The December 10th New York Times carried a piece about the scaled down staging of Rogers and Hammerstein's "Show Boat". (I just got around to reading it.) Originally carrying a cast of 50 and an orchestra of 28, Arlington, VA's Signature Theater's production had just 24 actors and an orchestra of 15.
While the article discusses the various incarnations and staging of the musical, I was struck by the thought that it will be increasingly rate for us to see musicals the way they were back in the day due to production costs. How can you get that many people on stage?
Knowing that most of us couldn't afford to see something close to the original staging made me doubly sad.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
How Full of It?
I weighed myself after the Thanksgiving meal without an intervening stop in a small room. While my weight was at the upper end of my guesstimated weight range, vanity wanted it to be at the bottom.
Weighing myself again today with the same clothes after emptying my pockets and an intervening pit stop, the difference was 5.8 pounds.
Now when people tell me I'm full of it, I can agree and provide a quantitative response.
Weighing myself again today with the same clothes after emptying my pockets and an intervening pit stop, the difference was 5.8 pounds.
Now when people tell me I'm full of it, I can agree and provide a quantitative response.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Childhood in a Strict Modernist Household
Once again I find myself reading the NY Times out of time. I couldn't tell. The cover said "Design & Living Winter 2009". (I didn't know when it was published. After a few perfunctory searches I decided to bag the baloney and move on. Here's a quick scan of the cover.)
On second thought, I went to the NY Times site and searched for the title of the article. "Empty Nest Syndrome" and there it was with the subheading "When your parents are hard-core-minimalist, you grow up with nothing — and like it." by Fred A. Bernstein. The article was practically new having been published on November 8, 2009. A passage bothered me:
In Chicago, Emanuela Frankel has spent her life in a loft with concrete floors, white walls, black leather furniture and not much else. Even in her own room, ‘‘I can’t have anything on my desk except a pencil holder and a tissue box,’’ says Frankel, 15, whose parents are both designers in the strict Modernist camp. And nothing on the walls — ‘‘no posters, no magazine cutouts,’’ she said. She compensates, however, with a colorful wardrobe.
No clutter. I can appreciate the thought, the dedication, the rigor and ruthlessness of their lives. I am appalled. I've been in very modern designer residences saddened by the lack of the warmth, the absence of humanity. They don't have a dog do they? Who would want to live in such a sterile environment? Weren't kids supposed to be able to hang posters in their room so that 10 or 15 years later they could mock their younger selves?
On second thought, I went to the NY Times site and searched for the title of the article. "Empty Nest Syndrome" and there it was with the subheading "When your parents are hard-core-minimalist, you grow up with nothing — and like it." by Fred A. Bernstein. The article was practically new having been published on November 8, 2009. A passage bothered me:
In Chicago, Emanuela Frankel has spent her life in a loft with concrete floors, white walls, black leather furniture and not much else. Even in her own room, ‘‘I can’t have anything on my desk except a pencil holder and a tissue box,’’ says Frankel, 15, whose parents are both designers in the strict Modernist camp. And nothing on the walls — ‘‘no posters, no magazine cutouts,’’ she said. She compensates, however, with a colorful wardrobe.
No clutter. I can appreciate the thought, the dedication, the rigor and ruthlessness of their lives. I am appalled. I've been in very modern designer residences saddened by the lack of the warmth, the absence of humanity. They don't have a dog do they? Who would want to live in such a sterile environment? Weren't kids supposed to be able to hang posters in their room so that 10 or 15 years later they could mock their younger selves?
Where are the books that a kid in sheer desperation and boredom might pick up and hours later, where did the afternoon go? Perhaps kids of those parents have enough of the parental gene and psyche to be able to live in that environment. To me it smacks of Harlow's maternal-separation and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys and infant macaques. (See for example A Critique of Maternal Deprivation Experiments on Primates and The Nature of Love by Harry F. Harlow, first published in American Psychologist, 13, 673-685. I remember reading reports of the experiments not long after they were published.)
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Reading History/Boxing and Cleaning Gutters
Just as I was bundling the November 14th New York Times Saturday Sports section for recycling, an article about Joe Santiago, Cotto’s Trainer Learned Outside the Ring caught my eye. The nice thing about reading old newspapers is that the internet makes it easy to jump to the end of the book to see if the butler did it. Did Cotto beat Manny Pacquiao in their World Boxing Organization welterweight title fight?
A quick search gave me the answer: Pacquiao had won. If I were really interested I would have tried to do a competent job determining if ring aficionados blamed Santiago for the loss. Instead, I posted this.
This day was noteworthy because after several weeks of fantasizing (if that is the correct term) I cut a Styrofoam™ block (a Dow registered trade mark for a polystyrene plastic), stuck it on the end of a ladder to avoid marring the siding and unblocked the drain on the gutter of my parents' house.
The whole gutter cleaning operation was unremarkable except that I was reminded once again how aluminum ladders wiggle and why spending a lot of time on ladders with sneakers is a bad idea. (In my case it's because a great deal of pressure is applied to a small area of the foot by the round ladder rungs. I used to wear very stiff soled boots which distributed the pressure evenly on the foot.)
A quick search gave me the answer: Pacquiao had won. If I were really interested I would have tried to do a competent job determining if ring aficionados blamed Santiago for the loss. Instead, I posted this.
This day was noteworthy because after several weeks of fantasizing (if that is the correct term) I cut a Styrofoam™ block (a Dow registered trade mark for a polystyrene plastic), stuck it on the end of a ladder to avoid marring the siding and unblocked the drain on the gutter of my parents' house.
The whole gutter cleaning operation was unremarkable except that I was reminded once again how aluminum ladders wiggle and why spending a lot of time on ladders with sneakers is a bad idea. (In my case it's because a great deal of pressure is applied to a small area of the foot by the round ladder rungs. I used to wear very stiff soled boots which distributed the pressure evenly on the foot.)
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
12 - 8 = 4
I'd had a few e-mail exchanges with a student about tutoring. Our original schedule didn't fit her schedule, but as more tutors came on board and the schedule was changed she let me know she was coming in. That she did. The tutor did the best he could, what with two other students also being there.
