Category Archives: Math

Hack and Shill Went Up the Hill

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Why Nate Silver’s Gambling Streak Makes Me Trust Him More

America is filled with people who think its okay to lie, bullshit, or otherwise misrepresent the truth in order to advance the electoral prospects of a politician or the cause of a governing coalition. Let’s call them shills. Other people aren’t necessarily aware that they’re misrepresenting the truth, but their work is so shaped by what would advance the causes of a candidate or governing coalition that it’s often indistinguishable from the shills. We’ll call them hacks. In a better world, journalists would be sworn enemies of shills and hacks, and the best are. Unfortunately, the press, especially the political press, has more than its share of shills and hacks.

I’m not sure if you’ve been following the Nate Silver hullaballoo this past week or so, but the short version is this: he has used statistics to show that Obama had (at the time of the linked article) a 75% chance of winning, based on a model that weights different polls according to past accuracy, instead of using the very blunt national polls. Advanced stuff. But because those on the right don’t like the answer, they are crying, “foul!”

A) this isn’t surprising, given how the GOP tends to treat science the way a baby treats a diaper. But B) this is actually an example of how science works. (A and B being somewhat related)

Taken by itself, a 75% chance of winning isn’t testable for a single-outcome event like an election. You can win even if your probability is low — unlikely events happen all the time. (and 1 in 4, or the current 1 in 6, is not all that unlikely. Clearly, you can roll a 6 on a standard die, even though there’s only a 1 in 6 chance of doing so) In the long run we see truly unlikely events because there are a lot of events. But that’s what you need in science in order to test your model — lots of events, so that you may gather statistics. This is why it’s important that Silver not only uses his model(s) to predict the result of the presidential election. There are more results

In 2008, he correctly predicted the outcome of the presidential election in 49 of 50 states, and accurately identified the winner in all 35 Senate races.

So there’s more to it than simply picking an overall winner. When your model accurately predicts outcomes, you have confidence that the model is a good one. Just like in science. We aren’t satisfied if all we can do explain past events; it’s the predictive power, and the possibility that the model can be falsified, that is one of the things that sets science apart from any wannabes.

Science and Math and Politics

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Eight causes of the deficit “fiscal cliff.” Which party is most responsible?

As we approach the US election, mentioning politics is not entirely avoidable. But not blind rhetoric — this has some science and math discussion in it.

[H]ow have we Americans been able to afford the endless trade deficits that propel world development? Simple. Science and technology. Each decade since the 1940s saw new, U.S.-led advances that engendered enough wealth to let us pay for all the stuff pouring out of Asian factories, giving poor workers jobs. Jet planes, rockets, satellites, electronics & transistors & lasers, telecom, pharmaceuticals… and the Internet. How I’d love to see a second “National Debt Clock” showing where we’d be now, if we (the citizens) had charged just a 5% royalty on the fruits of U.S. federal research. We’d be in the black!

The first decade of the 21st Century — the Naughty Oughts — was the first (since the 1940s) that saw no such technological tsunami, making America rich enough to buy from the world. As the internet boom petered out, we could have made sustainable energy our Next Big Thing. It was proposed, and the rate that China and Germany are getting rich off solar and wind is most impressive!

By coincidence, that was also the decade when the Fox War on Science hit full stride. When science became the right’s enemy number one.

If not for that, and Bush cuts on R&D and all the rest, would we have had another renaissance and tech-driven boom by now? I cannot prove might-have-beens. But it is no accident that this failure of the expected decadal innovation wave happened in the wake of an epochal and telling event. When the GOP banished from Capitol Hill all of the advisory panels on sci and tech that had helped Congresses to legislate wisely for 60 years.

The math part is pretty straightforward:

Remember, we paid for Big Bird and the other stuff just fine, under Bill Clinton. If you’re serious about looking for the reasons we’re in a mess… look at what changed.

And the conclusion

The bad news? Unbelievably, in the present election, the citizenry might actually re-hire the gang that did all this to us. Proving that hypnotism and incantations can trump facts — fooling some of the people, all of the time. Enough of the people.

The lesson is simple: do not re-hire the dopes who made the mess. Who committed the first half dozen travesties. If you do, future generations will have you to blame.

Seriously: do not re-hire the dopes who made the mess

From the Mandlebread Collection

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The Infinity Set

The set includes four pieces:
Cantor fork :: now you can pin a single kiwi seed. Twice in a row.
Recursive spoon :: it will never let you spill a drop of soup. Ever.
Koch knife :: to delicately cut hair-thin slices out of an egg. A raw egg.
The Infinity Set :: the set includes itself. As a subset.

One keyword is “contest” so I don’t know if this is simply an artistic concept or a product that will appeal to the geek crowd. I want to use the Koch knife to cut a Möbius strip of bacon.

That Hairy Ball is Right in Your Face

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“Hairy balls” in optics?

The hairy ball theorem is a fascinating aspect of the subject of mathematics known as topology, which loosely speaking is concerned with the mathematical characterization of shapes. But hairy balls are of significance in other fields, as well: in fact, many optical scientists are unaware that a hairy ball is, in essence, right in their face every time they do experiments! It is hidden in the polarization of light, i.e. in light’s inherent transverse wave properties. In this post we will uncover this mysterious hairy ball of light.

Sure As I'm Sitting Here

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Finding an Optimal Seating Chart

Every year, millions of brides (not to mention their mothers, future mothers-in-law, and occasionally grooms) struggle with one of the most daunting tasks during the wedding planning process: the seating chart. The guest responses are in, banquet hall is booked, menu choices have been made. You think the hard parts are over, but you have yet to embark upon the biggest headache of them all.

However, the algorithm is not exactly a quick optimization

The model ran for 36 hours on one node of a Beowulf cluster with two 2.83 GHz Intel E5440 quad core processors and 16GB of memory. The best solution found after 36 hours gave a very good starting point for seating assignments, and only required a few rearrangements to please the mother of the bride.

But, given some anecdotes I’ve heard, maybe it’s worth it.

Google Earth Fractals

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Google Earth fractals

The following is a “photographic” gallery of fractals patterns found while exploring the planet with Google Earth. Each is provided with a KMZ file so the reader can explore the region for themselves. Readers are encouraged to submit their own KMZ files for inclusion, credits will be included.