Saturday  24 Nov 2012           comment?

I looked into playing Go when I was a teenager but it never appealed to me. I knew the game had a long history and was renowned for its subtlety but it just wasn't to my taste.

Everything I was looking for but didn't find in Go, I found years later in Hex. And because Hex is less than 100 years old and has yet to develop a large following, playing it feels like being in on the ground floor—if of a building whose stature remains to be seen. It's not like chess, where Bobby Fischer proposed starting each game with a different arrangement of the pieces because openings had been analyzed to death.

Another difference between Hex and chess (for me, anyway) is how it feels to review games by top players. Whereas games by chess masters can be interesting, top-level Hex games seem downright magical. They're like proofs of math theorems: they make sense once you see them, but they take a Gauss or an Euler to conjure them out of nothing.

Although I never got into playing Go, I do find the game endearing by virtue of its having a bunch of proverbs. Some are specific to Go, but some are general enough that they could apply to Hex as well, e.g.:
  • Nothing requires doing this or that, but necessity exists.
  • Your enemy's key point is your own key point.
  • It is difficult to know exactly what you are doing.
  • Don't get surrounded! Ever!
  • A basic: Don't push too hard.
I'm still learning the implications of that last one. Compared to top-notch play, a lot of Hex games at my level look like petty squabbles.
Thursday  22 Nov 2012           1 comment

A statistics paradox.

A drug is shown to be slightly more effective than placebo in a trial with subjects who are dancers.

For non-dancers, the drug is also slightly more effective than placebo.

But in combining the two trials, the drug is less effective than placebo.

Is the drug worth taking? Well, are you human or are you (non-)dancer?

 ------- placebo ---------------- drug ---------
 
n
effective
% effective
dancernon-dancer
10001100
300473
30.0%43.0%
dancernon-dancer
10591002
320433
30.2%43.2%
 
n
effective
% effective
       combined
       2100
       773
       36.8%
       combined
       2061
       753
       36.5%


I've been taking Nevirapine since 2005 Yes, this is a contrived example. And it relies on the various arms of the trials having non-uniform values of n, although that's not unusual in the business (see table at right).

I got the idea for this from a book, which described the paradox in terms of trials with male and female subjects. The dancer angle I've used here is an inside joke for he who wants pet ferrets.
Saturday  17 Nov 2012           1 comment

News from the AP ("Mars Rover Is Set to Move On"):
...  Its next major task is to find a rock to drill into, and that requires moving to a new spot.  ...
Sounds familiar. Typical behavior of several dudes I've climbed with.
Monday  12 Nov 2012           comment?

excerpt from _Method of Fluxions_ by Isaac Newton Two unrelated things.

One, how cool is it not just to start a paragraph with a large capital letter, but to capitalize the second letter too.

Two, from xkcd's collection of NHC discussion bulletins:

HURRICANE ISIDORE DISCUSSION NUMBER 24
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MIAMI FL
11 PM EDT SAT SEP 21 2002

HURRICANE ISIDORE CONTINUES TO STRENGTHEN...AND MOVE
TOWARD THE BAY OF CAMPECHE.  HOWEVER...THE NHC WOULD
LIKE TO REMIND EVERYONE IN THE AFFECTED AREA THAT
THE REAL STORM...IS INSIDE US ALL.

$$ FORECASTER ANDERSON
Saturday  10 Nov 2012           3 comments

If,

in a work of fiction,

a prominent general got caught committing adultery with his biographer,

and the bio was called ALL IN,

it would seem
crudely contrived.
that's the way <uh huh uh huh> I like it
Thursday  08 Nov 2012           comment?

ewwwww. just ewwwwww. Should you hear a conservative ask—as some do—how the USA could possibly have reëlected Obama, point them to screen caps of the loser's transition web site and ask how they could think we'd be better off with anyone who would set his name in such a hideous script typeface.

The Secret Service's code name for Romney was Javelin, which the WaPo tells us was a reference to the AMC car. Gremlin would've been better still—but either way, nice touch to give him the name of a relic.
Monday  05 Nov 2012           comment?

conventionallynot so random

xkcd graphic by Randall Munroe used by kind permission

Sunday  04 Nov 2012           comment?

pic taken through (½ of) a pair of binocularsI've been deluged with email asking what happened to the horses that got loose yesterday.
(Either that or I didn't see anything I wanted to take a pic of today.)

I called neighbors who have horses, and although these weren't theirs they knew whose they were and rounded them up. A bucket of food aided in charming them.
Saturday  03 Nov 2012           comment?

pic taken through (½ of) a pair of binoculars This morning I saw two horses running down the trail in open space across the street. They looked to be enjoying new-found freedom.

Then came a point where the trail goes downhill. The horses stopped, as if they knew that coming back would mean uphill and they didn't want to sign up for something that felt like work. They stood around, their body language suggesting thoughts along the lines of OK, now what.

It reminds me of how this autumn has been for me. I quit my job a few months ago and took some time to breathe. Now I stand before various stuff I want to get done, that doesn't happen without effort.
Thursday  01 Nov 2012           comment?

In one of my recurring dreams, I've bought one or more used cars that I don't really want. It can be an annoying dream while it happens but to the extent I can interpret it, it's a nice reminder that a lot of the stuff one is tempted to acquire isn't all that worth having.

Last night I dreamt I was about to drive somewhere with a friend, he looked askance at me when he saw I had a big old car which he didn't think was my style, and I said don't worry, it's a dream car, it's not real even though it looks that way to you now.
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