Professor Tim Davidson.
Stay on task when working on your computer or pay the price
Gone are the good old days during the pandemic when you could slack off work and chat online with your friends and family or wander away for a long spell. According to a worldwide survey of 816 organizations by IDC Global conducted in July, nearly half of all large organizations (over 500 employees) now deploy monitoring software. More and more employers feed these analytics into algorithms that rate relative performance. They then tie the productivity score directly to their worker’s compensation.
You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.
George Orwell, 1984, speaking on how intrusively “Big Brother” watches you
Will this surveillance make digital workers do more, or will it backfire and cause “quiet quitting”? For some thoughts on this from an expert in the field of human relations, see Employee monitoring: Why it’s ‘dysfunctional’ but gaining popularity by Phil Albinus, Tech Editor for HR Executive.
Going nerdle on Wordle
I am habituated to my daily Wordle, the addictive online word-puzzle. It hinges on the 5 letters you lay out at the start. It’s too boring to enter the same vowel-heavy word, such as “adieu” or “orate”, every time, so I go with a different one every day of the month, referring to my top-secret list garnered from Wordle experts. Every day I compete (not especially well) against 4 or my adult children—us all posting our play to the family WhatsApp.
Here’s my stats thus far (nicely maintained and bar-graphed by Wordle): 152 games with 0 in 1 word, 5 in 2, 51 in 3, 45 in 4, 40 in 5, 7 in 6. The other 4 times I failed to get the word worked out in the 6 tries allotted, thus ruining those 4 days for me. However, my success rate of 97.4% is not too shabby, I think. (Because it is so easy and tempting to cheat with online Wordle solvers, getting valid stats on players’ performance is problematic.)
The current issue (June) of the Royal Statistical Society’s Significance magazine features a breakdown of the “War of Wordlers” by Mary J. Kwasny—a Northwestern University professor. She collected results from 20 Facebook friends (including herself) to compare with the performance of computer-based Wordle solvers. After a plethora of nerdy statistics, step plots and simulation graphs, Kwasny concludes that the computer will probably win out over an expert player. But that will be no fun at all.
If you have more of an appetite for Wordle as well as statistics (I’ve had enough!), check out this blog by data scientist Esteban Moro on Playing (and winning) Wordle with R.
Finis! (By the way, this is a valid Wordle word according to this list.)
PS Two of our family—my wife Karen and a son-in-law Ryan—quit playing after they made Wordle’s in one. Ryan got his ace on his first try at Wordle. With roughly 13,000 words in the hopper, that was extremely ‘skillful’.
Daylight elimination time
With virtually no opposition, the US Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which, if approved by the House and signed by President Biden, will make daylight savings time (DST) permanent beginning next March.
I was hoping for an end to the very annoying biannual change in time, but figured it would revert to standard, not daylight time. It will be very unsettling for those living in the far north to delay sunrise from 8:30 to 9:30 on the mornings around the winter solstice when days are shortest. However, I suppose that with the creep of DST over the years from 6 months in 1966 to only 4 months now, standard time stood no chance. Evidently the majority prefers not being woken up too early by the bright sun, and they like lighting up evening activities, for example, trick or treating on Halloween.*
An extra yawn one morning in the springtime, an extra snooze one night in the autumn is all that we ask in return for dazzling gifts. We borrow an hour one night in April; we pay it back with golden interest five months later.
Winston Churchill
Going to fixed time nationwide, even if it must be DST, will be very welcome. The clock fiddling got completely out of control in my Twin Cities years ago when the whole region split on going to DST. It came to a head with Minneapolis and Saint Paul being one hour apart for two weeks in 1965.**
It’s about time to settle on one time per zone and allow for the natural variation in daylight caused by our planet being so ‘tilty’. If you do not like it, move to the equator.
