Brain drizzling? Try linking instead.
Posted by mark in science, Uncategorized on May 13, 2012
Early on in my career as a chemical engineer working in R&D process development I came to the realization that many good ideas get shot down prematurely. Granted, many of these thoughts come out half baked, but in the proper environment they can lead to some very nourishing developments.
I always thought Osborn’s methods for brainstorming counteracted the quenching of creativity. However, although his approach certainly does generate a quantity of ideas, the end results never proved nearly as astounding as one might expect.
Earlier this year The New Yorker magazine debunked as Groupthink many of Osborn’s cherished tenets, such as allowing no criticism. The current thinking is that you gather a diverse group of bright people and then just let things fly with no holds barred. The fear of public humiliation forces the participants to think a bit before speaking. If they do get strong criticism, these creative people must regroup their thoughts and try again. The best idea(s) tend to win out.
Here is one minor variation on the “no rules” creativity session that I suggest: Ask that everyone come in with one idea to throw into the pot. Then let the fun begin!
Given Osborn’s rules are passé, where should you turn to next for catalyzing creativity? I recommend you consider Idea-Links. I have had the pleasure of picking the brain of the author, Jim Link—a very energizing fellow. Believe me, he really knows how to get people to think outside of the box.
“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”
– Albert Einstein
If you have other ideas on fostering creativity (or wish to criticize those already proposed), toss them into the ring. Do not be shy (nor sensitive).
Ivory towers of academia (& shiny ones in Vancouver)
Today’s Vancouver Sun suggests that a competitive university culture discourages sharing of knowledge, which then leads to the publication of many flawed and fraudulent studies. This is a rehash of issues I cited recently with the warning Beware of obvious answers and positive results. It would be great, albeit a bit boring, if journals published negative results from well-designed experiments with adequate power to see beneficial results. As my colleague Wayne Adams says
“Most of what you learn from an experiment is what NOT to do.”
PS. I took this picture Granville Island looking across to downtown Vancouver.
“Randomistas” building steam for government to do better by designed experiments
“Businesses conduct hundreds of thousands of randomized trials each year. Pharmaceutical companies conduct thousands more. But government? Hardly any.”
–David Brooks, The New York Times, 4/26/12 editorial seen here
For those of us in the know about statistical tools this statement provides light at the end of a long tunnel. However, this columnist gets a bit carried away by the idea that an FDA-like agency inject controlled experiments throughout government.
Although it’s great to see such enthusiasm for proactive studies based on sound statistical principles, I prefer the lower-profile approaches documented by Boston Globe Op-Ed writer Gareth Cook in this May 2011 column. He cites a number of examples where rigorous experiments solved social problems, albeit by baby steps. Included in his cases are “aggressively particular” successes by a group of MIT economists who are known as the “randomistas”—a play on their application of randomized controlled trials.
Evidently the obvious success of Google (12,000 randomized experiments in 2009, according to Brooks) and others reaching out over the internet has caught the attention of the mass media. Provided they don’t promote randomistas running wild, some good will come of this, I feel sure.
Where the radix point becomes a comma
Posted by mark in Basic stats & math on April 23, 2012
Prompted by an ever-growing flow of statistical questions from overseas, Stat-Ease Consultant Wayne Adams, recently circulated this Wikipedia link that provides a breakdown on countries using a decimal point versus a comma for the radix point—the separator of the integer part from the fractional side of a number.
For more background on decimal styles over time and place see this Science Editor article by Amelia Williamson. It credits Scottish mathematician John Napier* for being the first to use a period. However, it seems that he wavered later by using a comma, thus setting the stage for this being an alternative. Given the use of commas to separate thousands from millions and millions from billions and so on, numbers can be misinterpreted by several orders of magnitude very easily if you do not keep a sharp eye on the source.
So, all you math & stats boffins—watch it!
*As detailed in this 2009 blog I first learned of this fellow from seeing his bones on display at IBM’s Watson Research Center in New York.
