"You can observe a lot by just watching" Yogi Berra

While it isn't always easy, I can usually tell where people were raised as well as where they were born. Koreans raised in Los Angeles have a style completely different from those born in Seoul; the English, en masse, look different from the Scots, and it just takes one look at those wacky triangular eyeglasses for me to know that a young lady is either French or getting that way. In the same way, just by looking, I can pretty much diagnose the families waiting for the Newark to Gatwick flight. Here's one, prematurely greying father with John Lennon glasses, slightly older  mother with shoulder length hair, three blond boys with backpacks and crew cuts. I'm like, O.K. , he's British, she's American, all three boys born in the USA. Or, Asian looking father, fiftyish, no mother in the party, two young teen daughters, one classically Eurasian looking, the other blonder. Sure, I can do that: he's born in Hong Kong, but doesn't speak Cantonese well, one kid born in Shanghai, the other in canoe transit up the Amazon. Same father, I think, but the first girl's mother is definitely working as a dogcatcher in Evansville, Indiana, and the second one's mother once had that unfortunate accident with a hairnet and an avocado. Could these be the same person? Very likely, but I'm not infallible, while I know for sure that the father is part-time seal tamer and computer science professor, I can't be be sure whether he's a bigamist. It's just a matter of assessing the evidence.

I can also tell what language people speak, because the patterns of vowels and consonants shape the face. Turkish oral surgeons spend 47% of their time unsticking the tongue tip from the roof of the mouth. "Who put the gluten in this agglutinative language?", they cry. And did you know that Mick Jagger was raised Basque? His English accent is a fake: he stole it from a classmate at LSE, using 1960s recording technology and a hypnopaedic pillow. You don't get those lips from an Indo-European language, let me tell ya! Angela Lansbury is Swedish, and Dick van Dyke really is a cockney. As a young man Rex Harrison sang Wagner's Parsifal with Maria Callas in the Italian premiere at La Scala: the My Fair Lady thing is a front. Not many know that, but you can see all this in their faces.

Just by looking, I can tell whether your dog will develop cataracts (and whether your cat will develop doggeracts, should you care). Show me your friend's wardrobe, and I can predict the mean rainfall over the Andes for the next two weeks. Two glances inside your purse and I can diagnose your psychological problems to eight decimal places AND predict your fashion preferences. Just from your diet, I can tell you not only your height, weight and hat size but your views on a wide range of social issues and the three last digits of your social security number. If you were raised by wolves, I can tell. If you were kept locked in a cupboard by your neglectful parents, I will spot it, and be able to offer career advice, speech therapy and a range of inexpensive  after-care options. If your father married his half sister and you were raised by a vengeful dwarf in the forest, I will know, and be the first to offer you a place to lay your sword. And advise you on whether the local fire brigade is any use for your unknowingly genetically suspect purpose. But I'm not special, I think most people could do that, just by looking.

Why statisticians shouldn't write movie titles

Never Give a Sucker an Asymptotically Even Flip
The Variational Enigma
The Fisher King
Independence Day
Return to Monte Casino
The Man Who Measured the Bank at Monte Carlo
Between 99 and 103 Dalmatians
8.5 +/- 0.2
The Metropolis Method (void where prohibited by law)
Improper Priors go wild on Cancun

Genuinely funny April Fool article

This one actually made me laugh:


A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world.

The LHC successfully collided particles at record force earlier this week, a milestone Mr Cole was attempting to disrupt by stopping supplies of Mountain Dew to the experiment's vending machines.


http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49305387,00.htm?s_cid=33

SPLPAC

The Society for the Promotion of Long Prepositions,Adverbs and Conjunctions wishes, henceforward, to exist, notwithstanding its lack of positive ontological status heretofore. Moreover. it regrets and plans to remedy its previous delinquencies in this area, but nevertheless accepts that its existence may not continue for long. Contrariwise, it sees itself as a lexical mayfly skittering over the surface of the language, and is OK with that. Anyone know where the nectar is?

Safety precautions for data mining expeditions

Safety precautions for data mining expeditions

Prof. S.N.L. Ingqvist, Independent Data Prevention Consultant

The following text was found on the still twitching body of an explorer found near the opening to the lair of the Lithuanian gerund. It was a clear case of data poisoning. For your own protection, you may wish to consider the advice that he evidently ignored. If he’d taken it, he might still be alive today.

