(My cat on my new chair)

Of course, he’s using the worst-case scenario to prove a point on that end of the spectrum but there’s certainly the converse on the other end: I’ll call them the home flippers and bankers. Don’t worry, the money will never stop flowing…

We had a logic discussion on another puzzle that was presented by G.’s teacher and that the kids may have understood better than she. I reminds me of something pointed out in the article – we aren’t great with probabilities. Here are the basics from G’s class problem:

1. Two players will participate. One player will have all the odd numbers and the other will have the even numbers.

2. The winner will be the player that matches (odd or even) the final total/sum of two rounds of a random number generator.

3. The first round/iteration of the random number generator will be completely random. This result will be seen but does not mean a player has won anything.

4. The second iteration of the generator is programmed to select an even number two of every three ‘spins’.

5. All of these parameters are known by both players prior to the game beginning.

6. The prize is $20.

7. To play you pay $10 for the privilege.

8. There is no option after the first roll – you can’t vacate the game and have your money back.

9. The only question being asked here is this: Is the game a fair, or equally likely to be won, by either player when they pay their $10 to participate prior to the first number?

On the lighter side, I love Steve Nash. Always have. Having played my share of basketball in my youth I understand a few things. First, when you get to a certain level of repetitive play you sort out angles, distances, and power – or thrust, or whatever ratio we need to use – when shooting. We’ve seen it a million times at the NBA level when players show the innate ability to know where they are, spatially, and where the basket is. Second, for players who are pure shooters there are constants on the court and nothing moves: the three-point line, the free throw line, the basket. What I would anecdotally believe is that if you blindfolded a scorer after putting him at his chosen point along the three-point arc, that he would probably hit the rim 3 or 4 times out of 5 simply because the muscle memory when shooting from point x is pretty much hardwired into his system. But, if you give that guy only one eye – or, take one away – the lack of translation from the optics to your muscles will override what your muscles already know to be true. I don’t know how many shots these guys took during the shoot but, rest assured, NBA players probably only throw up an air ball, when unguarded on a gym floor, once in every 5,000 shots.


Lastly, for the week: they’ve decided to implement a Barnes Dance crosswalk at 7th and H St. NW in D.C. beginning this week. If you hop over and read the story and watch the videos, I’ll give you a bit of visual reconnaissance. In the first video, the Verizon Center – home of the Caps, the Wizards, the Mystics, and endless concerts, is located along the two-block span to the left of the screen. Crossing diagonally from where the camera is, are two blocks of restaurants and bars: hence, the endless pedestrian traffic in the area – all day and all night (there is also a Metro stop underneath the Verizon Center). I have only ever seen the diagonal crossing once in my life and it was in Denver way back in the late 70s; some of the comments to the story imply that it’s happening everywhere but it’s been a rare sight for me. I’m cool with it because I hate that intersection for all the reasons they used to justify the dance; bets on what happens once the traffic cops walk away after on week of keeping it safe?

T

here and there

It’s been awhile since I’ve linked to an article in the NYTimes but this one is just my speed. This is the kind of stuff that gives me hope for engaging dialogue and ideas in the media. Of course, the comments section (I read the first page) is almost as good as the article. I’ve been scanning the news of late with an eye out for pieces that L. can use/review for her post-Cold War history class in school. Between the Times, the New Yorker, The Economist, and The Atlantic, I think we can cover the current world, as well as, its state of affairs over the last 20+ years.

I’m also giving you an entry from an interesting Vblogger, j. smooth, at illdoctrine.com (also moving and using nildoctrine.com); I just came upon him via another blog and I quite like his ideas. This one deals with an NFL player and a little bit of historical reference and clarification.


I’ll be at my last mid-term tonight and then I can settle in for the second half of the quarter and getting to the meats and whatnot.

Hey.

does that road end?