*See How Retailers Got American Kids an Extra Hour To Trick-Or-Treat On Halloween
**See Two Cities, Two Times
Statbot AI a bust…sad…now in need of Woebot consoling
Sir David Cox, a giant in the field of statistics, passed away early this year at age 97. Boffins like him cannot be easily replaced—hence the interest in creating artificial intelligence (AI). Therefore, I was excited to see this announcement of NelsonBot5000 (NB5k)—an automated “statistical concierge”. Alas, after submitting several questions such as “what is a p value”, I discovered that NB5k referred all questions to Google. Lame (but a clever gimmick to create engagement!).
“When I was a young cyborg, knee-high to a dial-up modem, PapaBot_x86 used to tell me tales of what the future would hold. However, I never dreamt that we’d ever see the day where free statistical expertise would be available to everyone, instantly.”
– NelsonBot5000
This got me got me going on the state of AI in general. The first thing I found via Google was a New York Times report on an “automated conversational agent” called Woebot that, according to this randomized controlled trial (unblinded), significantly reduces depression. I wanted to share my disappointment about NB5k but Woebot would not talk to me—it requiring a referral from a mental-health provider. My colleague Pat Whitcomb, founder of Stat-Ease, had a good response when I shared similarly trivial woes with him: “GOI!” (get over it).
On the bright side, my work as a consultant, trainer and educator on statistical design of experiments (DOE) remains secure from smart bots. All I ask is that before you ask me for stat help, please consult with Google or the like. Or, better yet, read the trilogy of “Simplified” books on DOE, lead-authored by me based on brainpower from Pat and statistician Martin Bezener.
*“Something Bothering You? Tell It to Woebot. When your therapist is a bot, you can reach it at 2 a.m. But will it really understand your problems?”, Karen Brown, 6/1/21.
The perfect condiment from the Red Planet: Martian ketchup!
Astrobiologists at Florida Tech’s Aldrin Space Institute recently teamed up with Kraft Heinz to make ketchup from tomatoes grown in Mars-like conditions. Never mind Pillsbury’s Space Food Sticks or Tang—my favorite foods growing up in awe of astronauts: Bring on the Martian ketchup!
The Florida Tech News Bureau provides these fascinating facts and figures on this unearthly food-science development:
- A team of more than a dozen students, scientists, and technicians worked in a greenhouse, known as the Red House, to grow the Martian tomatoes
- Powerful LED lighting on 7,800 pounds of soil from the Mohave Desert provided Martian conditions for the 450 experimental tomato plants grown over a period of two years
- A bottle of “Marz” ketchup survived a 23-mile-altitude balloon-flight that reduced its temperature to minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit.
Here’s another amazing statistic cited widely on the internet: The average American eats 71 pounds of ketchup per year, which Google data supports—it being the condiment of choice in nearly half of USA’s states.*
For more details on the HEINZ Ketchup Marz Edition and a picture of a Martian-like tomato see this November 9 report by the Space Coast Daily.
“Working with the tomato masters at Heinz has allowed us to see what the possibilities are for long term food production beyond Earth.”
Andrew Palmer, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Aldrin Space Institute
*(BestLife, 4/28/21, This Is the Most Popular Condiment in Your State, According to Data)
Glow sticks—bright full (not frightful) for fun, safe Halloweening
The daylight here in Minnesota continues to dwindle depressingly, going from nearly 12 hours on the first of October to about 10 hours on the 31st. Therefore, it will be welcome, albeit brief, relief to see glow-stick-waving trick-or-treaters coming by on Halloween night. These colorful light-emitting wands add a lot of pizzazz to the celebration, but most importantly, they make it far safer, especially along my sidewalk-less suburban street.
For the history of this chemiluminescent invention and the science behind it see this week’s feature by Chemical and Engineering News detailing “What are glow sticks, and what’s the chemical reaction that makes them light up?”.
Glow sticks flare out far too fast—only lasting for about 8 to 12 hours, which makes the annual Halloween far more precious. Now we must contend with several weeks of increasingly dark, cold and dreary days (I dislike November very much!) until relief comes with Thanksgiving and the full-on display of holiday lights. However, glow sticks can be bought cheaply just after Halloween. Why not break one out on a nightly basis to bridge the holiday gap? Brighten up!
