A request.

I will give anyone $100 if they can transport me to two weeks from now. The offer expires tomorrow, so hurry down to my apartment today! Don't miss your chance to get $100!

...really...

Paper Airplane Football in Japan

Too awesome not to try. This might be a summer activity...
How may people would it take to play? 3 a side?

Chance question.

Hypothetical situation:
Jake picks up three dice and rolls them, they come up all twos.
"Hey, that's fun, they were all twos!" Jake said, "The chances of that happening are one in 216."
"No, that chance of that happening is more common than you think." Sam replied.

What actually is the chance of that happening and why?
p.s. Nicole can't play, she already knows the answer.

From Class

"I do know some things about Prairie Chicken mating."

So what does a Statistician do?

I think that most people have the wrong impression about what statisticians do. Most likely because the only time they hear about statisticians are when they are associated with a sports broadcast. But in reality those guys helping out the TV crew are not really statisticians, those people are counters. They collect data. Statisticians rarely collect data, we rarely even analyze data, well we do, but the actually time spent on analysis is smaller than you think. So what does a statistician do? We solve problems.
For example; The Children Puzzle (from NPR):

I tell you that a couple has two children and that (at least) one of them is a boy. I ask you what is the probability that their other child is a boy. Most people think the answer is 1/2, arguing that it is equally likely that the other child is a boy or a girl. But that's not the right answer for the question I have asked you. Here's why. In terms of order of birth, there are four possibilities for the couple's children: BB, BG, GB, GG. When I tell you that at least one child is a boy, I rule out the possibility GG. That leaves three possibilities: BB, BG, GB. With two of these, the other child is a girl; so the probability of the other child being a girl is 2/3. Leaving the probability of the other child being a boy at 1/3.

Now that is kind of a simple problem, but that is the kind of things that we do. A problem is posed and most of the work is figuring out the problem, a very little bit has to do with the actual calculating.

Who would pay for such a thing? The answer surprises a lot of people -almost any company. Companies (and governments) collect data, large amounts of data. They collect data so that they can answer questions, so that they can make a better profit. Statisticians are hired to answer questions the business has by using the data it collects. Sometimes the questions asked (or the way the data is collected) is so complicated that it could take a week to find an answer, even though the actual analysis of the data might take a couple of minutes once the statistician knows how to handle the question and the data properly.

So that's the low-down on statisticians, we don't count things, and we don't only deal with data either, we answer questions using data. And that sort of job pays quite well. ^_^

Live Stream of the NHL Playoffs!

HOCKEY LIVE - Comcast.net

Comcast gets +1000 points in my books. They are putting live streams of their NHL playoff coverage on the internet! That means that there will be one or two games of hockey to watch every night. Rock on!

Red Square

Since it has been awhile since my last game post, Pickle's suggestion of Red Square was a welcome one:

Red Square

The aim of the game is simple; don't let the red square touch a blue box or a black wall. It is quite hard since the boxes move around faster as the game goes on. It is frustrating, yet fun. So far the longest time I have is 21 seconds, can anyone beat that?

Crushed Dreams

I was thinking about getting a job as a "Rock Statistician" where I tour the country performing Stats, and living the high life, but I found out, to my dismay, that there is no such thing. Which is too bad, I was going to get a glitzy jump suit made up (like Elvis) and everything.

Two cool.

Yesterday I went to the Central Kansas Japanese Festival, and I was planning on posting about that today, but my video from the festival is still being processed by YouTube, so I will post about that later. But to hold you over here is two cool things:

The first is a map of America which is color coded by gas price:

To see an updated map check out GasBuddy.

The second thing is extraordinarily cool: Black light sensitive tattoos:

This gets me about twenty times closer to actually wanting to get a tattoo, however much closer that may be. It is awesome none-the-less. Check out more here.

Tweedledee, Tweedledum

Here is another clip from M@D! with Tweedledee and Tweedledum singing "Sight Reading" by Anything But Joey:

Dog in Shell

Were gonna play a game. Tell me when this would be the perfect gift to give:


Whoever thinks up of the best answer by Sunday will get something, I don't know what yet, but something.

Update! This is from a company called Dog-In-A-Shell, no joking.

