Worthless and Weak

I was thinking today: Colleges are typically defined by only 2 characteristics. First, the subject matter (technical vs liberal arts is the axis that I would use to describe it), and second, the competitiveness of the school. So, the simple model is that a prospective student identifies the subject matter he/she wishes to study, and tries to get into the best possible school that his grades/scores allow.

What I'm wondering is why isn't there more variety in the school selection. For instance, in high school, I will admit to not having worked very hard, although I do consider myself pretty smart. Therefore, I had lowish grades and highish test scores. (I'm willing to assume that at least 2/3s of kids with similar grades as I had lower test scores, while 2/3s of kids with similar SATs had higher grades than I).

It seems to me that there were no choices for this, and that, if done right, a college which specializes in smart kids who didn't work hard in school could do wonders. Ditto for colleges which specialize in kids who work their asses off, but aren't necessarily smart.

There are a few possibilities:

1. Such schools exist, I just don't know about them.

2. They wouldn't really work, as a degree which signals "lazy" would be much much worse than a degree from a random school. Therefore, the smart-but-lazy school would have to work the kids twice as hard as a normal school to combat this, and what smart-but-lazy kid is going to want to go to such a school?

3. Having an academically diverse student body is actually more advantageous than not. This I have a hard time believing, as I think the best way to teach is to have everybody in the classroom on the same page, so to speak. (To me, its useless having the teacher go faster than the student, especially in something like economics, math, or language. If you don't learn the previous thing, you're not going to learn the next thing).

Any thoughts?

-Garrett

Labels: fall, scooters, vacation

Last night, the Major League Baseball all-star game was held.

The good: It was an all star game, so it was exactly a normal baseball game (ie, it was overmanaged, and didn't have "real" starting pitchers.) And although this time it counted, it can never really compare to games that have incredible amounts of situational relevance (ie, pennant races or playoff games). For instance, I'm not sure I'll ever see another game as good as game 4 of the 2004 ALCS. (in fact, I may never see another game as good as game 5 or 6 of the 2004 ALCS, but whatever).

However, stripped of all situational relevance, the 2008 All-star game was perhaps the best game I've ever seen, ever. (I love extra-inning games). The game ended in the bottom of the 15th. The AL was, for all intents and purposes, out of pitchers, meaning that in th 16th they'd have to use a position player, more less guaranteeing the NL a victory. And the game ended on a close play at the plate. And the last play was about the 10th most exciting play of the game. I think I saw as many outs made at home plate last night as I have all year. Maybe for several years. So, all in all, it was a terrific game. Best all-star game ever, I'm going to argue.

The bad: MLB felt the need to start the damn game at 8:45. And take long commercial breaks. (I could understand 8, as it would be 5 on the West Coast. But 8:45 is really just too late to start a baseball game). This meant that the game was over at bout 1:30am. Which meant that, I got about 3.5 hours of sleep last night. Which sucks. So I had a long day of work. And, maybe it was the lack of sleep making me feel uncomfortable, but I have never been as uncomfortable on the T as I was today. although it was packed, a woman was completely invaded my personal space. As soon as she got onto the car, she seemed to walk right into me. And, while she grabbed the bar to "support" herself, she seemed just as happy to lean against me as to support her own weight with her feet. So I felt so uncomfortable and claustrophobic that I had to get off one stop early, and walk home.

(OK, that was really just two completely unrelated paragraphs, I'm sorry for that).

Well, take it easy America! (And Ireland too!)

Garrett

Labels: fall, scooters, vacation

Lets say that you have a hell of a lot of boxes. A million. Or a billion. And inside each of these boxes is either a substance, we'll call it X, or a substance that we'll call Y.

Now, you can't open the boxes, but you do have an 'X' detector. It will give you a one of two responses. Either it will say "this box contains X" or "I do not know whether the box contains X."

The first go around, as you sample boxes, you get about a .2% rate of "X" and a 99.8% rate of "unknown."

The days and the years go by, and they build better and better X detectors (ones with a lower false negative rate). You begin to see higher and higher rates of "X" 1% or 4%, or eventually 10%.

At which success level is it reasonable to assume that every box contains X?