Data mining is an inherently risky activity, and should not be undertaken unless you are aware of the risks. But with care it can be safe and enjoyable, even for the novice. If this is your first time, you may wish to engage the services of an experienced guide; but before taking charge of an expedition, or going it alone, there are a few simple safety precautions of which you should be aware:

• Make sure you are properly equipped. You need the stout boots of self-assured theoretical insight and the thick jacket of intellectual pride. Remember that equipment that would be able to resist data for an afternoon may not hold up so well on an overnight trip. Lighter materials may quickly become saturated with data and afford little protection.


• Make sure that someone knows where you are going and when you plan to return. Darkness can descend fast in the data mine, and it is easy to lose track of time. If you do not return to the comforting world of established theory at the expected time, your colleagues will need to alert the Data Mining Rescue, who will send out an appropriately equipped search party. See below for a list of the intellectual resources that you can expect the rescue party to bring.


• If you are trapped in an enclosed space, no matter how desperate you feel, you should not inhale until you have taken steps to be ‘above the data’. Remember that in such an environment there will still be pockets of rarefied intellectual discourse. Stand as tall as you can, and, holding your nose in the air, proceed to your safe zone.


• You do have a safe zone, don’t you? For some of us this is a methodology. For others it is a readily available source of non-toxic pseudo-data. If you are able to reach your safe zone before you are overcome by the data, the chances are good that you will find congenial company there.


• The following section, initially unreadable, was deciphered on realizing that the cuneiform script in which it was written was nothing more than an alternative writing system for an ancient dialect of AMS-LaTeX math mode: Be well versed in communications theory. It is only by clanging on the data pipe with your bit bucket that you will be able to send messages to the surface. Furthermore, if you can learn to reduce the conditional entropy of your surroundings, less data will be stirred up and you have a higher chance of surviving data poisoning.


• Once you are in the safe zone, you should wait for the arrival of the rescue party. Do not engage in debate, controversy or heated discussion, as these will rapidly exhaust your limited supply of intellectual oxygen. If a colleague panics or becomes over-excited, the kindest thing to do is to gently force them under the data, holding them down until they cease to struggle. This will increase everyone else’s chances of intellectual survival. You may be concerned about the long term consequences of this decision for your moral compass: this is quite natural. However, brain-imaging of the hypergallic gyrus (which Descartes correctly believed to be the seat of the conscience) reveals that 37% of survivors suffer few long term effects. While you may experience some degree of low-level remorse, especially in the first few days, post-trauma counseling services are available at all defense contracting firms, many government laboratories and a small but increasing number of first-rank research universities.


• The rescue party will have access to powerful data clearing tools. These may include the use of default reasoning, two-faced logic, reductio ad libitum (with or without repeats in the development section), argument that the data is a consequence of a general principle (and therefore, having no explanatory impact, must be ignored), argument from non-existent languages, argument from notational elegance, argument for argument’s sake, and (in extreme cases) argument from personal preference (de gustibus non est disputandum, some say, but for us that is just a matter of taste). If all goes well, the rescue party should be able to lead you back out into the light before permanent damage is done.


• After your experience, you may be tempted to dive back into the data immediately. Do not do this; even the most intellectually flexible require a recovery period. The medically recommended interval is two weeks for junior staff, two months for tenured faculty and two decades for distinguished university professors with a reputation to protect.

Finally, remember that there is usually nothing to fear from data. If you encounter data unexpectedly, the best thing is to ignore it.

(previously published in SpecGram)

Finding the lost symbol

Famous schlock author Dan Brown pounded through the keyboard in search of his lost symbol. After much reflection he had realized that on 28 February 2002 his keyboard had lost one of the most important symbols that it had ever had. Those royalty statements from Lisbon were looking very different. What had happened? All his royalties were down by a ratio of  200$018 to €1. Surely this must be a conspiracy which had been established at the highest level of the Catholic Church! And this wasn't just a matter of global concern and an opportunity for bestsellers ; it had happened to Mr. Brown's very own predictive word association football keyboard. The indignity! The shame! Handsome chisel jawed Dr. Brown, 5 foot 3, not Jewish, not wearing a yarmulke,  not wearing anything painful around his left thigh, honestly, couldn't think what to do. This was bathos! This was information that the reader could ever need! This was a poorly formulated parallel structure! How could he be expected to turn out well formed paragraphs? Why was he worrying about this? when had anybody ever expected this from him? What was the lost symbol, and how much was the royalty statement?

The answer from Wikipedia is that the lost symbol is called the cifrao and that it represents a sum of currency under the old Portuguese system of escudos and thousands of the escudo. The royalty statement hadn't changed, but Dan Brown's expectations had and so had the way in which the monetary sum was represented. But at least the last symbol had been found!!