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.
New insights this summer on human limits to heat
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on August 19, 2022
These late August days in Minnesota bring back poignant memories of the treasured time after the dog days of summer with the start of school looming. The cool breezes of late summer provided welcome relief for the sleepless nights spent sweltering on the top level of my bunk on the second floor of our two-story house in our un-air-conditioned bedroom.
Now comes the bad news from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that the average overnight temperature in the USA this July was the hottest on record.* But the good news is that the great majority of households nowadays (as of 2020) feature A/C. For the cool stats, see this 8/15/22 post by the Energy Institute on How Many U.S. Households Don’t Have Air Conditioning.
I never paid much attention to heat and humidity until my undergraduate studies in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota. Then I came to appreciate the impact of ambient conditions. Our lab instructor taught us how to measure moisture in the air via a sling psychrometer such as the one demonstrated very delightfully “down under” here. The resulting reading is called the wet bulb temperature.
If you must venture out into the mid-day sun, be careful not to go beyond what your body can balance for the heat. As reported here on July 6, researchers at Penn State University (PSU) discovered that “heat + humidity gets dangerous faster than many people realize.” Their findings came from experiments on 25 young adults who each swallowed a small telemetry pill, which monitored their core temperature. Previous studies** suggested that most people can tolerate a wet-bulb temperature of up to 95 degrees F. But the new data from PSU lowers this limit to 88 degrees.
“When the body overheats, the heart has to work harder to pump blood flow to the skin to dissipate the heat, and when you’re also sweating, that decreases body fluids. In the direst case, prolonged exposure can result in heat stroke, a life-threatening problem that requires immediate and rapid cooling and medical treatment.”
– W. Larry Kenney, Professor of Physiology, Kinesiology and Human Performance, Penn State, and his PSU H.E.A.T Project team
The tolerance to heat and humidity is certainly even less for people over 65, who, according to the PSU researchers comprise 80-90 percent of heat-wave casualties. They will now shift their experimental focus to this older generation.
Be careful out there!
* “The U.S. in July set a new record for overnight warmth”, The Associated Press, August 13, 2022.
** Sherwood & Huber, “An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 5/3/10, 107 (21) 9552-9555.
Pizza purchasers tricked by not knowing pie are squared
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior on July 29, 2022
Here’s a trick question going the rounds (pun intended) recently*: For the same price, which of these two options provides the best pizza value—one 9 incher or two 5-inch pies?
Many consumers would go for the two smaller pizzas. But going strictly by area, they then come up 38% short of the single large pie. Two for one is not a good deal in this case.
For comparing pizzas by size and price, even those of us that know the math can benefit from calculators like these:
- Nathan Yau’s Pizza Exchange Rate posted earlier this week—nicely slider-barred with a graphic view to make sure you get a fair deal. For example, if you order a mega 30 inch pizza that cannot be delivered, do not settle for anything less than 36 five-inch ones.
- Better yet is this value-based computer by DQYDJ (Don’t Quit Your Day Job) blogger “PK”.
For a fascinating study demonstrating the significance of how poorly people relate diameter of pizzas to their value, see this 2001 Marketing Science publication on Pizzas: p or Square? Psychophysical Biases in Area Comparisons. The research suggests that “consumers understand the [pizza] size increase more readily when presented with pictures of the various sizes versus when merely presented with the diameters.”
The authors go on to say that “the best strategy, however, is to give the actual area numerically.” Though this is obvious, it seems to me that most people who buy pizza would be overwhelmed by all this mathematical detail.
Am I being overly pessimistic?
*Twitter post about restaurant’s mathematical pizza miscalculation goes mega-viral, Michelle De Pacina, July 4, 2022 post by Yahoo.
Studies reveal downsides of not meeting in person
Posted by mark in Communication on June 16, 2022
At the onset of the pandemic-driven quarantine in March of 2020, Stat-Ease closed its office and never looked back. We all began working out of our homes and Stat-Ease training shifted from traditional classroom to distance-based presentation.
Being on a relaxed work schedule (60% time) at my ‘highly experienced’ career stage, this worked out wonderfully for me. Though I really miss the vibrancy of in-person meetings and teaches, this is far outweighed by the convenience of working at my summer or winter homes, or anywhere in between.
Earlier this month Elon Musk bluntly told his employees to return to office or ‘pretend to work’ elsewhere. In more diplomatic fashion, many other employers have already done the same. Aside from the obvious control issues, they may be on to something. According to recent experiments, collaboration at a distance cannot achieve the same results as a traditional in-person work environment.