She was having problems converting values between number systems. (It is possible to teach students to convert from decimal to binary in their head. I've done it. They've even done the conversion with negative numbers which seems impossible until you learn the trick. I'm shading the truth a bit. The students do the conversion by having each student act as a binary digit. Each student performs a subtraction and passes the remainder on to the next student representing the next smaller digit. I've wandered afield - back to the narrative.)
All that conversion requires is that the student be able to recognize which of two numbers is bigger (most get that), be able to multiply and subtract. Having spent a long time among technical people I was taken aback when the student needed to use her fingers to calculate the result of subtracting 8 from 12.
I thought she was a joking. Then I saw that she had no feel for numbers: when asked "how many times 4,096 went into 49,000" I expected that she's say "a little more than 12." I never expected her to say, "I dunno" and then start guessing.
Hoo-boy we're in trouble here. She said she didn't like math, I replied that part of the reason that the country was in the financial mess it's in might be attributable to people quite literally being unable to do the math on their mortgage commitment. Her answer was something I never have expected. "Oh, I'd only get a fixed rate mortgage.
Take home message? Maybe a heuristic is an adequate substitution for knowledge. Even so, seeing a college student use their fingers to perform simple math still upsets me. (One exception: computer science students learning once again how to use indexes which begin at zero instead of one.)
She was having problems converting values between number systems. (It is possible to teach students to convert from decimal to binary in their head. I've done it. They've even done the conversion with negative numbers which seems impossible until you learn the trick. I'm shading the truth a bit. The students do the conversion by having each student act as a binary digit. Each student performs a subtraction and passes the remainder on to the next student representing the next smaller digit. I've wandered afield - back to the narrative.)
All that conversion requires is that the student be able to recognize which of two numbers is bigger (most get that), be able to multiply and subtract. Having spent a long time among technical people I was taken aback when the student needed to use her fingers to calculate the result of subtracting 8 from 12.
I thought she was a joking. Then I saw that she had no feel for numbers: when asked "how many times 4,096 went into 49,000" I expected that she's say "a little more than 12." I never expected her to say, "I dunno" and then start guessing.
Hoo-boy we're in trouble here. She said she didn't like math, I replied that part of the reason that the country was in the financial mess it's in might be attributable to people quite literally being unable to do the math on their mortgage commitment. Her answer was something I never have expected. "Oh, I'd only get a fixed rate mortgage.
Take home message? Maybe a heuristic is an adequate substitution for knowledge. Even so, seeing a college student use their fingers to perform simple math still upsets me. (One exception: computer science students learning once again how to use indexes which begin at zero instead of one.)
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Drummer/TPE_U-theatre Drum
Last Friday I saw "The Drummer", a reckless-youth-becomes-a-novitiate film. In this case, it is a drum troupe (U-Theatre) that the young man wants to enter. When first heard, the drums are a faint sound coming down from the Taiwanese hills.
The drumming didn't raise the hair on the back of my neck like the drumming in the Chieftains version of "Loch Lomond", but
TPE_U-theatre Drum
The drumming didn't raise the hair on the back of my neck like the drumming in the Chieftains version of "Loch Lomond", but
TPE_U-theatre Drum
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Film Critics United
I stumbled across Film Critics United (http://filmcriticsunited.com/) which seems to be a one man operation by Christopher Armsted. The reviews are enjoyable, but especially so for me because almost every one contains at least one typo. Dirty Pretty Things was an exception: the page was blank.
The mailto: link is labeled "Let Chris How wrong He Is" [sic]. I sent him a list of typos, but have yet to hear back.
The following reviews are worth reading if only for style:
and especially "Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors" because among the typos he omitted a word making the review seem a damning confession. About one of the characters Chris wrote:
"His presence in the film I found the most perplexing and I would probably have to watch the film to get a better understanding of his place in the film."
Ah what a difference the word "again" would make.
The mailto: link is labeled "Let Chris How wrong He Is" [sic]. I sent him a list of typos, but have yet to hear back.
The following reviews are worth reading if only for style:
- The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3
- Pan’s Labyrinth
- Star Trek
- Angels and Demons
and especially "Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors" because among the typos he omitted a word making the review seem a damning confession. About one of the characters Chris wrote:
"His presence in the film I found the most perplexing and I would probably have to watch the film to get a better understanding of his place in the film."
Ah what a difference the word "again" would make.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Glory for Christ Football League
On June 25, 2009 The New York times published "Home-Schooled Football League Thrives in Georgia", an article by Mike Tierney, about a football league for home schoolers.
The picture of a sign on a practice field misspelled two of their 4 priorities and says more about their education than the proverbial thousand words.
The picture of a sign on a practice field misspelled two of their 4 priorities and says more about their education than the proverbial thousand words.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
The Internet to the Rescue: Brakelights
I lent my car to my main squeeze. Later that night she called to say that all the brake lights (left, right, and high mount) would not go off. She tried pulling the fuses, but that didn't work. I suggested that she just pull the battery cable, but she didn't feel up to doing that in the night. It took a call to AAA in the morning for her to get started.Being ever resourceful, when she got back, she searched the web to find the brake wiring diagram on about.com which seemed to show that the brake light switch was the culprit. Some more searches and I had a decent idea where to find the switch and what to do on answers.yahoo.com. (Being who I am, there was an interlude to notify all-parts.com that they'd misspelled "Cadillac" as "Caddillac".)
With her watching the rear lights we determined that two thicknesses of a postcard were all that separated the switch indicating the brake being on or off. My guiding principle in this regard is to ask myself, "What would Bob do?", Bob being a fellow graduate student with a firm idea of quality workmanship, integrity, and what slapdash fix would hold until the cavalry arrived.I didn't have the necessary open end wrenches so I wrapped the brake pedal lever with the necessary cardboard and went looking for a sale on open end wrenches. My usual source for cheap tools (tools I can lend or lose without getting upset), National Wholesale Liquidators, closed it's stores in my area due to the credit crunch and there doesn't seem to an obvious replacement.