Red Lic-a-what?

One of the joys of working for a master's degree is getting to know a good amount of people that are not from America. Sometimes they shed light on subjects that I have not ever thought about.
At today's data mining class I brought the rest of my twizzlers that I had started to devour yesterday (I would have ate them all, but I only took half of them with me to class last time.) I offered some of them to my professor (from China) and a classmate (from ?). My prof. tried it and said that they were ok, and tried to get my classmate to try them as well, which she refused. Then my prof. said that: "it was good, kind of like fruit jerky, and smells like toothpaste." Well if I had never tried them before I wouldn't have after that description.
But was it true? Are twizzlers fruit jerky toothpaste mix? I smelt them, and sadly I have to admit they do kind of smell like toothpaste.
Needless to say my classmate never did try them.

Twizzlers are the devil.

There is something about twizzlers that I can not resist. Once a bag is open, my body thinks that it is its duty to finish the bag. The really bad part is that after about 5 or 6 of them my stomach starts to hurt. But that still doesn't deter me from continuing on my mission to eat all twizzlers in sight. And they aren't even that good.
Are they laced with black magic, nay, red magic? All signs point to yes.

Now... where did I put that bag...

Tea Party

Sorry the updates have been light lately, I have been very busy/out of town for the last couple of days, and actually I don't think things will be getting much better in the near future. But enough about me.
This last weekend I went down to Garden to watch Michelle's play M@D! It was great fun and Michelle did a great job directing/acting in it. One of my favorite scenes from the play is during the Tea Party where the Mad Hatter is singing "One" by Anything But Joey. Here is part of it:

I'll get some more M@D! videos up later. Until then; rock on!

Mad Easter

I just got back from a fun four day weekend in Garden. I had a good time and got to see lots of people. But for now I will enjoy my bed. Oh how I missed the.

Mad! Night one.

Tonight was the first night for Mad, a play that Michelle is producing for her Buff project. Overall it went really well, and there was a relatively good turn out as well. If the internet was of the 56k variety over here I'd post a pic of two, or maybe even get a video of it up. But it was not meant to be.
K I'm heading off to bed.

Ctrl-Z! Ctrl-Z!!!!

Sometimes I wish life came with an undo button.

I got to school early this morning so that I could finish my project which I have to turn in early since I will be gone tomorrow. Well, after finally getting it done, I had to leave really quickly because I had to go give an exam. I dragged the old icon of my jump drive onto the desktop, and oked the prompt to replace my new file with the old one that was still on my jump drive.......
Yeah, that was brilliant.
I deleted four hours of hard work in one second of stupidity. This made my quite mad. Luckily when I got a chance to redo it, it only took me about 45minutes to get it done, since I already knew what to do. But still.

Ok, soon I will be off to Garden for Michelle's play. Look for Garden-y pics.
Rock on.

End Women's Suffrage!

Why is education important?

(The guy is from an all boy's school and this is filmed at an all girl's school.)
The girl's school that this was filmed at got all huffy about this, since "it made their students feel bad" (my summarization). Which should be a good thing, because not knowing that Women's Suffrage is a good thing, while attending an all girls school, should make you feel bad.

On a side note, I am now half the age of my dad. Why is that notable? Because that means he was my age when he had me. Eees. I am having way too much fun to have a kid right now, also I have to save my money for a LimoJet.

Update: I added Tsunami by Steriogram to my music player, it is musically a very good song, and the words aren't that bad either. Steriogram is a pretty good band overall, worth a checkout if you get the chance.

Tax day! Yes!

So I did my taxes today, booyah!
Let me tell you, that is some fun stuff. The best part was when I went to go pay my state taxes and they gave me the options of; American Express, MasterCard, and Discovery.
Yeah, that's right, no Visa option. Awesome.
If I give out awards for the one thing that pisses me off the most each day, this would have won it today. I still got it paid off by electronic check, but really, no Visa? That, my friend, is stupid.

