Archive for category Uncategorized
Recreational reading off by more than 25%
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on February 24, 2019
I’ve noticed that none of my many offspring or their significant others read newspapers (that I know of), while I and many others of my generation keep up with at least one daily publication. This report by BookRiot bears me out—passing along Bureau of Labor Statistics that Americans 15 years and older spent an average of only 16.8 minutes a day reading non-work (or non-school) materials in 2017—down from 22.8 minutes in 2005. According to BookRiot, we fall far behind India, the world leader, India, who came in at nearly over 90 minutes of reading per day. Given their literacy rate of 60% versus the USA’s 99% level,* that is quite impressive.
The New Yorker points out that the average American reader is reading more. However, this is counteracted by fewer people reading anything at all, falling from 26.3 per cent of the population in 2003 to 19.5 per cent in 2016.** That worries me–over 80% of Americans who, evidently, only watch TV. Read these reports and weep.
“People in the U.S. spend 10 times more time watching TV than reading.”
– Sarah Nicolas, BookRiot
**“Why We Don’t Read, Revisited”, Caleb Crain, June 14, 2018
“Data are profoundly dumb”
Posted by mark in Basic stats & math, Uncategorized on October 22, 2018
This is the controversial view of Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie expressed in “Mind over Data”—the lead article in the August issue of Significance. In this excerpt from The Book of Why these co-authors explain “how the founders of modern statistics ‘squandered’ the chance to establish the science of causal inference”. They warn against “falsely believing the answers to all scientific questions reside in the data, to be unveiled through clever data-mining tricks.”
“Lucky is he who has been able to understand the cause of things.”
– Virgil (29 BC)
Pearl and Mackenzie are optimistic that the current “Causal Revolution” will lead to far greater understanding of underlying mechanisms. However, by my reckoning, randomized controlled trials remain the gold standard for establishing cause and effect relationships. Only then can the data speak loud and clear.
Hurricane forecasters getting in the zone with their cone
Posted by mark in Nature, Uncategorized on September 13, 2018
Owning a home in Florida, I keep a close eye on the National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecasts throughout the June-through-November season. I see that Florence is now predicted to make landfall around mid-day tomorrow just south of Wilmington, North Carolina—the gateway to the aptly named Cape Fear. Even though that’s less than 24 hours away, it’s still subject to a broad zone of uncertainty–on the order of 100’s of miles. However, it’s very impressive that the NHC forecast made 48 hours ago remains right on. According to a Wall Street Journal report yesterday their 5-day conical projections have improved by more than 100 nautical miles (115 land miles) in radius over the past decade. That’s even more impressive.
However, WSJ advises we’d best remain very leery of the NHC’s spaghetti plots (an alternative to the cone), because they include very simple forecasts along with those that are state-of-the-art. This can be very disconcerting as I discovered when Irma came along a year ago to graze my place along the west coast of Florida. You can see in this Business Insider report on Irma that, only 3 days beforehand, this hurricane’s predicted landfalls ranged from Louisiana to Massachusetts. The article says that NHC suggests that people not focus on the specific tracks. That seems obvious to me based on the ridiculously high variance. I’d like to see these tracks vary by thickness according to the sophistication of the models—the thinner the weaker.
In any case, let’s hope that Florence fizzles out, after all.
Fascination for pendulums piqued by Foucault’s in France
Posted by mark in science, Uncategorized on June 26, 2018
Earlier this month I visited the Pantheon in Paris where I observed this attendant recalibrating Foucault’s pendulum.
This French scientist’s elegant scientific demonstration of earth’s rotation has delighted observers like me since 1851. For more on this story read this Ask Smithsonian blog. Unfortunately, one morning in 1998, the cable on the 52-foot long pendulum at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (originally History and Technology when opened in 1964) snapped, nearly ‘clocking’ a staffer with its wayward 240-pound brass bob. This Foucault device being unAmerican and dangerous, it was removed in favor of the Star-Spangled Banner Preservation Project, thus eliminated a favored place for folks to gather.
By the way, I am now reading The Discoverers by The Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin—the first in his wonderful Knowledge Trilogy. There, coincidentally, I learned that Galileo—only 19-years old at the time (1583) and bored by a church service in Pisa—became distracted by the swinging of a chandelier. By timing his pulse, he observed the time of a pendulum being independent of its arc length—an important discovery of a property called isochronism. This simple discovery, as pointed out by Boorstin, began a new age where science developed from observation and measurement rather than pure speculation.
Are you one of the elite 10% who can work out this test of logic?
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on May 2, 2018
Four cards are laid out before you, each with a letter on one side and a number on the other. You see E, 2, 5 and F. Which cards should you turn over that will prove the following rule: If there is an E on one side, the number on the other side must be a 5? See the answer by Manil Suri, Professor at University of Maryland, in this April 15 New York Times article that asks “Does Math Make You Smarter?”.
As to whether math really does make you smarter, the answer remains unclear. However, those who do well with numbers make far more money. That is not surprising, but the multiplier may be. See this U.S. News report (or not if you failed the test above) for the statistics.
High-tech brain-wave devices that make you very sleepy, plus other innovations now being tested at experimental hotels
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on April 13, 2018
While watching CBS News the morning of March 26, this report on “smart hotels” caught my eye—not so much for concerns about privacy, but more due to knowing these came by very clever experimentation by Marriot and other leading innkeepers. Perhaps not purely by coincidence, just a week before being featured in this broadcast, Marriot posted a job opening for the Manager of Digital Analytics. In similar postings by them over the past several years I see the hotel seeking someone able to “understand and apply best practices for designing statistical experiments.”