Stay tuned.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Stats Update
One of the stats profs dropped by for something else and I managed to inveigle him into analyzing a particular set of stats. It looked to me as if there was a difference between accredited departments and those which weren't. Sure enough a Chi-square showed significance way out to the p=.0001 level.
What was interesting because I don't yet understand it was that calculating Chi-square using a spreadsheet was half the value generated by SPSS. The stats prof said it was because of the way Chi-Square stats treat a 2x2 matrix. Beyond me, but I passed the good news along to the prof who wanted to find something significant to say about her survey.
Only later I found that "significance" is not as significant as it once was: statisticians seem to prefer describing confidence levels rather than specifying the probability of significance.
What was interesting because I don't yet understand it was that calculating Chi-square using a spreadsheet was half the value generated by SPSS. The stats prof said it was because of the way Chi-Square stats treat a 2x2 matrix. Beyond me, but I passed the good news along to the prof who wanted to find something significant to say about her survey.
Only later I found that "significance" is not as significant as it once was: statisticians seem to prefer describing confidence levels rather than specifying the probability of significance.
My Favorite Porn - I
Watching math videos is a rarefied perversion, but a fascinating one none the less. The poster child is BottemasTheorem. The theorem is simple to state: Draw squares on AB and BC on two sides of the triangle ABC. Let R and S be the points on the squares opposite vertex B. Then the midpoint M of RS is independent of B.
The setup looks like this:
The point labeled M does not move regardless of how the red triangle is changed. Mathematica's Demonstration site shows the deformed triangle (below) but the understanding of the theorem conveyed by the triptych is nothing compared to the impression of the online demo.
Click on any of the images to go to the site and start the animation.
The mathematicians who stumble onto the Mathematica are mesmerized by the demos until the need to tap a kidney bring them back to reality.
If math doesn't attract you, you still might want to take a look. Measuring the Speed of Light with Marshmallows is fascinating even for mathphobes.
Enjoy.
The setup looks like this:
The point labeled M does not move regardless of how the red triangle is changed. Mathematica's Demonstration site shows the deformed triangle (below) but the understanding of the theorem conveyed by the triptych is nothing compared to the impression of the online demo.Click on any of the images to go to the site and start the animation.
The mathematicians who stumble onto the Mathematica are mesmerized by the demos until the need to tap a kidney bring them back to reality.
If math doesn't attract you, you still might want to take a look. Measuring the Speed of Light with Marshmallows is fascinating even for mathphobes.
Enjoy.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Blind Shaft
Based on familiar scandals in China's mines, Blind Shaft is a raw Chinese film about two ruthless grifters who, by pretending to be the relatives of miners who die in "accidents" they've staged, collect money from the mine owners. Mines owners pay because the mines are operating illegally or with substandard safety.An unsparing camera follows the two men and their next victim, an innocent 16-year old who's trying to earn money to get back into school or get the school fees for his sister.
In a karaoke type singalong in a brothel, one of the grifters selects "Long Live Socialism" on the karaoke machine. As the men start to sing one of the girls asks if he's a hick. He's singing the old lyrics? Old lyrics? The new lyrics (according to the subtitles) include "The capitalist came back with their American dollars."
In one of the nicer touches in the film, one of the men who has misgivings about this particular scam tries to give him a last good taste of life with session with a prostitute. The boy bolts, but later, by chance, meets her again at an office where both have goneto wire money home.
The very fact that the film got made speaks volumes about changes in China. There is no musical sound track. There are no special effects. The production values are low. The story seems to have been caught on home video and seems just as real. The depiction of the underclass and the relentless drive for money makes its case more than any proletarian socialist realism film ever could.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
The Future of Textbooks is Colored Orange
This has been sitting in draft since May 25th 2009. In the interim the textbook rental market has taken off. The references to the movie theaters, airlines, and credit card companies are still relevant as business are still nickel and dime-ing, "breaking out services", or scrambling to make up forlost revenue.
On the very first day of Stats the instructor asked who had purchased the book, where they got it, and how much they paid. One student said she rented her book on line from Chegg.com for ~$40. Others had paid over $150.
I took a look, rented the text on Wednesday, paid for expedited shipping, and, lo and behold, an orange box arrived via UPS on Friday. The book looks pristine. Amazing!
Chegg.com and the recent Credit Card Bill Of Rights legislation got me thinking about capitalism, movie theaters, and credit cards. It seems that credit card companies cannot make money on people like myself who pay their bills on time in the same way that supermarkets can't make a profit from me because I've never left the impoverished graduate student mentality behind.
Credit card services provide an exceptionally useful service by minimizing the need to use cash for transactions and speeding commerce. If I had to pay for the textbook by check I would not have gotten the textbook anywhere as quickly as the check winged it's way to the vendor and being routed through the banking system. Add on the delay of a weekend and I would be half way through a summer course without the book unless I forked over considerably more money.
If the credit card companies are making money, they're not making money on me. Someone else is taking up my slack. Thank you, but is it fair? It is analogous to the movie theater owners who can't make money on what is ostensibly their business: showing movies. I'm told that their profits come from the (overpriced) concessions.
(It was not always thus. Back when I was an undergraduate, someone obtained a large brown paper sack of popcorn. I was told that the sack was what theater owners poured into their popcorn machines. The popcorn machines in theaters only warmed the popcorn. The machines didn't actually pop the popcorn. (It was one of many myths shattered in college.) I remember bringing the sack into the theater with about half a dozen others. The kid with the sack sat in the middle seat in the second of 3 rows with the sack extended lengthwise so it overlapped the seat of the guys next to him. We punched a hole in the top side of the bag at either end and in the middle so all of us could reach in for popcorn. Nowadays, something like that could only happen at free films.)
In this regard what is fair? Am I taking unfair advantage of the poor credit card companies, enjoying the good life financed by the wretched of the earth who can't manage their credit or driven in desperation to borrow at exorbitant rates? (Will Jesus not drive these money lenders from the temple?) Could be. On the other hand, by taking advantage of the situation I'm revealing flaws in the business plans of the credit card companies thus strengthening the capitalism's Darwinian imperative. (The Cato Institute is invited to donate to my PayPal account.) Or helping to destabilize evil Capitalism. (Surviving members of the International Communist Conspiracy are invited to donate to my PayPal account.) Or playing into the hands of the Capitalist masters so they can appeal to their government lackeys to use legislation to save them from the proletarian onslaught when their profits tank. (Whoo. the 60's are coming back with a rush!)