Sometime over the last few weeks there was some discussion of speed reading; I had flashbacks to infomercials from the 1970s touting Evelyn Woods' course meant to increase my speed and get me closer to the year 2000 and the floating cars; that comes from the mind of a ten year-old. I always thought, when sitting at home in front of the three-channel capable TV, that being able to speed read would make me well impressive. But when it came up at work I tried to think of a need for speed reading in my life. The only area that would be remotely suited to speed reading for me might be the Sunday paper and even that's a reach. Beyond that possibility I got nothing. It seems to me that you read for two reasons: academics and leisure. In either case, I think you're better off reading either for comprehension or enjoyment and not pure acceleration. It certainly isn't going to help me out to rip through any type of textbook or technical publication that requires some thinking and fairly deep comprehension. If I'm reading for leisure then I'm probably reading for enjoyment and there are few that posit pleasure being achieved in the quickest possible time (no jokes, please.) I don't want to be done with East of Eden quicker because I want to soak in the language and enjoy the story; it's the same with the history I read. I make my decisions about books, and whether I'll finish them, in the first 20 or 30 pages - the writing manner is key, not the subject matter. My method of speed reading is not read stuff I don't like or appreciate. One of the questions that came up when were talking was this: Do you have the ability was to put down a leisure reading project if it doesn't grab your attention pretty quickly? For me, yes; I simply stop reading but I don't think everyone is like that; there must be people who feel the need to slog through to the final page and notch up accomplishment. I'm not sure if using a library for your books or if buying them has any effect on that need but maybe I can look into a $1m government grant to conduct a formal study.

There was a link at (from?) Andrew Sullivan today that fell right into my thinking...and into some parallel universe so hold on tight. The premise of the post is, "How much stuff are you really going to get through in the grand scheme of things"? Are you missing something? What are your odds of getting through all the good stuff? It reminds me of Fermat's Last Theorem and the misread logic of us normal folk. This last theorem (last being the last we were able to prove) is an easily comprehended mathematical problem / statement for most us, unlike some other deep and disturbing theorems. What Fermat, a career math hobbyist, put forth was based on the well known Pythagorean theorem, A² + B² = C². He said, as a proven theorem, that this equation cannot be true for any positive whole number (the same whole number) greater than 2 in the exponential position. Unfortunatly, all Fermat left behind was his statement and not his notes. (Is this more than you want to know? Too bad, my blog, my typing.) As an example, he said that A³ + B³ = C³ will never be true. Of course, by "understandable" I meant you could comprehend what he was saying not how to prove the theorem to be correct. (By the way, if you want some good math reading here's the link to the book. Simon Singh's other book The Code Book is also very good.) Don't fret, I'm getting to the full circle part, at least in my mind. As one begins to try to prove this theorem you'd begin to think, as Singh describes, some methodology where if you could eliminate either all the even or all the odd whole integers then you'd be cutting your work by half. Funny that; it's just what I was thinking when I was reading the book. (Or course, I also thought the Caesar Role of encryption was uncrackable...I'm very gullible.) After you turn the page and keep reading Singh hits you with the more than obvious problem with this odd and even number tomfoolery: infinity is sort of infinite and your idea hasn't actually done anything to limit your work. Now, we circle. The speed reading thing ties into this idea in my little head. If all your speed reading, day and night, helped you get through 8/1000ths of 1% of all the books in the World (if I did my percent conversion to words correctly) have you really gotten anywhere? It doesn't seem like much to me and doesn't honestly add much to the art of reading for learning or reading for enjoyment.

I know, someone has some response about the need to read faster if you have to get through loads of coursework; but, my position on that is you do become a faster reader the more you read but it's not necessarily speed reading. I had to at least throw in that disclaimer.

Carry on with your weekend.

my remainder

I didn’t want to get into this discussion because it’ll make me sound like a crazy old man. Unfortunately, it has been forced upon my mind by current events. I’d like to refer you to a previous entry from the blog. Feel free to amble over and take a look, I’ll wait for you here.