Lets assume a 0% failure rate. (Or rather, what this problem really is a 0% false positive rate, with an unknown false negative rate).

I don't really have any idea to go about this problem. Obviously, once it hits 100%, we can assume X. Other than that, I would love to hear ideas if you have any.

Labels: math problems

If you're not using Pandora, you should be. Simply go to the site, type in the name of an artist or song that you like, and it will begin playing music like that artist/song. It works pretty well. Some artists are great, for instance, if you like Thomas Dolby, you'll probably love 90% of what appears on the station (because Thomas Dolby is the archetypal synth-pop artist. Other artists it doesn't work well with. For instance, if you use Johnny Cash, it will just play country. Which, I guess is ok, but none of it really sounds like Cash. While you may say that this in inevitable, as Johnny Cash is unique. But i'm going to slightly disagree. There are some who sound more like him, (Merle Haggard, for instance) and they weren't on the radio.

But i digress, that is neither here nor there. There are some improvements I would like to suggest. (I think that my improvements have a good chance of being heard, because 33% of my readership are google employees, and pandora is probably either owned by google, soon to be owned by google, or google will launch a competing product soon).

Pandora should have the option of merging and mixing radio station playlists. That way, if I'm doing something and I want to listen to 50% eighties, 25% nineties, and 25% 60's, I can do so, without having to listen to them in blocks (or to manually switch them). I know they have the option of making a station that is done off of two artists, but that will try to find music that resembles both of the stations, instead of either of them (I think).

If you can already do this, well, it should be easier to do, (completely intuitive)! So I should already know about it.

That just about sums it up. Good product, could be better. Use it if you're not already doing so.

cheers!

Garrett


PS Congrats to Sean, who was my 5,000th visitor.

Labels: fall, scooters, vacation

4,999 visitors so far on this blog. If you're reading this, there's a decent chance you'll be #5,000. Awesome.

For my birthday, my parents gave me a dumbell press. Which means that I can do a bench press with dumbells, and do situps on it. I was doing sit-ups last night, and, when you've actually got the right amount of resistance on your legs so you exercise just your abs, they are actually kind of hard. The book shows that you can do "inclined sit-ups" if you are so, um inclined. But after doing some real sit-ups, I don't think those are humanly possible.

Labels: fall, scooters, vacation, yes; I am out of shape

In my work e-mail inbox this morning, there was a message with the subject "xxxxx Confiential, do not forward"

The next four e-mails were "fw:xxxxxx Confidential, do not forward"


I love the universe!

Cheers!

Garrett

Labels: fall, scooters, vacation

Remember Slim Goodbody? The bizarre guy who wore a unitard with pictures of various internal organs in anatomically correct places on it? As a child, I remember he vaguely creeped me out. Not so much the unitard or the concept of it or anything, just his haircut.

One day in elementary school, it was announced that he would be coming to our school. This was a monumental occurrence. Well, not really, nobody really thought anything of it. The only thing that I remembered about it at all is that it billed itself as "The One and Only Slim Goodbody" The fact that I remember this wording many years after it occurred indicates that they made a big deal out of it. "The One and Only!"

When he finally came though, it wasn't even Slim Goodbody. It wasn't even a different actor playing Slim Goodbody, which I could have dealt with, considering that he is after all a fictional character. It was somebody named "Bill Strong." It's not the fact that we got a reserve Slim Goodbody named Bill Strong that bothers me. What bothers me is that they Specifically advertised it as "the one and only Slim Goodbody," and failed to deliver on that promise.

I've wondered why this happened. Maybe it started out that only the actual Slim Goodbody went to schools, but the program was so successful that they felt the need to hire more actors, but not successful enough to change their promotional material?

Then I realized it. The real Slim Goodbody was supposed to come to my school, but something happened, and he had to miss it, so they filled in with a reserve. And what could have happened? A family emergency? A missed flight? These things could have happened. But thats not what I choose to believe. What I think really happened is that the national icon of children's health wasn't able to make it to my school due to a cocaine overdose.

Cheers!

Garrett

Labels: Slim Goodbody, This tag probably isn't gonna get much use