Is there a sensible way of viewing the situation? I always considered credit card purchases as a short term, no interest loan. In my days of impoverishment (make a note: not a bad title) I would keep a mental tally of what I owed. I was fortunate enough that I didn't need to cover a large unexpected medical bill. Are the frequent flier miles programs essential for their business or a marketing idea come back to bite airlines? Does the need to offer inducements or grow their market by extending credit to those who can't repay the total represent a flawed business model or have credit card companies found themselves caught short like Long Term Capital Management: strategies which worked well during "normal" economic times fail disastrously in times of upheaval.
On the very first day of Stats the instructor asked who had purchased the book, where they got it, and how much they paid. One student said she rented her book on line from Chegg.com for ~$40. Others had paid over $150.
I took a look, rented the text on Wednesday, paid for expedited shipping, and, lo and behold, an orange box arrived via UPS on Friday. The book looks pristine. Amazing!
Chegg.com and the recent Credit Card Bill Of Rights legislation got me thinking about capitalism, movie theaters, and credit cards. It seems that credit card companies cannot make money on people like myself who pay their bills on time in the same way that supermarkets can't make a profit from me because I've never left the impoverished graduate student mentality behind.
Credit card services provide an exceptionally useful service by minimizing the need to use cash for transactions and speeding commerce. If I had to pay for the textbook by check I would not have gotten the textbook anywhere as quickly as the check winged it's way to the vendor and being routed through the banking system. Add on the delay of a weekend and I would be half way through a summer course without the book unless I forked over considerably more money.
If the credit card companies are making money, they're not making money on me. Someone else is taking up my slack. Thank you, but is it fair? It is analogous to the movie theater owners who can't make money on what is ostensibly their business: showing movies. I'm told that their profits come from the (overpriced) concessions.
(It was not always thus. Back when I was an undergraduate, someone obtained a large brown paper sack of popcorn. I was told that the sack was what theater owners poured into their popcorn machines. The popcorn machines in theaters only warmed the popcorn. The machines didn't actually pop the popcorn. (It was one of many myths shattered in college.) I remember bringing the sack into the theater with about half a dozen others. The kid with the sack sat in the middle seat in the second of 3 rows with the sack extended lengthwise so it overlapped the seat of the guys next to him. We punched a hole in the top side of the bag at either end and in the middle so all of us could reach in for popcorn. Nowadays, something like that could only happen at free films.)
In this regard what is fair? Am I taking unfair advantage of the poor credit card companies, enjoying the good life financed by the wretched of the earth who can't manage their credit or driven in desperation to borrow at exorbitant rates? (Will Jesus not drive these money lenders from the temple?) Could be. On the other hand, by taking advantage of the situation I'm revealing flaws in the business plans of the credit card companies thus strengthening the capitalism's Darwinian imperative. (The Cato Institute is invited to donate to my PayPal account.) Or helping to destabilize evil Capitalism. (Surviving members of the International Communist Conspiracy are invited to donate to my PayPal account.) Or playing into the hands of the Capitalist masters so they can appeal to their government lackeys to use legislation to save them from the proletarian onslaught when their profits tank. (Whoo. the 60's are coming back with a rush!)
Is there a sensible way of viewing the situation? I always considered credit card purchases as a short term, no interest loan. In my days of impoverishment (make a note: not a bad title) I would keep a mental tally of what I owed. I was fortunate enough that I didn't need to cover a large unexpected medical bill. Are the frequent flier miles programs essential for their business or a marketing idea come back to bite airlines? Does the need to offer inducements or grow their market by extending credit to those who can't repay the total represent a flawed business model or have credit card companies found themselves caught short like Long Term Capital Management: strategies which worked well during "normal" economic times fail disastrously in times of upheaval.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Statistics - Aaarrrggghhhh!
My knowledge of statistics is embarrassingly poor. I've a layman's sense of what variance, covariance, and standard deviation means. The calculation part is simple. Understanding when to apply a measurement (1-tail, 2-tail, general linear model) and the significance of the result is beyond me.
I can usually skate by with just this, but I created a program which, among other things, calculates Cronbach's coefficient of alpha. From my readings, Cronbach's alpha is not a statistic, but a measure of internal consistency. As an example, does the overall exam grade reflect the overall question grades? Described as a measure of internal consistency, as I understand it alpha let's you see how the the variations on individual questions compare with the variation of the entire exam. (I've been told that the coefficient of alpha was really designed to be used on Likert scales, e.g., scales from excellent to very poor, rather than on test scores, but I'm having enough trouble wrapping my mind around the concept that I'll agree with anyone who purports to know what they're talking about.)
Onward.
I recently volunteered to analyze the stats of a recent survey figuring that I'd learned something in the process. What I learned was that the survey was not constructed well, that there was no universally accepted way of analyzing the survey, and I needed to know more about stats.
The statisticians were uniformly kind and most enjoyed themselves richly making derogatory comments about the people who constructed the survey. I could smile because I had nothing to do with creating the survey.
In the end, only one of several important questions on the survey yielded a significant result if you made certain assumptions about the responses: instructor's teaching distance learning courses seemed to think that the size of the classes they taught were appropriate. (The reason the results are questionable is that there was no indication that the instructors were answering questions about the same type of class(es).)
But that's not why I started this post. I had rewritten an Opscan/Scantron grading program and all the stats but Cronbach's Alpha worked out correctly. We know that only one instructor actually checked those statistics, so I was able to let that slide citing the press of other work. It looks as though I'll have the time now. So...