The elementary school down the street – and one math teacher in particular – has determined that the kids in his or her class don’t know how to divide or multiply. They’ve attacked this great mystery by deciding to teach kids how to multiply and divide, huzzah! (I picture a sixty-year-old math teacher with a tidy brush cut, rumpled suit, and heavy black-rimmed glasses guffawing about the classroom as his minions fail to properly carry remainders; you create your own teacher.) A few weeks ago the house was suddenly overrun first with long division, and then with multiplication problems. The multiplication was not of the tables sort but the multiplying of three- and four-digit numbers with decimals. This new fangled math was met with suspicious eyes and minds by those under 5 feet, 5 inches. Who could have possibly invented this method? It’s mad! I think we should go back to coloring squares on a big square graph and then counting rows and doing magical tomfoolery. Ah ha!, I say. That doesn’t actually work in real life when you aren’t carrying around a bag of colored pencils, a pile of graph paper, scissors, and have time to sit on the floor at work and count squares. It makes you look simple. It warmed my soul in its mathematical corners to listen and watch as paper was gathered, pencil sharpened, brackets drawn, and numbers managed. The pattern and method, proven through time, had finally arrived at the Hilltop: a bit of multiplication, a dash of subtraction, the carrying down of the next digit, rinse, repeat, add a decimal, input another zero…voila! I was really beginning to get the feeling that all was lost in the educational system as I continued to watch a fifth-grader doing homework that required him to “underline” the tens place! Circle the thousands place! Color in the pie and then subtract the green stuff from the pink wedge!

Even with my old man bubbling over and seeming crazy (I’m not), there’s some evidence, if you can call consider standardized tests as evidence, of the mathematical ability of our children devolving, right? Maybe I’ll wander off and do some research to support that broad statement but I think it’s true. Once you get off the path of very strong suburban and / or private school systems, I’m pretty sure the maths numbers are staggering. Do you know why? I’ll tell you.

Grab a colored pencil, some graph paper, and take this down…

Hey to all

t

pick me! pick me!

I’m not going to bore you with the exact details of this statistical thing dubbed something like value over next selection – I don’t hardly understand it. Apparently, this is a theory that the numbers folk fully understand but knuckleheads like me never considered. The reason I’m throwing it out is because I used to for a fantasy football draft last night and the results were pretty stunning in relation to how good my team ended up being. What you need to understand are two things: first, all I’m doing when my pick comes up during the draft is run this mathematical chart and take the position player who gives me the greatest advantage over the next same position player who will be available when I next pick. Second, fantasy football players have a grand vision of themselves that shows us as somehow knowing something that others don’t: it’s a stupid, guy thing. What this ego tends to do is get in the way of facts and sludge up just about any event which a man is involved and supposedly using his mind to sort. The results of the draft, using this theory, when projected for each team gives my squad an advantage of 8% to 18% over every other team. Right…so now you have that in mind, let’s get to the rub.

During every draft (they are almost always done on-line with little chat windows available) there are invariably at least a dozen chat entries sent that say “good pick”; normally they come from the highest of the highest self-appointed fantasy stud. What became so funny to me last night in the situation I was in, using a straight forward mathematical model, was that there was no such thing as a “good pick” – there’s only one pick – the right one. What does “good pick” really mean? It’s one yahoo validating another yahoo’s choice by confirming that, indeed, we are two mental giants playing in the same league. It’s so completely random that ‘Hank’ might have picked the player that ‘Jeff’ was considering a “good pick” that it reminds of when someone honks at you because you’re driving the same car. You know what they’re thinking, “Hey, that guy in the Reliant K car is awesome, just like me. No one else gets it.” If the recipient of the “good pick” pat-on-the-back has gone completely bonkers and made a choice that doesn’t match at all with the numbers I’m using then it’s simply a bad pick. When the math is right in front of you it’s fairly clear the correct answer. I can just imagine some college kid turning to another kid in his algebra class and saying “good answer” when he correctly solves the problem. Really? There’s a good answer and a bad answer? No, but there is a right answer and a wrong answer where math crosses our lives - nothing more, nothing less. When professors dole out the treasured partial credit on long math problems it’s because the process was correct and you simply came up with the wrong answer. Professor Mathenstine never writes on the paper that your process was wrong but you get partial credit for a “good answer”. In truth, I didn’t trust the process until I looked at the final results this morning. There we so many players that I would have chosen using my seat-of-the-pants technique that I passed on simply because I stayed true to the experiment.