By the way, if you have ever been tempted to crack open a tube of chemiluminescent fluid, first watch this YouTube video by TKOR (The King of Random). Do not try this at home, especially rubbing the contents on your teeth to make them glow.
Marshmallows and s’mores—an underappreciated wonder of food science
My family gathered around a campfire recently to enjoy s’mores—a tasty sandwich made with graham crackers, milk chocolate bars and marshmallows.
The trickiest part of putting together these calorific concoctions is the roasting. I prefer sticking my marshmallows in just the right place where they turn golden brown. Others just go for the burn and blow out the flames quickly enough to keep the ashes from overwhelming the gooey sweetness. Either way, most s’more fans take their marshmallows for granted, never realizing their precise chemistry.
I became enlightened when Chemical and Engineering News in their 4/28 issue* explained how the three ingredients in marshmallows—sugar, corn syrup, and gelatin—“come together in a complex chemical dance to make your taste buds sing.”
The trick is to put these components together in just the right ratios so they can be foamed with air into a stable form. This only works because of the elasticity provided by the gelatin—a triple helix. Furthermore, gelatin is thermo-reversible, so it can melt and reset. Even better, it does so at just the right temperature to melt in your mouth.
Check out this new video showing how to make s’mores completely from scratch—far more delicious than using store-bought ingredients.
Savor s’mores and their association with good times around a campfire. But also, appreciate the unique combination of their ingredients, as well as the science behind them that makes such a sweet sensation of smooth chewiness. Yum!
*Reference: What’s in marshmallows, and how do the ingredients work together to make ooey-gooey treats?.
Illuminating results from sparkler experiment
Posted by mark in Education, pop, Uncategorized on April 16, 2021
This video, concluding with the obligatory lighting up of multiple sparklers, lays out the results of another fun and educational experiment by Chemical and Biological Engineering (CBE) students at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT) for their Applied Design of Experiments for the Chemical Industry class.
The testers: Anthony Best, Henry Brouwer, and Jordyn Tygesen, uncovered significant interactions of wind, water and lighting position on the burn time as illustrated by the Pareto chart of effects from Design-Expert software.
I expect these three experimenters will be enjoying extremely sparkly celebrations this summer!
Applying multifactor testing to a wine-making simulator
The Pudding, a digital publication devoted to data-driven visualization of current culture, currently features a very interesting essay on Wine and Math, A Model Pairing. The author, Lars Verspohl, provides many eye-catching graphics of the analytics behind producing quality wines.
What got my attention was a simulator for making red Portuguese Vinho Verde. Verspohl sifted through a dataset of 1600 wines to develop a model that predicts quality based on 11 factors. You can slide these up and down to try making a fine wine—rated at 7 or more on a scale of 10.
Not being content with haphazard searching on so many variables, I set up a multifactor test. Using version 13 of Design-Expert® software (free trial here), I laid out a minimum-run (plus 2) screening design on the 8 factors ranked most important by Verspohl’s Random Forest analysis, bypassing the bottom 3 (pH, residual sugar and free sulfur dioxide). I then worked through the 18 combinations and recorded the quality results in percent.
As shown on its Pareto plot of effects, Design-Expert revealed that only 5 of the effects tested produced significant effects.
The numeric optimization tools led to the optimal red Vinho Verde flagged in this 3D plot at the highest alcohol and lowest volatile acid levels. Settings for the other attributes are indicated by the position of the slide bars, e.g.; sulphates at the high level*. The factors defaulted to the middle are ones that did not get picked for the model.
Now that I’ve solved this simulator, my next mission is to locate a bottle of red Vinho Verde for some one-glass-at-a-time testing.
*This result surprised me—not being a big fan of sulfurous compounds in wines. This skepticism is borne out by another take on the Vinho Verde wine here. The only way to resolve the conflicting results would be to do an actual experiment on the composition of a red wine, ideally a mixture design for optimal formulation.