Always one to shirk duty, but having used up all my excuses, I searched the web for information about Cronbach's coefficient of alpha and was disappointed to find that the example on the NIH's web site had an error. The bleeping National Institute of Health! Sigh. Double check me: Table 18-2. Number of Teeth in the Sex Comb on the Right (x) and Left (y) Legs and the Sum of the Two (T) for 20 Drosophila Males contains an error. If you've got a moment, find the average value of column labeled x. The total of 20 numbers comes out to 133 with an average of 6.65 by my calculations. The illustration shows the average to be 6.25. The error seems to have escaped the authors and reviewers because the value of 6.65 is used about a quarter way down the page in the calculation of cov xy. The book, should you be inclided to investigage is Modern Genetic Analysis by A. J. F. Griffiths, W. M. Gelbart, J. H. Miller, R. C. Lewontin published by W. H. Freeman and Company (1999) ISBN 0-7167-3118-5.
I'm off to find another reference which will show me how to calculate Cronbach's alpha. Alternatively, maybe I can convince people that they don't need alpha calculated. Most instructors just look at the grades. Only one instructor actually looked at the kurtosis values, but then he was a Psych prof and measurements was his specialty.
I can usually skate by with just this, but I created a program which, among other things, calculates Cronbach's coefficient of alpha. From my readings, Cronbach's alpha is not a statistic, but a measure of internal consistency. As an example, does the overall exam grade reflect the overall question grades? Described as a measure of internal consistency, as I understand it alpha let's you see how the the variations on individual questions compare with the variation of the entire exam. (I've been told that the coefficient of alpha was really designed to be used on Likert scales, e.g., scales from excellent to very poor, rather than on test scores, but I'm having enough trouble wrapping my mind around the concept that I'll agree with anyone who purports to know what they're talking about.)
Onward.
I recently volunteered to analyze the stats of a recent survey figuring that I'd learned something in the process. What I learned was that the survey was not constructed well, that there was no universally accepted way of analyzing the survey, and I needed to know more about stats.
The statisticians were uniformly kind and most enjoyed themselves richly making derogatory comments about the people who constructed the survey. I could smile because I had nothing to do with creating the survey.
In the end, only one of several important questions on the survey yielded a significant result if you made certain assumptions about the responses: instructor's teaching distance learning courses seemed to think that the size of the classes they taught were appropriate. (The reason the results are questionable is that there was no indication that the instructors were answering questions about the same type of class(es).)
But that's not why I started this post. I had rewritten an Opscan/Scantron grading program and all the stats but Cronbach's Alpha worked out correctly. We know that only one instructor actually checked those statistics, so I was able to let that slide citing the press of other work. It looks as though I'll have the time now. So...
Always one to shirk duty, but having used up all my excuses, I searched the web for information about Cronbach's coefficient of alpha and was disappointed to find that the example on the NIH's web site had an error. The bleeping National Institute of Health! Sigh. Double check me: Table 18-2. Number of Teeth in the Sex Comb on the Right (x) and Left (y) Legs and the Sum of the Two (T) for 20 Drosophila Males contains an error. If you've got a moment, find the average value of column labeled x. The total of 20 numbers comes out to 133 with an average of 6.65 by my calculations. The illustration shows the average to be 6.25. The error seems to have escaped the authors and reviewers because the value of 6.65 is used about a quarter way down the page in the calculation of cov xy. The book, should you be inclided to investigage is Modern Genetic Analysis by A. J. F. Griffiths, W. M. Gelbart, J. H. Miller, R. C. Lewontin published by W. H. Freeman and Company (1999) ISBN 0-7167-3118-5.
I'm off to find another reference which will show me how to calculate Cronbach's alpha. Alternatively, maybe I can convince people that they don't need alpha calculated. Most instructors just look at the grades. Only one instructor actually looked at the kurtosis values, but then he was a Psych prof and measurements was his specialty.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Economic Indicators/Latisse
Like my mother, I say I'm reading history when what I'm really doing is reading old issues of the NY Times. Today's readings included two bell weathers of economic tidings. From February 5th, Vanity’s Downturn: Botox Use, and Allergan Sales, Dip reported that facial fillers were down 8.8%, breast implants were down 12%, and botox injections were down 3% for year over year quarterly sales. This is taken as a sure sign of a decrease in disposable income.
As someone who sense of style is notable by its absence, even more fascinating was learning that Allergan, whose main business is eye care pharmaceuticals, will be introducing Latisse an "eyelash growth drug". My immediate thought was that this might be the next Pretty Feet, the product which put Jerry Della Femina on the map. (A web search shows that the product, now known as Pretty Feet and Hands, is still on the market.) (The pro forma sarcastic comments are now inserted: Now in addition to worrying about the economy, health insurance, violence and locusts, women will also have to worry about the thickness of their lashes.)
And if you needed additional confirmation about the tragic state of the economy, there it was in black and white in today's NY Times: More Artworks Sell in Private in Slowdown. Private sales are increasing for a number of reasons. From the sellers side a private sale hides the seller's need for money and loss of face if an auctioned item gets not bids or if the selling price is low. Auction houses on the other hand charge less for private sales, but that is balanced by reducing expenses by avoiding price guarantees, advertising, insurance, and the logistics of shipping and storage.
It's a different world from my college days when a Personality Poster was all you needed to decorate your room. You knew the student had class and money if the poster was framed instead of just tacked to the wall. (Diverted by the thought, I stumbled around the web trying to locate the iconic W.C. Fields poster: "Never give a sucker an even break". It was offered for sale for $99 plus $6 shipping on ioffer.com. That the offer had no takers since November of 2008 indicates that it might be overpriced. maybe the poster is available in a store. Should real, traditional, you walk-in-the-door store now be preceded by the retronym: "brick and mortar"?)
As someone who sense of style is notable by its absence, even more fascinating was learning that Allergan, whose main business is eye care pharmaceuticals, will be introducing Latisse an "eyelash growth drug". My immediate thought was that this might be the next Pretty Feet, the product which put Jerry Della Femina on the map. (A web search shows that the product, now known as Pretty Feet and Hands, is still on the market.) (The pro forma sarcastic comments are now inserted: Now in addition to worrying about the economy, health insurance, violence and locusts, women will also have to worry about the thickness of their lashes.)
And if you needed additional confirmation about the tragic state of the economy, there it was in black and white in today's NY Times: More Artworks Sell in Private in Slowdown. Private sales are increasing for a number of reasons. From the sellers side a private sale hides the seller's need for money and loss of face if an auctioned item gets not bids or if the selling price is low. Auction houses on the other hand charge less for private sales, but that is balanced by reducing expenses by avoiding price guarantees, advertising, insurance, and the logistics of shipping and storage.