Of course, it’s just fantasy football and most of the determining factors are luck and avoiding injuries. Men are strange.

The Cubs have won seven straight games, ten consecutive series’, and the future is very bright indeed.

t

one car leaves the house going 50mph...

I’ve done a bit of back-of-the-envelope mathematics in some sort of vain attempt to conjure a reasonable idea about gas prices, the World oil supply, drilling, and prospectin’. From what I’ve corralled, and I’m going to round the scary numbers to make the math prettier, we import about 10 million barrels of crude oil per day. It obviously comes from a number of countries in varying amounts so I’ll just deal with a few of the rebel and unstable countries we like to castigate, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, in order to demonize either them, our use, or our own insecurities. Combined they account for about 25% of our daily imports (about 1m from Venezuela and 1.4m from Saudi Arabia per day, respectively.) In order to eliminate our need for either Hugo Chavez or the House of Saud, we need to somehow either increase our own production (or buy from someone else) or simply reduce our use. There’s a thing called CAFÉ, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, standard that notionally applies to corporate fleets but can be used as a simple measuring stick of what’s going on out there. The average on-the-road fuel economy for cars is sitting at about 25mpg and for light trucks it’s about 20mpg. My premise is this: build, sell, and own more fuel efficient cars (and trucks, if you must.) In order to offset that 25% of imported oil we could increase our economy for cars to 31mpg and light trucks to 25mpg and be done with it. No need to wait ten years for drilling the oceans or ANWR in hope that it will alleviate the problem sometime in my late fifties. If that seems like too much to hope for then how about everybody carpool to work once a week? It almost seems like everyone carpooling once a week would work out to each person who’s riding alone in a car saving 20% of their Monday – Friday fuel usage (more math). Twice a week? Now we’ve got 40% savings Monday – Friday.

On a lighter note…

We went to see Lyle Lovett and his Large Band at Wolftrap last night and took advantage (?) of the Metro Transit Authority’s bus service from our Metro station to the venue. What happens is this: you pay $3 for the roundtrip fare with buses departing every 20 minutes from West Falls Church station. It’s about a 15-minute ride to Wolftrap and the bus deposits you right at the entrance to the massive amphitheater. The theory, and it worked better last year, is that you don’t have to deal with the mass of parking and traffic and you can just flounce on and off a bus like a celebrity. Last year there was a different system involved between the buses, the traffic cops, and Wolftrap. Last year they would actually stop all the traffic leaving the park and allow the buses to drive straight out onto the exit road – it saved loads of time. This year they seem to be making the buses wait in line just like every other car so the advantage is seriously diminished. Anyway, what the Eleven was laughing about upon arrival is the bus driver passing along, and passengers hopefully understanding how, the return ride rules apply: the buses, all of them, will leave the venue 20 minutes after the show or at 11pm, whichever comes first. We immediately put forth the idea that the driver actually should provide real examples to some of the concert goers who looked, and probably were, confused. Maybe before you can exit the bus you have to answer some word problems, things like this:

Driver: “Suppose Lyle Lovett finishes at 10:15pm. What time are the buses departing?”
Rider #1: “11pm?”
Driver: “Incorrect. You need to find a friend who understands directions.”

Driver: “Let’s say Mr. Lovett ‘finishes’ his show at 10:45pm but he hasn’t played Closing Time or If I Had a Boat and you love those songs - you came for those songs. So, you know there’s at least one encore coming – as always at these things. What time is the bus leaving?”
Rider #2: “When will he finish playing If I Had a Boat?”
Driver: “What? You need to hang around the other guy who’s confused. When will he finish…Jesus.”

