Archive for category pop
Experiment reveals secret to maximizing microwave popcorn—Part two: Results
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on January 3, 2021
Nothing beats microwave popcorn for snacking. That’s what makes unpopped kernels (UPK) so aggravating—not just for the loss of yummy yield, but also for the pain from accidentally biting down on them. Therefore, I am quite pleased to report significantly reduced UPK discovered by my designed experiment detailed in part 1 of this blog.
The big reveal comes from the interaction plot showing that the effect of preheating depends on the timing method.
First off, look up at the upper left of the graph and notice that the default GE timing, done by a humidity sensor, creates significantly greater UPKs—the lower end of the least significant difference (LSD) bars (p<0.5) fall above the higher ends of all other LSDs. The actual results using my GE microwave popcorn button, shown by the red (no preheat) and green (yes-preheat) circles on the left, ranged from 41 to 92—far too many UPKs per bag.
Next, see how the combination of GE++ (adding time) with no preheating wins out overall. The actual counts, shown by the red circles at middle bottom, ranged from 23 to 34—far fewer UPKs than before.
Life is good: Best not bother to put in 1 cup of water and wait for a minute; also, no complications introduced by setting up my cell phone, quieting the household, and standing by to turn off the microwave when alerted by Popcorn Expert. All I need to do is press the popcorn button and then 9 twice for the extra time. Easy! And, by the way, the popcorn tastes great—no burning!
I never would have made this significant improvement without the more-precise:
- measurement of UPK counts (versus weight) and
- Poisson-regression (versus ordinary least squares) modeling*
*(available in the newly released version 13 of Design-Expert® software)
I encourage you to do your own microwave popcorn experiment, ideally multifactor ones using Design-Expert version 13, now available as a free, fully functional, 14-day trial. Many factors can be tested—first and foremost being brand of popcorn and time in the microwave. Two ‘hacks’ posted to the question-and-answer website Quora intrigue me:
Another hack botched by me (as confessed in part 1) is pouring the popcorn into a vented microwave container. Throw one or more of these factors into your design of experiment (DOE) and please let me know the statistical outcome along with the raw data.
I remain a few dozen kernels short of the perfect microwave popcorn: Zero UPK with every exploded morsel being incredibly delicious.
Every once in a while, someone will mail me a single popcorn kernel that didn’t pop. I’ll get out a fresh kernel, tape it to a piece of paper and mail it back to them.
Orville Redenbacher
New study reveals the benefits of being a bad wrapper
My wife Karen pulled a good trick on me this weekend. While surrounded with gifts for our very large family (now including 9 grandchildren), she asked “would you like to help me with wrapping?” Ha ha. At the beginning of our nearly half-century together, I taped comics from the Sunday paper around my gifts to her—pathetic but colorful. When Hallmark introduced handled gift bags in 1987, my presentation improved greatly with little effort required other than finding a suitable size and decor—thank goodness.
The ribbons! The wrappings! The tags! And the tinsel! The trimmings! The trappings!
Dr. Seuss
However, I may need to give wrapping another go after seeing this scientific study on gift wrapping that reveals why presents should look messy. It turns out that family and friends prefer sloppily wrapped gifts significantly more than those neatly trimmed. So it seems that my lack of talent in anything crafty is a strong point. Ha ha. (Last laugh.)
Cheers!
Raisin Bran sun wearing sunglasses and other shady “alternate memories”
Your mind plays many frustrating tricks. For example, as I detailed in How to arrest what’s-his-name’s [Ebbinghaus] forgetting curve, the brain purges valuable information far too quickly. A fellow statistical trainer recently refreshed my memory of the forgetting curve—citing this study that replicated the original experimental results from Ebbinghaus.
Coincidentally, I watched Friday’s episode of the quirky new “How to With John Wilson” HBO show*, which featured widely shared alternate (false!) memories such as:
- The Raisin Bran sun wearing sunglasses
- Stouffer’s Stove Top Stuffing mix
- Mandela dying in prison.
The last common misconception spawned a growing belief in what became known as the “Mandela Effect”. Check out this list with hundreds of other alternate memories and see if some resonate with your recollection. If so, you may be living in an alternate universe!
The “Mandela Effect” really plays tricks with your mind with memories that never happened but seem as if they did. However, it may not be evidence of a multiverse, but rather more mundane mental mistakes explained here by Healthline.
Never mind the Mandela Effect, the memory lapse that works for me is the forgetting curve—it doing its magic on the year of 2020.
“Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.”
― Kahlil Gibran
* Reviewed highly here by Vulture.
Statisticians earn residuals by airing errors
Posted by mark in design of experiments, pop on October 10, 2020
A new book by David S. Salsburg provides a series of Cautionary Tales in Designed Experiments. Salsburg wrote the classic The Lady Tasting Tea, which I read with great delight. I passed along the titular story (quite amazing!) in a book review (article #4) for the July 2004 DOE FAQ Alert.
Salsburg’s cautionary tales offer a quick read with minimal mathematics on what can go wrong with poorly designed or badly managed experiments—mainly medical. I especially liked his story of the Lanarkshire Milk Experiment of 1930, which attempted to test whether pasteurization removed all the “good”. Another funny bit from Salsburg, also related in The Lady Tasting Tea and passed only by me in my review, stems from his time doing clinical research at Pfizer when a manager complained about him making too many “errors”. He changed this statistical term to “residuals” to make everyone happy.