The funny thing is that I was once a subject for a factorial design by Marriott. This happened in the early 1980s during their development of the Courtyard. For a discount off my bill (I think $20—a fair amount of money back then), I got sent from room to room with various combinations and permutations of desks, chairs, bathroom layouts, etc.—so many that I became a bit bewildered trying to sort out what really hit the spot for me as a business traveler. Anyways, being into designed experiments, I enjoyed being a very small part (one data point!) of this Marriott success story in product development.
Nowadays Marriott tests their new concepts at the M Beta hotel in Charlotte seen here. Buttons throughout the property register resident’s reactions and impressions. Read more about these feedback devices and check out photos of recent innovations in this report by Innovation Leader.
My favorite hotelier, Hilton, also experiments on their rooms and services as you can see in this article by USA Today. At their Innovation Gallery in northern Virginia Hilton you can strap on a VR device and take a tour of a guestrooms of the future. Whoohoo!
As the CBS report noted, some of the new features coming at these high-tech hotels do create queasiness for them being so intrusive on one’s personal space. For example, I will take a pass on Hilton’s NuCalm device (not at all related to what’s pictured), which purportedly sends its wearers into 20 minutes of dozing that feels like three hours of deep sleep, thus evaporating stress and promoting utter relaxation. Leave my brain be, please!
Twitter far fitter for false news than the truth
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on March 11, 2018
The word coming straight from MIT News (no lie!*) is that Twitter facilitates falsehoods “farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth”. People are 70% more likely to retweet wrong news than a true story.
“False news is more novel, and people are more likely to share novel information.”
– Professor Sinan Aral, MIT Sloan School of Management–co-author of The spread of true and false news online (Science, Mar 9, 2018).
We all know that it’s human nature to enjoy being the first to share previously unknown (but possibly false) information. This is nothing new; for example, in 1710 Jonathan Swift observed that “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” However, the technology of today allows (to paraphrase comedian Tracy Morgan) false news to travel at the speed of light, whereas what’s true continues to flow, as always, like molasses.
Costa Rica — the happiest place on Earth
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on November 6, 2017
Life-sustaining Costa Rican “broccoli” tree towering over rain-forest trail on the slopes of the Arenal Volcano.
The latest issue of National Geographic awaited me upon my return from a wonderful vacation in Costa Rica. Based on my pleasant encounters, it was no surprise to me that this Central American country came first on the feature article about “Happiest Places”. Costa Rica also ranked #1 on the Happy Planet Index (HPI). See the Today.Com video here for the heads-up on what distinguishes Costa Rica and other joyful places around the world.
It seems to me that the recipe for happiness varies quite a lot, but one aspect of Costa Ricans that I like is them living “pura vida”—the pure, or simple, life.
“What I argue for are statistically driven things you can do to optimize your environment so you’re more likely to be happy for the long term.”
– Dan Buettner, Minnesotan author of The Blue Zones of Happiness (Source: The Atlantic.com “A Lazy Person’s Guide to Happiness”
P.S. The top 25 happiest USA cities are ranked here — the hometown for Stat-Ease came in at #22. 😊
‘Roid rage
Posted by mark in Nature, Uncategorized on October 12, 2017
Let’s not get caught off guard by an Earth-killing asteroid. As Dylan Thomas said: “Do not go gentle into that good night, …rage against the dying of the light.”
That is the mission of NASA. If you are reading this, chances are that Asteroid 2012 TC4 whizzed by today at 30,000 miles per hour—closely monitored by a network of observatories. Check out the details at this NASA website. They take asteroid defense very seriously. Their defense plans for redirecting asteroids will be tested out in 2022 on a double asteroid Didymos B as explained here.
Keep in mind that asteroid 1950DA, about three-quarters a mile wide—big enough to destroy our planet, has a 0.1% chance of hitting the earth 2818. In case NASA does not succeed in their defense efforts, start digging now and you might get hunkered down enough to survive for a short while after that.
What happens if you walk backward while carrying a cup of coffee?
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on October 1, 2017
One would assume that walking backward with coffee, especially when it’s piping hot, would be nearly as dangerous as running with scissors. Not so, according to the 2017 Ig Nobel Prize winning study for Fluid Dynamics. According to Korean physicist Jiwon Han, you will likely spill less walking backward than forward. However, your chances of tripping, or crashing into a colleague (also walking backward with coffee, ha ha) “drastically increase”.*
“Rarely do we manage to carry coffee around without spilling it once. In fact, due to the very commonness of the phenomenon, we tend to dismiss questioning it beyond simply exclaiming: ‘Jenkins! You have too much coffee in your cup!’”
– Jiwon Han
As reported in this “SmartNews” post by Smithsonian Magazine, Han advises a claw-like grip on top of your cup, rather than using the handle. Other tips from University of California researchers, reported here by LiveScience, are to gradually accelerate to a very slow walk, thus avoiding disruptive oscillations, and keep your eyes on the cup, not the ground.
My secret to stop spillage is to use a very large cup and fill it only two-thirds of the way, e.g., 12 ounces of hot coffee in a 16-ounce Styrofoam cup. The ultimate solution is to use a spill-proof, lidded container. However, I prefer drinking from a cup, if possible.
*(Source: Chemical and Engineering News, 9/18/17, Newscripts—“Curating quirky science since 1943.”)