Incredible Machines

This is an awesome clip from Japan about very cool chain reaction machines. Some of them are just brilliant, while other are just run-of-the-mill awesome. I bet you three bucks that you will smile when you watch this video.*


Also last night I got up a music player on my right side bar. Currently there are three songs on it:
Thorn by Bain Mattox (Nicole got me this cd for my birthday last year)
Sweet Sweet Sandi by Fight Biff (These guys came to play here at PJ's and Amber hooked me up the song)
Today is the Day by Apollo Sunshine (A very good spring-y song)

I'll get more music uploaded as I find songs that are worthy.
Enjoy your weekend (watch the video above)!

*All bets are null and void unless I win them.

Master of Science

Oy vey. Today I spent all day finishing up my master's report. It took a good chunk of time but it is now in its "defensible" format. Ok, I am so tired of computers now so here is the abstract for my paper. Enjoy:

***
Though the subject of player choice for fantasy football teams is extensively covered in magazines, the internet, and even specialized computer programs, there has been no serious discussion on what is the best fantasy football scoring system to use. This problem is pertinent because the value of an individual player for a fantasy football team depends greatly on the underlying scoring system used. To make things more complicated, the current standard scoring systems are not optimal; each one is either a bad predictor of the final game score or a bad predictor of the correct winner of a fantasy football game. The goal of this paper is to find an optimal scoring system that can accurately predict the correct game scores, predict the correct winner for a fantasy football game, and reward players in the fantasy game for events that happen in the real game that are not linked to direct scoring statistics. This will be accomplished by using a regression model to find proposed scoring systems and then by comparing them on two different validation tests to find which scoring system is optimal under basic constraints placed on the possible values for the scoring system.
***

You can get the full paper here, as well as all the data (if you're into that kind of thing ^_^ ).

Rock on.

Damaged! (The Epic Conclusion to the Storm Watch Trilogy)

When I got home from picking Nicole up from car pool (around 5) I pulled up the radar to see that the storm was bearing down on us. (This is actually as the storm is on top of Manhattan.)

So Nicole and I gathered our cameras and headed down south of town to the Scenic Outlook. We saw some pretty spiffy evil looking clouds, and just north of these pictures the storm was producing a tornado, but since there was alot of rain we couldn't see it.

Well, when we were just about done watching the storm, it got mad at us.

That is a whole lot of 1 3/4" hail. It didn't really give us any warning, when the first one hit we got up to go back to the car, and then it hailed a whole bunch before we could stand up all the way. I made it to the car unscathed, but Nicole got hit by a hail stone to fulfill the prophesy of 'A Damaging Storm'.

Her welt was pretty big, but she is ok. After the hail (which lasted for maybe a minute) the stormed passed and it cleared up since its destiny was fulfilled.
The End.
(Or is it?)

Storm Watch 2

I just got back from eating Lunch with Amber and one of her friends Ethan (or Nathan, I couldn't tell, but I like Ethan better, so that's what I will call him for now...). It's was Taco Bell, and it was only ok. But it was cool in the Union. So it all evened out.
Anyways, the real reason for the post was to update the foretold damaging storm. Here is the current radar:

The original Wichita storm has broke into a group of smaller storms... it kind of looks like a seahorse now. But I won't be fooled by its cute shape, for I know that this is the damaging storm that the Oracle of Firefox prophesized. I will not let my guard down. I will be alert!

Storm Watch

Since Firefox predicted that to we would be having a damaging storm today I have been checking up on the radar frequently. Nothing happened until about 1.30 and this storm popped up down by Wichita:

It is moving in this direction, so it is the best bet so far as the damaging storm. We'll have to see how it develops through out the day. You can help too: the link to the local radar loop is here. Manhattan in abbreviated as MHK.

More later, possibly pictures of the damage.

My Magical Skiing Adventure!

Ok, before you go any further you most promise me that you at least have an hour to burn. If not, just bookmark this post and come back later.

Ok, I assume that if you are reading this you have a good chunk of time on your hands. Good, because this will take it all up. My Magical Skiing Adventure! is a thread on a forum where a guy draws a story and people on the forum suggest what to do next. It started off this way:

One day I was sitting at home, watcing TV and eating Cheetos.