Driver: “Okay, someone help me out here. The former Mr. Julia Roberts decides he’s dog tired and only plays about ninety minutes and walks off the stage; the house lights come up, you look at your watch, and it’s only 9:20. When does the bus leave?”
Todd: “9:40pm.”
Driver: “Great kid. Let me ask you one more. Ol’ Big Hair finishes playing If I Had a Boat and it's now 10:55 – that’s for Rider #2 over there – and that’s the encore, end of show. Lights up and people start heading out. What time does the bus leave?”
Todd: “11:00pm, but me and the two confused riders latched to my ‘don’t get lost’ rope are going to have to haul ass through sidling suburban crowds, roller coolers, and assorted lawn chairs in order to see your smiling face.”
Driver: “Well said” [fist bump]

t

my cents

I went to the Web site 270towin and took a look at the electoral results from the last few Presidential elections. What’s important to me isn’t the endless popular vote statistics that either Clinton or Obama are using to support their case – primaries don’t translate to the general: either candidate will carry California or New York so telling me otherwise is a weak argument. You’re just mangling numbers to make you feel better about your candidate. What I remember so well from 2000 was yelling at the talking heads that it was just Florida that was the downfall – it was any single ‘safe’ state that Gore ignored. If he had carried any state that he lost – any state from Alaska to Nevada – he would have won. Every state is worth at least three electoral votes and he lost by five. Using that election as a basis since only three states changed in 2004 (Kerry lost N.M and Iowa, but picked-up N.H.) it’s pretty clear to see what needs to be done. (P.S. Hey Al, if you can’t carry your home state then it’s pretty tough to blame anyone else for that loss.) Of the states that could have swung in 2000, we needed any one of the following:

+ 40,000 of 2.2. million cast in Missouri
+ 11,000 of 600,000 cast in Nevada
+ 3,500 of 550,000 cast in New Hampshire
+ 40,000 of 2 million cast in Tennessee

It wasn’t just Florida. If we get back to picking up the states that Democrats carried in 2000 then it’s one step to a victory – without Florida or Ohio. The states that are hanging, according to the Web site, include seven states the Dems carried in 2000: N.M., Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. All seven of those states have been predominantly Democrat over the last four Presidential election cycles, and at least half of the last ten cycles. There are five states in play from the Republican pull in 2000: Nevada, Colorado, Missouri, North Carolina, and Virginia. Nevada and Missouri have split over the last four elections, and New Mexico has gone Dem three of the last four. The other four states have been strongly Republican over the last ten cycles. I happen to think Virginia is going to become very important even if its run Republican forever – more power to the massive population growth in Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax counties that has brought in two Democratic governors, Senator Jim Webb, and a second Senate seat on the horizon with Democrat Mark Warner.

I think that pulling Nevada, Missouri, and New Mexico means the end of the campaign. Who knows what the hell the Granite State folks will do in the end – can someone pop over to Keene and help them out. It’s almost impossible to imagine a surge in Republican support across the hardcore Democratic states whether our nominee is Clinton or Obama – the numbers won’t change even if Virginia doesn’t come through – and the Dems cover 276 – 262.

My point in this ramble is this: the Democrats need to bring out the numbers we’ve seen during the primary season for the general election. The candidate needs to hit the fringe states hard and use them to leverage off states like Florida and Ohio. Simple mistakes like not carrying your home state or giving away the smaller states that are in play can’t be allowed.

I’ve made my case.

Feel free to take that nap now.

trains and spotting

I remember an entry earlier this year about the bus girls checking out each other’s fashion every time the 401 stopped and some gal the walked up the aisle towards an exit: heads swiveling, eyes glaring. It seemed a combination of both fashion grading and fashion idea theft. In order to present both sides of the sexual agenda I need to rat out the guys – at least the Metro train drivers. I suspect that the bird watching occurs primarily during the morning and evening rush hours as the flocks move in heel-tottering, well coiffed formation. I also believe that the actual Metro station has a lot to do with the view – those stations with the exits/escalators toward the head of the train provide the greatest cinematic pleasure. For those beyond the Metro confederacy, here’s how trains manage passenger exit (first) and entry (second). The train doors open upon arrival at the station and herds of folks pile out as new herds pile into the oft-packed cars. The drivers, after a few seconds in the station, open the platform-side window of their cockpits and stick their heads out in order to look down the platform so they have a basic idea of when the crowd has managed to complete boarding. Once everyone seems on board they trigger some switch in the cab, while still looking out the window, and signal a warning before the doors close and the train begins to pull out of the station. I know that’s a long description but it’ll come in handy. Any number of drivers during the morning rush spend a little extra time looking down the platform because they’ve spied hottie who’s exited three cars down and is waggling her little self towards the escalators located near the front of the train. I can tell you with absolute certainty that those long(er) stops in some stations can be confirmed by verifying the escalator location. If you happen to be getting off a train and heading towards the front you could simply catch a glance at the driver and you’ll easily find who he’s looking at – and he’ll look until he gets a walk-by, full view and all. Of course, he doesn’t have carte blanche on girl watching – anyone beyond three train cars isn’t get the eye…he doesn’t have that much time. I can’t really blame the drivers. If I spend a good part of my day in and out of the tunnels under D.C. and the greater metro area I’d need some fresh air and scenery. I’m just saying.