“Remote work is no longer acceptable… If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.”
– Elon Musk in an emailed pronouncement to Tesla employees.
For example, on April 27th Nature published findings that Virtual communication curbs creative idea generation. Researchers from the Columbia Business School paired up hundreds of engineers in five different countries in two different groups, randomly assigning half of the pairs to work together in person and the other half to work together in separate, identical rooms using videoconferencing. The teams of two were then tasked with brainstorming—one group (300) coming up with creative ways to manipulate a Frisbee and the other (334) working out alternative uses for bubble wrap. Ultimately, pairs who met in person came up with about 17 percent more ideas than those meeting remotely (Zoom).
Another experiment reported in April by found that Emails and texts in lieu of conversation could negatively affect performance on higher-level job tasks. Study participants who teamed up with a partner in person produced 19 percent fewer errors on a work task than those who could only communicate by text.
Furthermore, a survey of nearly 2000 office workers conducted in early 2021 (when most remained at home due to the pandemic) revealed that 70% experienced some form of mixed-up messaging from their colleagues due to having to do so at a distance. Managers fared the worst (which explains why so many have mandated a return to the office!). For statistical details, see The Digital Communication Crisis.
Given all these issues dealing with the aftermath of the pandemic on office work, I am very happy with my pivot back to a purely technical role after many years as the chief Stat-Ease business administrator. Having no supervisory responsibility for existing or new hires (tricky trying to train at a distance!), I am fine with the array of digital communication tools at my fingertips—Teams, Zoom, Slack, Outlook and all.
Just a bit lonely…
PS An ongoing attempt to work around being physically present makes use of ever developing tools for the metaverse. Based on reports of being Lost and Confused in the Virtual, Immersive World, I am skeptical that this will provide any added value anytime soon. More interesting to me is the advent of holographic meetings a la the WebEx service reviewed on June 1 here. This holds promise as an antidote to Zoom fatigue.
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’.
LEGO bricks used to build regression model
LEGOs are very popular around here in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. They keep our kids, such as my grandson Archer, occupied during the long winter when our cold weather limits outdoor activity. See his creative solar-powered banana-research station pictured. No wonder the local Mall of America features a LEGO Imagination Center!
Thus, naturally, this recent Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education publication on “Building a Multiple Linear Regression Model with LEGO Brick Data” caught my eye. The article lays out a fun class-project by two Iowa State University Statistics Department Associate Professors—Anna Peterson and Laura Ziegler. They developed an “innovative activity that uses data about LEGO sets to help students self-discover multiple linear regressions” that “explore the relationship between the Amazon price and the number of pieces per set for two sizes of bricks, small and large.” The students start with graphical displays, then progress to simple linear regression, and, finally, develop models that uncover interactions of factors.
Using the spreadsheets provided by Profs Peterson and Ziegler, I used the Import tools in Design-Expert® software (DX) to reproduce their results.
First off, Graph Columns revealed a strong correlation (r=0.986) between the total number of pieces and the number of unique pieces per LEGO set—this being a measure of the potential cost for individual molds. Seeing this I decided not to include both factors in my modeling—going forward only with the total number of pieces, as did Peterson and Ziegler.
Next, I did a Design Evaluation of a polynomial model with the main effects of size (A), theme (B) and number of pieces (C), plus their three two-factor interactions (AB, AC and BC), and the quadratic term for the number of pieces (C2). The results revealed an aliasing between size and theme—only the Duplo came in the large size. Thus, theme dropped out of my focus.
I then deployed DX to do a regression on the model A, C, AC and C2. Residual diagnostics revealed via the Box-Cox plot that a log transformation would do significantly better. The only catch in this metric is a high Cook’s Distance for the large-pieced Duplo Modular Playhouse set—not a problem, per se, but curiously influential.
In the end I reproduced the interaction shown in Figure 4 of the publication, but with a bit of flair for some curviness and the addition of confidence bands as seen below.
You can see that the effect on price by the number of LEGO pieces depends greatly on size of the bricks. My conclusion is that going for the small sized LEGOs is by far the most cost-effective way to keep kids busy, provided them being old enough to do so safely and with the exceptional focus needed to make something out of them.