With all the controversy now about clinical trials of Covid-19 vaccines and the associated politics, Cautionary Tales in Designed Experiments offers a welcome look with a light touch at how far science progressed over the past century in their experimental protocols.
“It is the well-designed randomized experiment that provides the final ‘proof’ of the finding. The terminology often differs from field to field. Atomic physicists look for “six sigma” deviations, structure-activity chemists look for a high percentage of variance accounted for, and medical scientists describe the “specificity” and “sensitivity” of measurements. But all of it starts with statistically based design of experiments.”
David S. Salsburg, conclusion to Cautionary Tales in Designed Experiments
Butterfly effect debunked (but, even so, best you not step on them)
It’s peak butterfly season—a beautiful time of the year to watch for these wonderfully winged insects, such as the Tiger Swallowtail caught on camera this week by my son-in-law Ryan Bretzel.
Coincidentally, physicists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory just announced* that we need not worry about butterflies in Minnesota setting off hurricanes in Florida, as speculated by chaoticians (such as Dr. Ian Malcolm in the movie Jurassic Park).
“For those interested in the technical details, a number of entangled qubits were run through a set of logic gates before being returned to their initial setup.”
– Mike McRae, Science Alert, 7/31/20, Time Travel Simulation Shows Quantum ‘Butterfly Effect’ Doesn’t Exist
That’s one less thing to worry about for Floridians! They need all the help they can get, being at the peak of pandemic and hurricane season.
* Recovery of Damaged Information and the Out-of-Time-Ordered Correlators, Bin Yan and Nikolai A. Sinitsyn, Physical Review Letters, 125, 040605 – Published 24 July 2020.
Humans cannot wolf down hot dogs as fast as a wolf, scientist calculates
Here at the heart of summer in middle America, hot dogs reign supreme (or at least as co-rulers with hamburgers and brats). Their tubular geometry facilitates ingestion with minimal obstacles as attested by Joey Chestnut—winner again of the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest on this year’s Independence day. His new record of 75 consumed in 10 minutes probably approaches the theoretical maximum, according to a statistical study by a veterinarian and human biomechanics researcher.
The author, Professor James Smoliga from High Point University in North Carolina, worked out 83 as the number of hot dogs being humanly possible to eat in such a short time. My hunch is that Chestnut and his fellow competitors will be working-out all year to demolish this ‘Smoliga’ bar.
For all the scientific details see the July 15 Royal Society publication of Modelling the maximal active consumption rate and its plasticity in humans—perspectives from hot dog eating competitions.
“These contests provide each individual with an unlimited, ready-to-consume food supply. Thus, participants can focus all of their efforts on maximizing consumption, rather than investing energy into foraging, chasing prey or competing with others for access to a dwindling supply.”
Dr. James Smoliga speaking on the advantages of human hot-dog eaters at a staged event such as the 2020 Nathans Famous event (check out the wacky hats worn by the spectators—gotta love that mustard!)
Even a glutton for statistics gets choked up by the feast of analysis provided by Smoliga, but I did find the comparison between species very tasty, especially the bit about grizzly bears being on par with humans for active consumption rate (ACR). However, having owned a number of big dogs and seen them demolish entire platters of barbecued meats left within reach, I was not surprised that, per Smoliga’s calculations, a grey wolf can eat meaty foods at more than double the rate of a person.
I suggest putting Smoliga’s speculations to the test at next year’s event: Pit the winner against a wolf and a grizzly for the interspecies champion of hot dog eating.
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.
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.
Pi day—tau be or not tau be, that is the question
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on March 14, 2020
Math-savvy pizza and pie shops around the world will be celebrating this afternoon of 3/14 at 3:14 pm to honor the mathematical constant pi.
Rounding pi to 3.14 suffices for most rational people, but those of you who are trained matheletes might like to carry this never-ending irrational number out to 100 or a 1000 decimal places. If so, knock yourself out at this post by math.com. You might as well quit at this point because the record is now 50 trillion digits, held by cybersecurity analyst Timothy Mullican who used 303 days of computation to complete this calculation, which he detailed here.
A good way to build up your chops on pi is to memorize a ‘piem’, that is a poem in which the length of each word represents a number, for example, “Now I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.” See a much longer (101 digits!) piem sung by musician Andrew Huang and many other amazing feats related to pi in this article by Andrew Whalen posted today by Newsweek.
Sadly, some mathematicians are reigning in the pi parade by insisting it be doubled to the constant tau.
“To describe 3/4 of a circle in trigonometry, you would say 3/4 tau radians. But in the pi world, that’s 3/2 pi radians. ‘Blegh!’ says Prof. [Bob] Palais [Utah Valley University]. ‘People are so ingrained that they don’t even see how stupid it is.’”
For Math Fans, Nothing Can Spoil Pi Day—Except Maybe Tau Day
Wall Street Journal, 3/14/20
You’d best circle (ha ha-math joke) June 28 to celebrate Tau Day, even though that’s no reason to eat pizza or any other kind of pie.
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!