Daily Archives: September 29, 2008
I Don't See Tina Turner Anywhere
Oh, wait, that was Thunderdome.
The Baikonur Cosmodrome at The Big Picture
When NASA’s last scheduled Space Shuttle mission lands in June of 2010, the United States will not have the capability to get astronauts into space again until the scheduled launch of the new Orion spacecraft in 2015. Over those five years, the U.S. manned space program will be relying heavily on Russia and its Baikonur Cosmodrome facility in Kazakhstan. Baikonur is an entire Kazakh city, rented and administered by Russia. The Cosmodrome was founded in 1955, making it one of the oldest space launch facilites still in operation. Here are collected some photographs of manned and unmanned launches from Baikonur over the past several years. (26 photos total)
Did Jules Verne Write This?
Journey to the Center of the Neutron
A neutron contains three quarks, and nuclear physicists don’t completely understand how these move within the particle. Last year, an analysis revealed a negative charge at the center of the neutron, and now an article in the Rapid Communications section of the September Physical Review C attributes this negative core to very fast moving “down” quarks. The results elaborate on an emerging three-dimensional view of these fundamental particles and their proton cousins.
The Value of Sports Statistics
Chad’s got a post up about how Baseball Statistics Are Crap. I’ve got a different beef.
(There are, certainly, a lot of dubious statistics in baseball. I just don’t agree that things are as bad as Chad says but maybe it’s just that I’m used to the idiosyncrasies. I do understand the infield fly rule, after all. If that weirdness makes sense, maybe the weird statistics do, too.)
Anyway, my objection is that even with these simplified statistics, the sportscasters and writers read too much into them. They don’t understand what the statistics are saying, and the value of statistics is to be able to compare players. In baseball it’s not so bad — even if the stats are flawed, a player hitting .356 is objectively a better hitter, by this measure than one who is hitting .290. But what does “by this measure” mean? In baseball, you can hit for average or for power — there are different skills and abilities useful to the team, and you want to find the statistic that is appropriate to the skill you are trying to quantify.
In this regard, I think, football is an example where the reporters are a great abuser of statistics. And this goes beyond saying “turnover ratio” when “differential” is meant (one thing that’s gotten better over the years). The main abuse, I think, is saying that accuracy is measured by completion percentage, and this seemingly happens all the time.
Accuracy is your ability to hit a target, and if you want to compare apples-to-apples, the target should be the same one. A stationary target at 10 yards is easier to hit than a moving one at 40 yards. A better receiver, who can get open, is easier to hit, and also affects the ability for other receivers to get open. You can have a receiver who drops the ball even though it’s “right at the numbers,” or one who catches everything thrown his way. When nobody’s open and he’s trapped, a quarterback can take a sack or throw the ball away, giving him an incompletion. All of that affects completion percentage, and none of it reflects accuracy.
Chad Pennington is touted as an “accurate quarterback” by many sports journalists, who, in the next breath, mention he has a weak arm and dumps the ball off quite often. Short passes. Connection? I think so!
My favorite example is Donovan McNabb. When Terrell Owens was about to join the team, analysts were all cautious about how Owens would tolerate the inaccurate McNabb, who had never completed 59% of his passes. Until that year, when he completed 64%, and everyone was saying how accurate he had become. Owens leaves, and the completions percentage drops back down. (It’s up again this season, and last — he’s got better receivers, and he dumps the ball off to Westbrook when he has to)
Ballistic and Nonballistic Trajectory: Career Path
I’ve been adopted by three high school groups (so far). Last time I did this, there was a list of questions, so I got a head start on answering the ones I thought might be asked. The answers seem to have tunneled into the ether, however, but since questions about career path are likely to come up (and I haven’t done a post on that), here I go.
I’m not tempted to say “I didn’t take the typical career path” because I don’t think there is any such thing. Some might propose that the typical path is grad school to postdoc to university teaching and research position, but since only about a third of doctorates work in academia, and there are positions other than the university research professor (teaching-only positions, liberal-arts or community colleges) that’s not really “typical,” though it may be perceived to be.
I went to Hartwick College, a small liberal-arts school in the middle of nowhere Oneonta, NY, which was about two hours away from home (less now, since they put in a highway while I was there). I ended up there because the financial aid offered by my main choice, Cornell, was a tad less than I needed: they offered zero. (I was put on a waiting list and the money ran out before the candidates did). Between student loans, work-study, scholarships and grants, Hartwick was possible. I had AP credits for physics and calculus and overloaded my schedule one term to graduate early. (3.5 years)
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