It's a different world from my college days when a Personality Poster was all you needed to decorate your room. You knew the student had class and money if the poster was framed instead of just tacked to the wall. (Diverted by the thought, I stumbled around the web trying to locate the iconic W.C. Fields poster: "Never give a sucker an even break". It was offered for sale for $99 plus $6 shipping on ioffer.com. That the offer had no takers since November of 2008 indicates that it might be overpriced. maybe the poster is available in a store. Should real, traditional, you walk-in-the-door store now be preceded by the retronym: "brick and mortar"?)
Friday, April 10, 2009
I Make Matzos Balls (Everyone Survives)
I promised my brother I'd make matzo balls for Passover. After many years of experimentation we found the "best" recipe, that is best by the normal culinary standard of uniformity of texture and taste, to be the recipe on the side of the box. All we had in the house was a canister of whole grain matzo meal which did not have a recipe for matzo balls on the side. The previous year my father had a family friend buy regular matzo meal rather than use the whole grain stuff so the whole grain stuff was at least one lunar year old.
Where was I going to find a recipe? I turned to the web of course. (A more traditional approach would have been to go to go to a supermarket and look at boxes of matzo meal.) In the course of searching I learned that Manischewitz revolutionized matzo by inventing machines which could satisfy the rabbinical strictures (I believe that to be kosher for Passover the dough has to be be baked within 18 minutes of mixing), and that Streit's sold their lower East Side bakery in 2007, but I had a hard time finding a recipe. (In these times "hard means a web search which takes more than a minute.)
There were recipes for tri-colored matzo (green colored with pureed spinach, yellow made with turmeric and a red using tomato paste), using matzo with veal, for frying fish, etc. I passed on every recipe which promised "light and fluffy" matzo balls. My brother and I like matzo which my brother describes as aldente. I describe my preference as soft on the outside and rubbery on the inside. (Guess which one of us works in the food industry.)
Matzo Balls III (jewishfood-list.com) got my attention:
The recipe promised to serve 5. That sealed the deal: we expected 5 for seder.
A background in chemistry and biochemistry prepares one to following recipes, but not necessarily for creative cookery. I almost followed the recipe. The list of ingredients contain a "dash pepper", but the recipe doesn't describe when or even if to add the pepper. (Maybe the pepper was to throw at people who annoy the cook or to ward off evil spirits.)
Matzo balls are a subset of genus dumpling. To my embarrassment, I was surprised that the melted margarine solidified when I added it to the dry ingredients. Getting a uniform mix of the dry ingredients and the margarine provided a good aerobic workout.
I stored the matzo balls in the refrigerator, my brother used the turkey broth frozen since Thanksgiving to make the soup, and we all got to weigh in on their matzo ball preferences. Much to my relief nobody complained about the matzo balls and, as the heading states, everybody survived.
My brother conducted two services: Michael Rubiner's "The Two-Minute Haggadah" and then his own service (complete with seder plate orange) from the Maxwell House haggadah. I might have been tired. It might have been the realization of the futility of some other reason, but I refrained from complaining that the erudition of rabbinic sages is a cover for delusional numerology.
So passed another Passover.
Where was I going to find a recipe? I turned to the web of course. (A more traditional approach would have been to go to go to a supermarket and look at boxes of matzo meal.) In the course of searching I learned that Manischewitz revolutionized matzo by inventing machines which could satisfy the rabbinical strictures (I believe that to be kosher for Passover the dough has to be be baked within 18 minutes of mixing), and that Streit's sold their lower East Side bakery in 2007, but I had a hard time finding a recipe. (In these times "hard means a web search which takes more than a minute.)
There were recipes for tri-colored matzo (green colored with pureed spinach, yellow made with turmeric and a red using tomato paste), using matzo with veal, for frying fish, etc. I passed on every recipe which promised "light and fluffy" matzo balls. My brother and I like matzo which my brother describes as aldente. I describe my preference as soft on the outside and rubbery on the inside. (Guess which one of us works in the food industry.)
Matzo Balls III (jewishfood-list.com) got my attention:
"I use a little over a cup of matzo meal but be careful, too much turns them into 'sinkers.'"
The recipe promised to serve 5. That sealed the deal: we expected 5 for seder.
A background in chemistry and biochemistry prepares one to following recipes, but not necessarily for creative cookery. I almost followed the recipe. The list of ingredients contain a "dash pepper", but the recipe doesn't describe when or even if to add the pepper. (Maybe the pepper was to throw at people who annoy the cook or to ward off evil spirits.)
Matzo balls are a subset of genus dumpling. To my embarrassment, I was surprised that the melted margarine solidified when I added it to the dry ingredients. Getting a uniform mix of the dry ingredients and the margarine provided a good aerobic workout.
I stored the matzo balls in the refrigerator, my brother used the turkey broth frozen since Thanksgiving to make the soup, and we all got to weigh in on their matzo ball preferences. Much to my relief nobody complained about the matzo balls and, as the heading states, everybody survived.
My brother conducted two services: Michael Rubiner's "The Two-Minute Haggadah" and then his own service (complete with seder plate orange) from the Maxwell House haggadah. I might have been tired. It might have been the realization of the futility of some other reason, but I refrained from complaining that the erudition of rabbinic sages is a cover for delusional numerology.
So passed another Passover.
Friday, April 03, 2009
"Hey kids! Let's put on a show!"
I was asked to help one of the bigger cheeses with his presentation on the current economic turmoil ramifications for higher education. I've enjoyed working with him in the past because he freely admit his limited understanding of technology, but he knows what he wants, has a decent feel for what technology can do, and has an excellent sense of organization. By this last I mean that he'll find references and statistics and knows how to arrange them in the presentation. I do the dog work, make a few stylistic suggestions which are usually taken, and, in this case, had two slides I suggested included in the presentation. We used PowerPoint in the past and this was no different except we used a newer version.