The Minnesota Vikings head coach says he’s going to continue using two running backs even as super rookie Adrian Peterson returns from injury this week. There are some good reasons to share the workload, and I don’t disagree in theory, but the excuse he’s giving is this – they don’t want to risk him getting injured again. Right. This brings to mind a great book / great problem called Fermet’s Last Theorem. The book, about the problem, is a grand yarn involving a mathematical theorem that us normal folk can actually understand. Fermet, an amateur math genius from back yon, put forth the following: for a3 + b3 = c3 (those are cubes) there are no whole numbers to make the equation true. Same idea as Pythagoras but with the mysterious threes included – “it’s a magic number.” As later mathletes attempted to prove this theorem they ante up the idea that the variables couldn’t be odd numbers (or even numbers, I can’t remember) so they could basically eliminate the search by half…all the odds (or evens). Of course they realized shortly thereafter (probably within minutes) that since we believe in infinity there was, in actuality, no reduction in possible numbers to test: infinite odds and infinite evens. I love that story. Anyhow, back to football. Since most injuries - particularly knee injuries - occur on freak plays and poor footing during a violent sport, cutting a players actions from 40 to 20 doesn’t really change the odds of him getting hurt. Are we assuming that freakish plays and injuries only happen on odd or even downs? Just wondering.

I’ll leave everyone alone.

T.

i wasn't aware there would be a test

I was driving to Trader Joe's this afternoon and stopped at a light behind a car sporting a bumper sticker that read: 1% of the people have 40% of the wealth. What's your share?" Right. If every person equals one share (I'm making this easy) then all those really rich folk have 40 times more than they should. If the other 99 of us are sharing the dregs remaining, 60%, then I'm only getting $.60 on the dollar...if I were actually contributing an equal amount as that evil 1%. If each unit worked (and hour, a week, a month) is worth some portion of money, and my value is $.60, then I think I'm alright. My actual level of work is more like $.50 so I'm about 20% up on the deal. Not bad. I think that attempts toward socialist and liberal ideals shouldn't necessarily be based directly on some ratio of wealth. Is the system off-balance?, sure. Do I need to spend an hour wondering about formulas and equations? Not buying. Unfortunately, it's the constant path of 'protest' that doesn't hold any real effect.

Speaking of story problems, I've got this one:

How much longer will I stand in line at Trader Joe's because the customers in front of me think that bagging groceries is a spectator sport?

I'd like a full-length wall mirror just behind the register so Doug and Tilly can see how moronic they look while they clutch the debit card and watch the cashier bag six bags of groceries for them. Maybe they are thinking about that memorable time when Dixie at the Safeway managed to bag two carts of groceries in fifteen minutes. There was a day when SuperTodd worked the bags as a courtesy clerk at Albertson's (Omaha, circa 1984). My legendary ability to bag wasn't enough to convince grocery stores to maintain a cadre of highly trained, frozen food aware, heavy contents on the bottom of the bag, customer service gods. I'm guessing it was about 1990 when bagging ceased being a seperate skill set in the grocery...if you are older than 15 you should know all about this latest development. I should not watch you wide-eyed, with bags on the counter in front of you, imagining just how daring the ride will be when the bagging starts. Pick up a bag, put stuff in...it's not hard. Not only will you not look doltish, I might not be standing in line imagining ways to punish you. Oops.

Hey, it's Sunday.

T