Suddenly, I grew dissatisfied with life.
I needed to get out of the usual routine, so I decided to climb Mount Everest...
...and then SKI DOWN THE SIDE!!!!!!
My guide suspected nothing, as we made our trek to the summit.
Finally, the moment of truth was upon me. I put on my skis.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a great gust of wind hit me!
I found myself careening out of control, flying down the slope backwards at 80 miles an hour!
WHOOSH!!
As I sailed through the air, I blacked out.
I awoke later, and found myself at the bottom of a deep ice chasm.
I quickly checked my inventory.
And now, here I find myself, trapped at the bottom of an icy crevice with extra underwear, $5, and a half-empty bag of Cheetos.
What do I do?? Where do I go??
Help!
(there are pics for each of the lines)

Then it is up to the forum members to tell him what to do. It is really funny and so far the forum post is 54 pages long. But seriously, I can't do it justice here, you need to check it out.


On a different note, the forecast here for tomorrow doesn't look too good:

The forecast of "A damaging storm" is kind of a strong prediction. Not even "A chance for severe thunderstorms". Nope, it is a unquestionable conclusion that the thunderstorm will be damaging tomorrow, it is just a matter of "how damaging will it be?" We will see about that!
... (eep) ...

Floats

Floats (game)

Floats is a unique game from Orisinal.

### ...Hold up, hold up... 'a unique'? Not 'an unique'? So the 'u' sound isn't a vowel sound. Crazy. OK carry on... ###

The object of the game is to combine all the little bugs into a one huge bug. The way you do this is drawing a loop around bugs of the same color. (Note: clicking once starts the loop, and the loop will be automatically finished when the line you draw completes the loop. It's not click and drag to draw the loops like I expected.) The bugs will combine into a bigger bug if all the bugs in the loop are the same color. There is a time limit so you have to be sort of quick to finish each level. Even though this game is old, it is still a really good one, so check it out.

I used to be real good at this game, but I don't have my old high scores. I just got a score of around 3000, but I am sure that score could be beat in a couple of tries. If you beat the current high score feel free to post it, also if you see any butter monkeys on sale, pick one up for me.

Eyespot

Eyespot is a place to edit videos online. They let you upload all types of video files, as well as .jpg and .mp3s to set your movies to music. It is pretty easy site to use, especially to cut videos and to mash them together. For example I made this riveting video in about two minutes, from one picture and two video clips that I edited down.

I call it; Vault, In Green:

Hey Dude

Never forget your roots.

It's Monday

Senses Challenge (game-ish)

It's Monday so do you know what that means? It's time to flunk a quiz. Senses Challenge tests your senses to see if you can get some tough questions right... beware though, not all of the questions are tricks, so you actually have to think about them. If you are feeling a bit too smart this Monday give the Challenge a spin, it should put you back in your place.

Laser

Laser (game)

Amber showed me Laser a couple of days ago, and I have meant to get it up ever since. The goal of each level of the game is to turn on all the light bulbs using a laser beam which must be split and reflected to make it go where you want it to. The only problem that I have with the game is that once you complete the level it automatically pulls up a "level clear" box which they place right over the completed level. I wish it didn't do this so that I could bask in my own glory for finishing the level.
Laser over is a good puzzler, and in later levels it gets fairly difficult. It is a good game for a lazy Sunday.

(p.s. the game might actually be called Reflections since that word is actually on the game, but the place that is hosting the game calls it Laser. So call it whatever you want, it is the feel good game of the day.)

Spring Cleaning.

I just got done updating some of the big posts.

The Super Game Post now includes all the games on this blog through March.

The Best Posts now includes the 5 best posts from Feb. and March. Also I updated the Bests Posts Ever to include "Sam does Telefund", since it was so funny. I also added the 5 best posts from March on the left side bar. So, well, that is that.

In other news; there are times when I wish that the title of the blog wasn't "I really don't like the word Blog". For one thing it is way too long. But I didn't really think (or care) about it when I started. They just asked me what the title of my blog was, and it so happened that that is the first time that I had actually seen the word 'blog' spelled out, so it was particularly appalling, so my blog title became a comment on that. Unfortunately by the time that I started to care that the title sucked (i.e. I started to get linked from other blogs) it was too late to change. Oh well, as they (don't really) say: You win some, you blog the rest.