As deadlines approaches there are always modifications, but these never even rise to the level of an imposition: moving a few slides around or maybe deleting or adding a few slides a day or two before the actual presentation. Anyone in a similar position will recognize this as nothing unusual or onerous. What was gruesome was the videos.
Jumping to the chase: the presentation worked flawlessly on multiple laptops and desktops whether run from hard drive, CD or USB key. On his Lenovo X61 notebook videos froze. Because we weren't as sharp as we should have been and because of certain initial problems with the videos we didn't realize that the problem was the notebook not the videos. We tried to contact the conference's technical contact because it wasn't clear from their instructions whether presentations had to be run on their equipment or whether we'd be allowed to use our own. Could the presentation be on a CD or USB key? Our preference would have been to FedEx a CD with the presentation to someone at the conference who would let us know if there were any problems, but the conference's technical contact didn't get back to us until the day before the conference.
(Because of an ugly incident at a conference we hosted many years ago we've been exceptionally sensitive about these things. People who indicate that they don't need anything special don't realize that their standard company issued PC includes a special sauce.)
Something no one anticipated sucked several other members of my department into the project. In desperation some proposed converting the whole presentation to Flash.
My throw-in-the-towel solution was to send him to the conference with the old laptop they had around his office (the same laptop I used to develop the presentation) and his X61 which he used for business. When I say old I mean a laptop with no Windows key on the keyboard, a Y key which is askew, and a defective left Ctrl key. (The right Ctrl key works.) My guy's attitude is great: if he won't be embarrassed during the presentation he's satisfied. (They may kick sand in his face because he's schlepping an old laptop, but as long as the presentation doesn't blow up he'll be satisfied.) The conference organizers might not have liked it, but it was unlikely that they'd tell the keynote speaker that he couldn't use his own laptop.
That said, he knew humor was needed to leaven the steady drumbeat of grim economic news. Video clips seemed the most natural.The first was a clip from Horsefeathers, the Marx Brothers' farce, where Groucho deciding that it is too expensive to maintain both the college and the football team decides to tear down the college. Where will the student's sleep? "They'll sleep where they always sleep: in the classroom." (Always mindful of running afoul of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) the Horsefeathers clip came from a VHS tape.)
Then there was a scene from Damn Yankees. He wanted to introduce the clip by saying "Nobody likes times like these, except..." and then the clip of Appplegate (the Devil) singing about the "Good Old Days". (The clip included scenes of people jumping from windows on Wall Street. )
What we all felt would be a natural conclusion was a clip with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland saying "Hey kids! Let's put on a show!" A quick web search turned up an einsiders.com review indicated that it was in Girl Crazy in which Rooney and Garland put on a show to save Cody College. As fast as you could whip out a credit card the box set was ordered on a Friday and delivered to me on Monday. (I did say the presentation was for someone at the top.)
After watching over 6 hours of the dynamic duo (Babes in Arms, Babes on Broadway, and Strike Up the Band in addition to the aforementioned Girl Crazy), I stand before you to say that "Hey kids! Let's put on a show!" may join the ranks of "Play it again Sam" or "Alas poor Yorick. I knew him well." - lines which everyone remembers, but were never said. The line may exist in an Andy Hardy film, but not in the versions of the films in the boxed set. (What did you do today? I watched 4 Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland films to find 5 seconds of non-existent dialogue. Three other people scanned the films looking for the line.)
We tried to cobble three snippets from Girl Crazy) to show a radio news flash of the legislature's intention of closing Cody College due to a lack of enrollment, Mickey and Judy suggesting to the dean that they put the college on the map with a rodeo show, and the scene where they dump a sackful of applications on the dean's desk as Judy triumphantly exclaims "The governor can't close the school now!" Our ability to extract a clip from DVD to QuickTime worked fine. Editing the QuickTime clip worked fine. The conversion to WMV format not so fine. We lost or gained fractional parts. In the end we never got a usable clip from the boxed set. (I now have the background, but not the nerve to apply for a grant for Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland studies.)
As deadlines approaches there are always modifications, but these never even rise to the level of an imposition: moving a few slides around or maybe deleting or adding a few slides a day or two before the actual presentation. Anyone in a similar position will recognize this as nothing unusual or onerous. What was gruesome was the videos.
Jumping to the chase: the presentation worked flawlessly on multiple laptops and desktops whether run from hard drive, CD or USB key. On his Lenovo X61 notebook videos froze. Because we weren't as sharp as we should have been and because of certain initial problems with the videos we didn't realize that the problem was the notebook not the videos. We tried to contact the conference's technical contact because it wasn't clear from their instructions whether presentations had to be run on their equipment or whether we'd be allowed to use our own. Could the presentation be on a CD or USB key? Our preference would have been to FedEx a CD with the presentation to someone at the conference who would let us know if there were any problems, but the conference's technical contact didn't get back to us until the day before the conference.
(Because of an ugly incident at a conference we hosted many years ago we've been exceptionally sensitive about these things. People who indicate that they don't need anything special don't realize that their standard company issued PC includes a special sauce.)
Something no one anticipated sucked several other members of my department into the project. In desperation some proposed converting the whole presentation to Flash.
My throw-in-the-towel solution was to send him to the conference with the old laptop they had around his office (the same laptop I used to develop the presentation) and his X61 which he used for business. When I say old I mean a laptop with no Windows key on the keyboard, a Y key which is askew, and a defective left Ctrl key. (The right Ctrl key works.) My guy's attitude is great: if he won't be embarrassed during the presentation he's satisfied. (They may kick sand in his face because he's schlepping an old laptop, but as long as the presentation doesn't blow up he'll be satisfied.) The conference organizers might not have liked it, but it was unlikely that they'd tell the keynote speaker that he couldn't use his own laptop.
That said, he knew humor was needed to leaven the steady drumbeat of grim economic news. Video clips seemed the most natural.The first was a clip from Horsefeathers, the Marx Brothers' farce, where Groucho deciding that it is too expensive to maintain both the college and the football team decides to tear down the college. Where will the student's sleep? "They'll sleep where they always sleep: in the classroom." (Always mindful of running afoul of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) the Horsefeathers clip came from a VHS tape.)
