two things that made me laugh today

#1. Google "recursion."

#2. From the New Yorker April 29, 2013:

We got used to it.

"It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak; but the oak is already implied in the acorn."

I hope you enjoy this absolutely lovely video as much as I did this evening.

"For example, people used to believe ... people who lived in the antiquities would fall off. And that was scary. But then when somebody sailed round the world, and we all got used to it, and we travel around in jet planes and everything... We have no problem thinking that the earth is globular. None whatever. We got used to it."

I have faith in mankind, that someday we will get used to a lot of the scientific ideas that are controversial today. Pretty neat to think about it.

Why you can't talk about how foxy-looking that lady is

I enjoyed reading this explanation in response to President Obama calling Kamala Harris the "best looking attorney general in the country" at a fundraiser. I hadn't heard about this incident, but I do identify with the feeling. (Though fortunately I have never been introduced as such. I don't think it would ever cross the average engineer's mind, thank goodness.) And I like the article because it's really funny too. What better way to break it down?

Along the same lines, I got to that article from this one, which describes a study in which study participants decided between hypothetical male and female political candidates. The conclusion is that the more the media talks about the woman's looks, even in a positive or neutral way, her percentage of the vote drops pretty dramatically.

Put it to The Test

I gave my brother's kids the They Might Be Giants album 'Here Comes Science' for Christmas. He told me today that the kids love it, and he highly recommends it for folks with young children. I'm sure lots of people know the old song "Why does the sun shine?"-- but did you know that they came out a new one, "Why does the sun really shine?" First the sun was a mass of incandescent gas, and now it's a miasma of incandescent plasma... The Johns really keep up with their science.

I was listening to a few more of the songs on this album and I especially enjoyed this one: Put it to the Test. Who could argue with these lyrics?

"If there's a question bothering your brain that you think you know how to explain-- You need a test! Yea, think up a test. If somebody says they figured it out, and they're leaving any room for doubt, come up with a test! yeah! You need a test! Are you sure that thing is true? Or did someone just tell it to you? Come up with a test! Test it out!"

Context for Big Data

As a part of the Internet Multi-Resolution Analysis (MRA) long program at IPAM a few years ago, I became very aware of the need for context when analyzing big data. Our most infamous example was the claim made by some that the internet was extremely vulnerable to targeted attacks. The reasoning in that paper suffered two faults, one of logic but another of lack of context. The actual internet topology is very different from the one suggested in the paper, as was discussed in this article by some of the organizers of the MRA program.

A few weeks back, this blog entry from the new york times also stressed the need for context. It tells a story of collecting data using sensors on elevator and stair usage, where after a few days of collection the conclusion was that students use the stairs more at night. That seemed an interesting story until a security guard gave them some needed context: that the elevators had been breaking at night. So of course people were taking the stairs!

Missing context and missing data can be as (if not more) important as confounding factors in data collection. As we see more and more data collected and analyzed for various decision-making purposes from government to corporations to industry, and in both the private and public domains, I believe that the need to understand potential pitfalls of missing data and uncertainty will be central to actually getting good use out of that data.

We are living in the future!

The White House has released its official response to a petition to build a death star. "The Administration does not support blowing up planets."

I want you to read the whole thing (it's only a few paragraphs), but still here's my favorite part:

"We don't have a Death Star, but we do have floating robot assistants on the Space Station, a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is supporting research on building Luke's arm, floating droids, and quadruped walkers.

"We are living in the future! Enjoy it. Or better yet, help build it by pursuing a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field. The President has held the first-ever White House science fairs and Astronomy Night on the South Lawn because he knows these domains are critical to our country's future, and to ensuring the United States continues leading the world in doing big things."

Research on Firearm death in the United States

In the wake of the very emotional tragedy last Friday in Newtown, Connecticut, I wanted to learn something about research on firearm death in the United States. Erin Richardson, who received her Ph.D. in public health from UCLA, had an article last year on this topic. Additionally, her co-author wrote a book 6 years ago about firearm regulation in the United States and its role in public health. I found them both very informative, so I thought I'd share the citations:

Richardson, Erin G.; Hemenway, David. "Homicide, Suicide, and Unintentional Firearm Fatality: Comparing the United States With Other High-Income Countries, 2003." Journal of Trauma-Injury Infection & Critical Care. 70(1):238-243, January 2011.

Hemenway, David. Private guns, public health. University of Michigan Press, 2006.

A few quotes:

From the Journal of Trauma:

"A cross-sectional analysis of the World Health Organization Mortality Database analyzes homicides and suicides (both disaggregated as firearm related and non-firearm related) and unintentional and undetermined firearm deaths from 23 populous high-income Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries that provided data to the World Health Organization for 2003. ... The US homicide rates were 6.9 times higher than rates in the other high-income countries, driven by firearm homicide rates that were 19.5 times higher. For 15-year olds to 24-year olds, firearm homicide rates in the United States were 42.7 times higher than in the other countries. For US males, firearm homicide rates were 22.0 times higher, and for US females, firearm homicide rates were 11.4 times higher. The US unintentional firearm deaths were 5.2 times higher than in the other countries. Among these 23 countries, 80% of all firearm deaths occurred in the United States, 86% of women killed by firearms were US women, and 87% of all children aged 0 to 14 killed by firearms were US children. ... The overall non-firearm homicide rate was 2.9 times higher in the United States."

From Private guns, public health:

Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all have many guns, though not nearly as many handguns as the United States. The key difference is that these other countries do a much better ob of regulating their guns. Their experience and that of all high-income nations shows that when there are reasonable restrictiosn on guns, gun injuries need not be such a large public health problem. Their experience also shows that it is possible to live in a society with many guns yet one in which relatively few crimes are committed with guns."

"Households with guns, 1999-2000 (Table 1.2). United States: 41%. Canada: 26%. Australia: 16%. New Zealand (1997-98): 20%."

"A nation may be judged by how well it protects its children. In terms of lethal violence, the United States does very badly. For example, a comparison of violent deaths of five- to fourteen-year-olds in the United States and in the other twenty-five high-income countries during the 1990s shows that the United States has much higher suicide and homicide rates, almost entirely because of the higher gun death rates. The United States has ten times the firearm suicide rate and the same nonfirearm suicide rate as these other countries, and the United States has seventeen times the firearm homicide rate and only a somewhat higher nonfirearm homicide rate. Our unintentional firearm death rate is nine times higher."