Marshmallows measure the speed of light (and get put to other good uses)
One of my favorite blogs, Flowing Data, provided me the heads-up on a great lecture by Adam Savage (the Mythbuster’s guy) called “Simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries”. I really enjoyed all of his stories, but especially the one on Hippolyte Fizeau’s measurement of the speed of light in 1849. Ingenious!
Coincidentally, my brother Paul forwarded me a detailing of how one can measure the speed of light with a tray of mini-marshmallows! Check it out at this Science Blog written by theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel. This sharp-fingered fellow (if you view his blog you will see what I mean) goes on to tout a marshmallow-made diorama that ‘peeps’ recent claims of particles going faster than the speed of light.
That leads me to puffing up my daughter Emily, who achieved the “peeple’s choice” award in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press Ninth Annual Marshmallow Peeps Diorama Contest. She and two of her closest peeps produced The Mupeeps Take Minnepeepolis. It looks very much like the view out of my window from Stat-Ease headquarters east of downtown Minneapolis.
By the way, my favorite Muppets are Bunsen and Beaker. See them demo their invention of fireproof paper here. At the Muppets Lab one should always be prepared with fresh marshmallows on a stick. I advise going for two at a time. o——<8
High rollers beat the lottery odds
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior on April 2, 2012
The $640 million jackpot in the Mega Millions lottery Friday night created a huge buzz. Unfortunately this fizzled out for all but the three big winners in Illinois, Kansas, and Maryland. Even we analytical types get swept up in the frenzy, seeing as how the money sunk in prior drawings brings the expected value over 100 percent. Yes, the odds of 1 in 176,000,000 remain daunting, but it sure is fun to have a few numbers to play with.
The really gutsy lottery wonks focus on other games where situations arise that make huge bets nearly a sure thing. For example, see this Boston Globe heads-up on “a game with a windfall for a knowing few”. Imagine showing up at your corner gas station with $100,000s in cash for lottery tickets—that would be a great day for the own, especially given the seller earns a commission that can grow to $100,000 for some jackpots.
“Bettors like the Selbees, who spent at least $500,000 on the game, had almost no risk of losing money.”
– Mark Kon, a professor of math and statistics at Boston University
Holing up on a frozen Minnesota lake
The March issue of Minnesota Business magazine, a valuable source of information and insight for growing companies,* provided a fascinating statistic, hard to believe really: 25,000—the number of ice fishing holes drilled last month for an ice-fishing contest on Gull Lake. Minnesota-based StikeMaster Corporation provided the augers. See their video for a demonstration.
Meanwhile (reported on page 44), elsewhere on Gull Lake (far from the 25,000 holes, I hope), Grand View Lodge offered the ideal meeting place for getting away from the office. See this report from our local CBS television affiliate—you will be amazed.
Sadly it seems that spring is nearly sprung so we must now endure 6 months of warm weather before the fun can begin again.
*Full disclosure: My daughter Emily is Graphic Designer for the production of this publication by Tiger Oak Media of Minneapolis.
Beware of obvious answers and positive results
Posted by mark in science, Uncategorized on March 4, 2012
“Most results, including those that appear in top-flight peer-reviewed journals, can’t be reproduced.”
This is a “dirty secret” revealed by the Wall Street Journal’s Gautam Naik in this December report. It cites statistics from Bayer that nearly two-thirds of published studies could not be replicated. Naik blames the complicated nature of experiments nowadays along with the “positive bias” researchers driven to produce results. Glenn Begley, vice president of research at Amgen, a biotechnology company, suggests that “academic scientists, like drug companies, should perform more experiments in a ‘blinded” manner to reduce any bias toward positive findings.”
Meanwhile, Duncan Watts, author of Everything is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer says
“When you do the experiment properly [randomized and controlled], all the numbers go down.”
