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.
Creatures (other than cats) with innate sense of direction and purpose
I am continually amazed by creatures great and small who know just where to go and what to do. For example, who would have thought that a dog could apply calculus to find the optimal angle at which to jump into a lake and fetch a tennis ball. See the proof here from a mathematics professor who worked it out after observing his Welsh Corgi “Elvis”.
Naturally ants do very well going about their business, as we’ve all observed when they get into our homes. I was alarmed to hear recently that these industrial insects apply an algorithm for building bridges over any gaps that hinder their travel. See how they do it in this 2/26/18 blog by Quanta Magazine. Things are getting a bit too ‘swarm’ for my comfort when entire institutes such as this one do nothing but model collective behavior. To what ends will this knowledge be applied? I foresee it being used by the military to program hordes of diabolical drones. But, perhaps, it will mainly be for more peaceful pursuits, such as managing traffic on par with ants, who according to this report, never get into a jam.
But just counteract the notion that creatures might be a lot smarter than we think, either individually, like Elvis, or collectively, such as ants, there’s this cat who showed a lack of capability in its calculations of distance.
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.
Unearthly Stats on Spaced-Out Tesla Roadster
Spaceman calmly motoring over Earth in his Tesla Roadster
Powered by the most powerful booster since NASA’s Saturn V, the SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket lifted off earlier this month with a Tesla Roadster as its payload. The FHR’s two side boosters stuck their simultaneous landing as you can see and hear (double sonic booms!) here. Unfortunately, the rocket’s main booster missed its landing on an offshore drone ship. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, attributed this failure to a shortfall of ignition fluid, for which the “fix is fairly obvious.”
Starman’s Tesla Roadster will be a very high-mileage car by the time it crashes back into the earth, or perhaps Venus or maybe the sun, after about 10 million years. (As detailed here the calculations remain very uncertain.) If you wonder where Starman might be, go to this website. As of today, he’s over 3 million miles away from earth, moving at a rate of 7,463 miles per hour. It’s good that Starman is a dummy because otherwise he would suffer from the worst earworms ever, having already listened to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” 5000 times in one ear and the singer’s Life on Mars in the other ear nearly 7000 times.
Weakest students hurt worst by shift away from face-to-face teaching
The January 21 New York Times featured a thought-provoking critique* of online courses by Susan Dynarski, a professor of education at the University of Michigan. She cited growing evidence that the trend away from classroom training in high schools and colleges hurts less proficient students who need ‘hand-holding’ from skilled teachers. However, research suggests that the greatest harm comes from courses going fully online. “Blended” training, which presents the opportunity for interaction with a flesh-and-blood teacher, evidently overcomes this disadvantage.
An interesting wrinkle on blending face-to-face with online education comes from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They offer free online courses on economics. Students who do well can apply for a master’s program which requires only one semester of class on MIT’s Cambridge campus to graduate. This weeds out those with weak academic skills, whereas many high schools mistakenly go the opposite route—students failing face-to-face classes get sent to remedial online classes.
“For advanced learners, online classes are a terrific option, but academically challenged students need a classroom with a teacher’s support.”
-Susan Dynarski
*”Online Courses Fail Those Who Need Help”, p3, Sunday Business Section.
Ear, ear: 7-year-olds hear 70% from right versus only 55% of speech to left
Jo Craven McGinty, the Wall Street Journal “Numbers” columnist, provided in the February 3rd issue the surprising ‘heads-up’ that children understand much less of when spoken to from the left than from the right. The difference in comprehension stems from a discrepancy in lengths to which speech must travel through the brain. This had been thought to become moot as nerves develop—the “right-ear-advantage” (REA) becoming clinically insignificant by adulthood. However, as reported by WSJ, new findings presented by Auburn University researchers in December to the Acoustical Society of America, indicate that even at ages 19 to 28, a challenging communication may be understood at a rate of 40% more when delivered to the right ear.
The Remarkable History of Right-Ear Advantage published in the January 2018 Hearing Review reveals that REA returns with a vengeance at age 60 and beyond. Perhaps a podcast will be produced to speak on this phenomenon. If so, I plan to put the sound bud into my right ear.
Statistics and advice on New Year’s resolutions
- The Statistic Brain offers these two morsels on New Year’s resolutions:
- Losing weight leads the list of at over 20%. Self-improvement comes in a distant second.
- Less than 10% of people achieve their resolutions. However, people who make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t.
- “Ditch New Year’s Resolution Day” will be observed on January 17—the most common day that people give up on their goals according to Psychology Today. They recommend going with monthly resolutions.
- Experimental results reported in this article on “The science of keeping your New Year’s resolution” from yesterday’s Washington Post provide good news for those who make it through one entire month without being derailed from their resolution. It turns out that by doing so, along with being willing to forgive yourself for a few slip-ups, you are
likely to succeed over the long run. (P.S. I recommend that you follow the link above and check into two suggestions that will enhance your success for building up good habits: ‘”Piggybacking” and “Temptation Bundling”.)
All the best in 2018 for accomplishing whatever goals you hope to achieve.
2017—A prime year for statistics
To cap off the year, I present half a dozen wacky new statistics:
- 2017 was a “sexy” prime, that is, 6 years beyond the last one in 2011 (six in latin is “sex”).
- By 2050 the plastic trash floating in the oceans will outweigh the fish. (Source: Robert Samuelson, “The Top 10 Stats of 2017”, Washington Post, 12/27/17.)
- University of Warwick statistician Nathan Cunningham debunked the “i-before-e except after c” rule based on evaluating 350,000 English words: The ratio of “ie” to “ei” is exactly the same for the after-c words as it is for all words in general. Weird science!
- After digging into data compiled by the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), Sam Monfort, a doctoral student in Human Factors and Applied Cognition at George Mason University, concluded that UFOs are visiting at all-time highs. Americans sight UFOs at a rate that exceeds the worldwide median by 300 times. Far out!
- In May, an Australian cat named Omar was confirmed by the BBC as the world’s biggest at nearly 4 feet long and over 30 pounds. My oh meow!
- Nearly a thousand people dressed up like penguins at Youngstown, Ohio this October to break the world’s record. Coincidentally, National Geographic reported on December 13 that the fossilized remains of a giant, man-sized penguin, were found in New Zealand. Eerie!
No reason to worry yourself to death over downturn in USA life expectancy
National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) researchers announced this week that life expectancy for a baby born in 2016 fell 0.1 percent to 78.6 years. First off, this reduction is so miniscule that it cannot be significant. It definitely is of no importance per se. I do, however, concur with those who cite this statistic as a call for alarm by it being driven down by the epidemic of opioid deaths.
The trick to interpreting statistics on life expectancy is to keep in mind it has a mathematical value that changes as an individual gets older. For example, men like me at age 65 can expect to live to age 84, primarily because we made it through high-mortality childhood and the perils of being a young adult. Look up your expectancy at this Life Table from the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Office of the Chief Actuary and give yourself a year or two extra by it being a bit dated (me being optimistic in the continuing advancement of medical care).
If you want to be more precise than the SSA tables, check out the calculators posted here. One to avoid is the “How Long Have You Got?” calculator, which comes with the caveat that “each time we’ve tested this calculator we are expected to pass away on the same day”. On the other hand, I think you will like the results from the Easy Surf life-expectancy calculator*.
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
– Marcus Aurelius
* Evidently by the domain “.cc” this comes from someone living in Australia’s Cocos Keeling Islands—a paradise on earth where one might live long and happy as you can see here .