Then there was a scene from Damn Yankees. He wanted to introduce the clip by saying "Nobody likes times like these, except..." and then the clip of Appplegate (the Devil) singing about the "Good Old Days". (The clip included scenes of people jumping from windows on Wall Street. )
What we all felt would be a natural conclusion was a clip with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland saying "Hey kids! Let's put on a show!" A quick web search turned up an einsiders.com review indicated that it was in Girl Crazy in which Rooney and Garland put on a show to save Cody College. As fast as you could whip out a credit card the box set was ordered on a Friday and delivered to me on Monday. (I did say the presentation was for someone at the top.)
After watching over 6 hours of the dynamic duo (Babes in Arms, Babes on Broadway, and Strike Up the Band in addition to the aforementioned Girl Crazy), I stand before you to say that "Hey kids! Let's put on a show!" may join the ranks of "Play it again Sam" or "Alas poor Yorick. I knew him well." - lines which everyone remembers, but were never said. The line may exist in an Andy Hardy film, but not in the versions of the films in the boxed set. (What did you do today? I watched 4 Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland films to find 5 seconds of non-existent dialogue. Three other people scanned the films looking for the line.)
We tried to cobble three snippets from Girl Crazy) to show a radio news flash of the legislature's intention of closing Cody College due to a lack of enrollment, Mickey and Judy suggesting to the dean that they put the college on the map with a rodeo show, and the scene where they dump a sackful of applications on the dean's desk as Judy triumphantly exclaims "The governor can't close the school now!" Our ability to extract a clip from DVD to QuickTime worked fine. Editing the QuickTime clip worked fine. The conversion to WMV format not so fine. We lost or gained fractional parts. In the end we never got a usable clip from the boxed set. (I now have the background, but not the nerve to apply for a grant for Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland studies.)
Sunday, March 29, 2009
TheGreat Train Robbery
When I spotted the book at a garage sale I remembered the movie with Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, and Leslie-Ann Down was a good historical drama/thriller (a "ripping tale") and thought, why not?
The novel reminded me of a Mark Twain story, the title of which now eludes me, and John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman. Twain interspersed statistics, the effect not unlike the cinematic effect of a voice over describing a city with the subsequent action reflecting the facts. The French Lieutenant's Woman provided Fowles ample opportunities to discourse on Victorian era sociology. (I'm a sucker for this stuff: I have fond memories of a classic sociology study Family and Kinship in East London")
Part of the enjoyment of The Great Train robbery stemmed from deciphering period criminal slang. In one section, ostensibly quoting from the trial transcript one of the thieves explains, "... he plays like a flimp or a dub buzzer, or a mutcher, no interest or importance, and this because he don' want the skipper to granny that a bone lay is afoot." (p 104) and then the theif is perplexed when the judge asks the thief to explain his explanation. (I thought that a judge who dealt with criminals would have mastered the argot, but then this is a novel and the passage is amusing.)
I was struck by one curious difference between the movie and the book: the novel made repeated reference to the mastermind's red beard, but this was not significant enough to have Sean Connery's beard dyed red for the movie.
The novel reminded me of a Mark Twain story, the title of which now eludes me, and John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman. Twain interspersed statistics, the effect not unlike the cinematic effect of a voice over describing a city with the subsequent action reflecting the facts. The French Lieutenant's Woman provided Fowles ample opportunities to discourse on Victorian era sociology. (I'm a sucker for this stuff: I have fond memories of a classic sociology study Family and Kinship in East London")
Part of the enjoyment of The Great Train robbery stemmed from deciphering period criminal slang. In one section, ostensibly quoting from the trial transcript one of the thieves explains, "... he plays like a flimp or a dub buzzer, or a mutcher, no interest or importance, and this because he don' want the skipper to granny that a bone lay is afoot." (p 104) and then the theif is perplexed when the judge asks the thief to explain his explanation. (I thought that a judge who dealt with criminals would have mastered the argot, but then this is a novel and the passage is amusing.)
I was struck by one curious difference between the movie and the book: the novel made repeated reference to the mastermind's red beard, but this was not significant enough to have Sean Connery's beard dyed red for the movie.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Boots Of Spanish Leather/Suze Rotolo
I heard her girlish voice introduce EmilyLou Harris on a YouTube video, but couldn't remember Nanci Griffith's name. In these times, I search the Internet to fill gaps in my memory. Remembering one of her albums was titled, "Other Voices, Other Rooms" I was off to the races. The track listing led me to a discussion of Bob Dylan's "Boots Of Spanish Leather".
There I learned the meaning behind a song I've known most of my life. Well, yes, I see now that the initial verses alternate between characters and the last three stanzas belong to the lover left behind. And knowing something about Suze Rotolo made it that much more poignant and embarrassing to see how much I missed.
(Aficionados of the era knew that it was Suze, a red diaper baby, who introduced Dylan to William Blake, Bertolt Brecht Arthur Rimbaud and certainly sparked his social conscience. Dylan obsessives know there is an instrumental named for her, Suze (The Cough Song). Suze's name pops up in David Massengill's concerts. I first heard her voice when she was interviewed on WNYC when she was interviewed about her memoir, "A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties". In an interview on WFUV's Words and Music from Studio A Steve Earle commented that he spends a lot of time turning German tourists in the right direction when they try to have their picture taken in the same spot as the cover for “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album.)
There I learned the meaning behind a song I've known most of my life. Well, yes, I see now that the initial verses alternate between characters and the last three stanzas belong to the lover left behind. And knowing something about Suze Rotolo made it that much more poignant and embarrassing to see how much I missed.
(Aficionados of the era knew that it was Suze, a red diaper baby, who introduced Dylan to William Blake, Bertolt Brecht Arthur Rimbaud and certainly sparked his social conscience. Dylan obsessives know there is an instrumental named for her, Suze (The Cough Song). Suze's name pops up in David Massengill's concerts. I first heard her voice when she was interviewed on WNYC when she was interviewed about her memoir, "A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties". In an interview on WFUV's Words and Music from Studio A Steve Earle commented that he spends a lot of time turning German tourists in the right direction when they try to have their picture taken in the same spot as the cover for “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)