PS While researching this blog, I noticed that in just the few years from when the costs got gathered by Peterson and Ziegler, LEGO prices went way up on Amazon. Given the recent performance of stocks and bonds, you might do well by investing in these toys per January’s Research in International Business and Finance. See the highlights (average long-term return of 11%–better than gold!) at LEGO: THE TOY OF SMART INVESTORS.
Will our boreal forests become a carbon bomb?
Leading up to Earth Day on Friday, last week’s CBS Mornings show featured several reports on environmental issues. One that caught my eye provided a birds-eye view of 10 giant octagonal glass chambers in northern Minnesota’s Marcell Experimental Forest operated by the U.S. Forest Service. They look very much like an alien colony!
It turns out, though, that this out-of-this-world complex is the home of the “SPRUCE” experiment, providing data on Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Changing Environments. From what I saw on CBS, things do not look good for boreal trees subjected to the most extreme conditions of temperature and carbon dioxide. However, it will be best not to make any conclusions until this “largest climate change experiment on the planet” ends it’s 10-year run some years from now.
“Will deep belowground warming in future release 10,000 years of accumulated carbon from peatlands that store one-third of earth’s terrestrial carbon?”
– The ‘bombshell’ question that the SPRUCE experiment hopes to answer
Major League Baseball goes all in for humidors to dampen homeruns
As I reported back in 2018 in my blog on Boffins baffled by baseballs being bashed beyond ballpark borders, MLB experimentally imposed humidors in select stadiums with high rates of home runs, such as Coors Field in Denver and Chase Field in Phoenix. The moistening evidently worked well enough* to make humidors mandatory for all teams, including my home-town squad—the Minnesota Twins, this season.
Perhaps the humidors will dampen down the homers a bit, at least in the drier climates of Denver, Phoenix and the like. But, despite dealing with the reduced coefficient of restitution (?), our “Bombas” blasted 6 round-trippers on Sunday at Target Field in Minneapolis. So, I am skeptical (though happy for my Twins).
This will not be a big deal in most parks but the most humid parks (San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, Tampa Bay) may get an offensive boost as the humidors will dry the balls out a little.
Eno Saris, baseball analytics writer for The Athletic, Mar 25, 2022 tweet
I suggest that MLB try deadening bats to further reduce home runs. This worked well for the Little League—reducing homers by 70%.** The trick will be working out a way to do it with wood. Going to plastic and/or metal would be ruinous for the Grand Old Game.
In any case, it would be great to see MLB get back to fast moving shorter games. Though home runs are exciting, they do not balance off the boring plethora of strikeouts and the inaction of the 7 position players.
*For the statistics, see this Hardball Times April 26, 2019 blog by David Kagan on The Physics of Humidors: A Second Case Study at Chase Field.
** “Little League Slows the Home Run Revolution”, Wall Street Journal, Amanda Christovich, 4/19/19.
The Feynman Technique for mastering concepts
After I watched a statistics webinar on the Stat-Ease channel, YouTube laid out a series of further videos that ‘they’ (the artificial intelligence) thought I might like to see next. They did well by suggesting this simple explanation of “How to Learn Faster with the Feynman Technique”. Being an admirer of this famous physicist and his incredible ability to explain complex concepts, I am happy to now know that his secret is simple: Once you understand something, spell it out as simply as possible to an imaginary listener. In other words, teach what you’ve learned to someone else.
Though, thanks to the AI wizard at YouTube, I only just came across the Feynman Technique, it turns out that I inadvertently applied this approach in my first try at teaching statistical design of experiments (DOE). I understood DOE very well, or so I thought until I had to lay it out the first time for a group of industrial researchers. As soon as the questions started, I realized that I should have rehearsed a lot more with a dummy audience, such as a goldfish.
“The questions of the students are often the source of new research. They often ask profound questions that I’ve thought about at times and then given up on, so to speak, for a while. It wouldn’t do me any harm to think about them again and see if I can go any further now. The students may not be able to see the thing I want to answer, or the subtleties I want to think about, but they remind me of a problem by asking questions in the neighborhood of that problem. It’s not so easy to remind yourself of these things.”
Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!‘
To make matters worse, the class was held at a restaurant on stilts just off the shore of San Francisco Bay. During the first few hours of my class an earthquake hit. The whole building wobbled back and forth for a minute or so. That night another earthquake shook me out of bed.
Somehow, I made through the week-long class relatively intact, but with a vow to never again come in so unprepared for a presentation.
Lesson learned!
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