soapbox

Believe it or not, webapps can do more than just let you play games! For example, you can use your computer as an alarm clock using the unfortunately-initialed KuKu Klok. It’s a rather simple but somehow entertaining little webapp – you set a time for an alarm to go off, you choose a sound to wake up to, and you hit “Set Alarm.” One advantage it has over Online Alarm Clock is that is that it’s Flash-based and goes off even if your internet connection cuts out.

Honestly I don’t know how/when you’ll ever need it, but any webapp that has “Slayer Guitar” in its preferences deserves a mention. Of course, maybe more fun is the pseudo-functional Sleep Blaster where you can yell at your Mac to turn of the alarm. Now if only that worked for the car alarms outside my office that are set off by low-altitude F-16 flybys.

I have a statistics question that I need some help with. It’s really a question of “what is the statistical importance of a deviation from a fit?”

Let me illustrate with plots:

1. Here we have some data and a line fit to the data. Everyone I’m sure agrees that this is a good fit.

2. Now, the same data and fit, but with one point that’s off by 1-sigma. 1-sigma events happen all the time (well, roughly 1/3 of the time) so we’d still assume that the fit matches the data well.

3. Now we have a point that’s 2-sigma from the fit. Assuming a normal distribution, that should only happen by chance ~5% of the time, so we start wondering if the deviation of that point is actually a significant event.

4. Now, the real question. Instead of a single deviant point, we have two points. Both of them are 1.3-sigma from the fit. If taken individually, there’s a ~20% probability that each one does match the fit. However, we “know” that they’re correlated in that the depression of both points is related to something physically going on. How would I determine how statistically significant this depression is?

Needless to say, my real data isn’t faked and is more complex than the example, but I need to figure out the same sort of answer. I’d appreciate any help that anyone can offer. And I apologize for using my astronomer’s imprecise statistical descriptions.

We continue our series of belated postings with what-happened-to-me-last-saturday.

I went here.

Now in fairness, K said that I didn’t have to go if I didn’t want to, that she could go with just her sister-in-law and they’d wander about, but I ended up going along with my soon to be brother-in-law.

whoa.

The Bridal Expo that we went to was held in the SD convention center, and in hindsight it had a lot in common with one of the poster sessions at a big APS (March Meeting, etc, or AAAS I guess?)… imagine a huge airplane hanger filled with row upon row of different vendor booths. That sounds innocent enough, right?

For starters you have to pay $10 or $15 bucks to get in the door (they do have door prizes, so maybe that’s fair), and they greet you with “are you a bride or groom”? which is actually a funny question if you think about it, but the fallout of your answer is that they give you a nametag with “Groom” or “Bride” on it, and you’re supposed to put slap it on somewhere. Then you play plinko and other little games to win little (and demeaning) prizes before being sent off to wander up and down the rows of Photography people, Cake people, Honeymoon people, three different Mary Kay booths, Floral/decorations people, etc. In one corner of the hanger, I mean, convention center they had a stage and seating – this was the site of a bridal fashion show. It was pretty much what you might think; models strutting up and down with various outfits, girls swooning, guys sneaking off to buy a beer and rest their tired eardrums, etc.

All in all, I’m glad I went if for no other reason than I am more certain now than ever that K and I are a good match and that I’m very glad she’s not like a lot of her fellow brides that I saw there. That said gentlemen, when you are faced with such a situation, make sure to (a) stay hydrated, (b) get a good night’s sleep beforehand, and (b) bring lots of $5 bills and a few ones for tips to the beleaguered barman at the beer booth.

Best $5 I ever spent was on that lukewarm Bud Light.

I like growing experimental things. Or at least experimenting with what I grow. As a kid in Alaska, I used to try to grow corn in our greenhouse, two or three whole plants!*

More long and boring story after the jump
(more…)

So, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game was last week, and if you hadn’t heard, this one counts! (That’s right, instead of using some logical parameter on which to base home field advantage in the Finals/World Series, the MLB awards that advantage to the winner of an exhibition game. Brilliant.)

I have many thoughts on the matter, most of which will bore (most of) the soapboxosphere to death, so I’ll keep them to myself. I will however link to one post on the game that I particularly enjoyed because it goes a decent way towards capturing the contempt I feel towards the Fox broadcasting team. Tim, I know you’ll love this.

I’m also curious as to the East Coast’s reception of the pre-game festivities. Everybody out here was disgusted and disappointed, saying that the 1999 All-Star Game’s ceremony honoring Ted Williams was way better and had more Hall of Famers. My impression is that Yankees and Mets fans loved it, and if you were outside NY then it came off as cheap and tacky. As Jim Caple commented:

And while we’re at it — how come “O Canada” was a tape recording instead of a live performance? The Yankees were able to bring back the Village People to lip-synch “Y.M.C.A.” — but they somehow couldn’t find a single performer in the entire city of New York available to sing Canada’s national anthem?

It’s kinda hard for me to believe that Larry Jones (more commonly known as “Chipper”) has been playing pro ball for about a decade now. That means that I’m old, in case my most recent birthday didn’t hammer that home.

This season he started off red-hot, and there was all sorts of foolish “can he hit .400″ talk a couple months into the season. The problem is that Jones isn’t the most injury-free player around, and recently his hamstrings have been acting up to go along with past knee, quad, shoulder, and other injuries.

Which leads us to the entire point of this post – Chipper’s quote regarding his hammy:

“It’s sore right now,” he said. “I don’t know what the timetable’s going to be. Hamstrings are a little more delicate than quads or groins.”

Let the debate on the relative delicacy of hamstrings, groins, and quads begin.