|
jsimon66
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Jay
Country: United States
State: California
Birthday: 3/27/1981
Gender: Male
Interests: badminton, baseball, sports in general, video games, movies, web design, cards, food
Expertise: decision analysis, game theory, operations research, statistics, Excel/VB, math.
Occupation: Assistant Professor
Industry: Department of Defense
Message: message me
Member Since:
5/11/2004
|
|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| I've added a lot of new video game music to my collection since the last one. For a drink, which of the following words appears the most often in song titles in my video game folder? Same rules as last time: other forms of the word count, but compound words that include the word do not. Remix song titles do not count. As a tiebreaker, guess the 2nd most frequent word. Contest closes 10/28 at 11:59 PM.
Time
World
Spirit
Village
Dark
Memory
Castle
Palace
Eye
Star
Temple
Day
Prelude
Song*
Chocobo
*The 11 different versions of the "Song of Prayer" in Final Fantasy X only count as one. Even though they're so damn catchy. | | |
| This is another one of those books that I feel like everyone should be strapped down Clockwork Orange style and forced to understand. Causality is a tricky idea that the human brain has a lot of trouble dealing with, and we often ascribe horribly incorrect explanations to unusual events.
One of the points that really resonated with me was: when the author says (or I say) that someone like Bill Gates was lucky, people interpret that as a criticism, and get incredulous and defiant. It is NOT a criticism. Bill Gates is brilliant and hardworking. But his wealth is not a result of him being more brilliant and hardworking than everybody else. A ton of people are brilliant and hardworking. Out of that large pool of people, Bill Gates is incredibly wealthy because he happened to be in a fortunate combination of circumstances that gave him the opportunity. Too many people cling to this baffling insistence on attributing phenomenal success to one or two simple personality traits.
| | |
| If I ever see someone carrying a sign comparing Obama to Hitler, I will punch them in the face.
Hitler -> Holocaust -> genocide.
Obama -> ??? -> theory of special relativity -> ??? -> u-substitution -> ??? -> Modus Ponens -> ??? -> machine wash warm, tumble dry -> ??? -> divide by zero -> ??? -> Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes -> ??? -> Fourier transform -> ??? -> Insert disc 2 to continue -> ??? -> Use staple remover on tremendous dangerous-looking yak -> ??? -> inverse tangent -> ??? -> disengage from reality -> ...Hitler?
| | |
| I've noticed something interesting during my last few road trips. In many cases, I can actually go faster driving in the right lane. During long stretches of freeway with no exits, there are sometimes no cars in the right lane. I think a lot of people have a complex about not wanting to be seen as a slow inept driver who can't keep up with traffic, so they refuse to drive in the slow lane. Everyone in the crowded left lane is doing 60*, so I move over to the "slow" lane and pass them all going 75. People are idiots.
*These speeds are on the section of 101 south of Gilroy. It's a little winding, so you can't do typical high freeway speeds. | | |
| This one stemmed from a question that was asked during a regression lecture.
When told about the least squares approach (fitting a line through a scatterplot to minimize the sum of the points' squared vertical distances from the line), a guy in the audience asked "why use the vertical distances instead of the actual distances from the line?"
My response was: "You get the same line either way." He didn't believe me, so I proved it. Can you? It's for a drink, as per usual.
Edit: I guess Ian should get a drink for pointing out to me that this is in fact not true, and my proof has a mistake in it.
| | |
|