He’s speaking on the bias of marketing executives toward their own sensibilities, which often do not reflect those of the population being sold to. See what the Financial Times “undercover economist” Tim Harford says about this here. Unfortunately, in my experience, those (the analysts) who know better than to extrapolate from small, non-representative sample of opinions from the ‘powers-that-be’ (often n=1, that is—the Boss) get very little support for spending money to put these assertions to the test. Even though you know the top dogs might be barking up the wrong tree it’s easiest just to go along with the pack and press ahead. To do otherwise risks suffering a painful bite-back. Yes, I am a cynic.
Getting a head of beer
With winter winding down my thoughts turn to warmer times ahead when the cover comes off the grill and a cold beer hits the spot. Last weekend my daughter and her husband motored down to New Ulm for Schell Brewery’s Bock Fest—a sure harbinger of Spring (and the desperation of home-bound Minnesotans). Increasingly I find myself turning to this next generation for keeping me on the bubble for brews. For example, I now know that it’s helpful to carmelize freshly-tapped bock beer by poking it with a red-hot iron—preferably one laid among fiery logs until glowing hot. 
But never mind that, I want to pass along some results from another of this younger set, Tracy Lenz, on a more mundane aspect of drinking beer—achieving just the right head of foam on the pour. For a graduate class in industrial engineering at Arizona State University (ASU) taught by DOE-guru Doug Montgomery, she used Design-Expert® software to experiment on foam height. A local microbrewer suggested that Tracy’s project team study keg pressure, temperature at keg and using Biofoam to make the brew more ‘sudsy’. The team included two very different beers in the same experiment design, which turned out to be problematic for modeling, so let’s concentrate on one—an American red ale.*
It turns out that red ales foam readily so they need no encouragement with Biofoam. Take a look at this response surface plot from the ASU study. Figuring on 2 centimeters of foam as a good head puts the sweet spot (shaded green) at the no biofoam (-1) side with pressure needed to be set low (-1). This result is achieved only if temperature is maintained at low level.
So there you go—a vital problem (especially for graduate-engineering students) solved. Just one catch though—how you pour the beer into the glass may be the biggest factor for achieving a good head. Here again the next generation comes to my rescue, for example last summer at an outdoor reception that featured a beer wagon with my favorite on tap: Lift Bridge Beer Company’s Farm Girl Saison ale. My glass foamed over no matter how I positioned it under the tap. It turns out that the trick is pouring along the side and then at just the right moment straightening up the glass while turning off the flow. See what I mean via this Youtube video. I found it easier just to stand by the beer wagon with an empty pint and a forlorn look until one of the younger fellows took pity on me. Cheers!
*I learned from one of my sons that an ale ferments at the top, whereas a lager ferments at that bottom. This is just one of many differences that are detailed by this beer-faq.
Obscurity does not equal profundity
Posted by mark in Basic stats & math, sports on February 12, 2012
“GOOD with numbers? Fascinated by data? The sound you hear is opportunity knocking.” This is how Steve Lohr of the New York Times leads off his article in today’s Sunday paper on The Age of Big Data. Certainly the abundance of data has created a big demand for people who can crunch numbers. However, I am not sure the end result will be nearly as profitable as employers may hope.
“Many bits of straw look like needles.”
– Trevor Hastie, Professor of Statistics, Stanford University, co-author of The Elements of Statistical Learning (2nd edition).
I take issue with extremely tortuous paths to complicated models based on happenstance data. This can be every bit as bad as oversimplifications such as relying on linear trend lines (re Why you should be very leery of forecasts). As I once heard DOE guru George Box say (in regard to overly complex Taguchi methodologies): Obscurity does not equal profundity.
For example, Lohr touts the replacement of earned run average (ERA) with the “Siera”—Skill-Interactive Earned Run Average. Get all the deadly details here from the inventors of this new pitching performance metric. In my opinion, baseball itself is already complicated enough (try explaining it to someone who only follows soccer) without going to such statistical extremes for assessing players.
The movie “Moneyball” being up for Academy Awards is stoking the fever for “big data.” I am afraid that in the end the call may be for “money back” after all is said and done.