omenti

connecting the dots with curiously ripe technologies

This will be a very short, but hopefully fascinating, post.  

 

People ask me about some of the more interesting projects I've worked on in the past ten years.  Some of them involve clever hacks and some of the more interesting involve position information - feel free to ask for details.  I've mentioned some like Air Graffiti and there are several others that I can talk about and some I can't.

 

What strikes me as interesting is there are types of practical questions that can be answered with brute force and cubic money and, at the same time, have very clever solutions that depend on a wee bit of coupled orthogonal thinking.  The later approach often depends on foundational technologies and science in which there are few short cuts, but benefits extend beyond the wildest dreams of the original implementors. Exactly where connecting-the-dots and having a lot of interests and the ability to dance with others who are very different from you come in handy.  I should add that it is really important to have a rich problem space and can also help a lot to be resource poor (money and people), but connection rich (several people with very different backgrounds and someone who can tie everything together).  Large well-funded projects with massive teams are rarely clever - large organizations that field cleverness tend to use very small working groups.

 

Rather than my rambling on,  take a look at this talk by Googler Michael Jones at the US Naval Institute and see if it doesn't leave you with some interesting questions and ideas   -  its popcorn time!

 

mean free paths - from pinafore to removing risk to custom design

It was a beautiful late Spring day and I found myself of singing a song from The Mikado as I strolled down West College past the Conservatory.  I'm not a good performer, but my rendition must have been recognizable as a chap walking next to me took the one of the other parts and we were doing a bit of harmony as our paths became a formation.  We stopped for the light, stopped and continued until we had finished.  I smiled and nodded.  He reciprocated, but then he started into the first song from  Pirates - We sail the ocean blue.  He had a strong voice and I followed him in whatever harmony I could muster.

 

We crossed the street and continued a block to the intersection next to the conservatory and more magic - two others joined and we continued walking until the song was over smiling broadly and nodding before we parted.

 

Oberlin, Ohio is a tiny town and we had all probably overshot our destinations as we sang together that day late in April 12 years ago.   It was a powerful manifestation of how serendipity - at least a certain type of serendipity - is possible when the mean free path between people with similar interests is small.

 

In physics mean free path roughly means the mean distance between objects that may collide - the mean free path between molecules in a very high pressure gas is less than that of one at a low pressure.  There is also a social mean free path and it is one of the reasons why cities, Silicon Valley, the restrooms and central atrium of Pixar, the old Bell Labs, and any number of other concentrations of talent are important.  Bring people within a few meters of each other and they interact.  Bring passionate and talented people within a few meters of each other and you may just get the unexpected.

 

These clusters may not be stable over time as people migrated - Brooklyn has become one of the East Coast regions that shrinks the mean free path between creative residents. Take a look at the Outlier video Om has featured for an excellent example of what a low mean free path can mean for someone interested in something novel in dungarees.  

 

Brooklyn has become so important for a certain type of young creative that the new Pixar building in California is known in some quarters as "Brooklyn"...  

 

Now back to Oberlin ..  There is enough talent in the Music Conservatory that it is possible for someone without great means (me) to have a piece of music composed.  You need to be tapped into the roots of the beast - I was an adjunct professor there for several years as part of a joint AT&T Research/Oberlin College Music Conservatory project.¹  This position gave me a rich interaction with students and faculty often into the wee hours of the morning with drink and good food.  Ideas would bounce around and people began to sense a few new possibilities that would normally remain hidden.  These things can and do happen over the Internet, but their cross section - the probability of them happened and being recognized as interesting - is much lower.  Our online environment, rich as it is,  is much less sophisticated and rich than the real world

 

Under the right conditions the Internet can decrease the mean free path between parties. Long distance mentor relations and even a few projects.  The problem is finding people well matched for serendipity and creativity.  A large amount of research has gone into creativity in individuals and groups.  To date online creativity - the connecting the dots/serendipity kind - is still a loooooooong way from face to face human interaction.  

 

But the Net can help creative enterprises - often at crucial movements.  Om has recently talked about Kickstarter.  Now most projects proposed on Kickstarter fail, but well thought out and articulated projects do succeed providing enough money to get them over a critical initial hump.  

 

Perhaps just as important is a funded project also gives insight into potential market size.  I know someone with a fairly well known podcast.  Some people had encouraged him to make a transcript of all of the shows aired to date available for sale.  Unfortunately the problem with this is he had about sixty hours of material and even the cheapest transcription services would introduce a risk of several thousand dollars if people didn't purchase the final product.  There was also an issue of understanding how to price it and if a print or ebook version should be made.  

 

He decided to turn it into a Kickstarter project and learned (a) there was a market large enough to support the transcription and editing effort, and (b) the price he picked was considered reasonable by those who bit - two absolutely vital pieces of information acquired with almost no risk.  His success gave me paused and made me think of a few small projects I've seen fail due to incorrect estimates of these questions.  

 

The Kickstarter approach may be superior to funding it yourself even if you have the money as it provides a sandbox to answer potential market size and price questions

 

One of you (the Jheri of the Jeri/Jerry/Jheris I know) happens to be very tall and hard to fit - not only clothing, but also airline seats, countertops, chairs and so on.  She introduced me to her taller friend Colleen.  Both of them don't think about their poor fit that often as you get used to your environment and learn to compromise, but being different can take a physical toll with bad backs being far too common in that crowd.  It is good to have friends like this as they provide a rich problem space you may not have considered.

 

I decided to work on a simple cutting board for Colleen who happens to love to cook.  It turns out there have been numerous studies on work surface positioning for almost every body type and physical condition.  It became clear a raised wooden board would be the best bet and I had one made for her as the cost of hardwood is so high that a woodworking shop could do it at a lower cost than I could and they would probably do a better job.   The owner of the shop became interested in the idea of making this a product and Colleen put together a page promoting it as she loved hers.²  A bit of asking around got the attention of a well-known women's tv show and they wanted to feature it.  The problem was they also demanded a copy be given to everyone in the audience in a special "tall" show.  In the end the cost of doing that was greater than the profit made selling these online.  The product remains as it is custom made for the user, but I don't think they have made  profit on it.  

 

In retrospect this may have been a great Kickstarter project.  Although it is custom made by a small shop the more important function of Kickstarter would have been gauging the size of the market before any major effort was undertaken.  It may also have allowed a volume purchase of hard maple as well as specialized shipping materials.

 

The other project that should have been done on Kickstarter was an attempt to make very long inseam jeans for tall women.  The designer spent about a year online lining up customers, finding a boutique manufacturer and so on.  He rounded up about 2,000 firm commitments that they would buy - enough to allow an initial low volume production run and sell them at a reasonable price.  Based on these commitments he went ahead with a somewhat smaller run to err on the side of caution thinking 500 or so would bring him close enough to break even that he could proceed.  Unfortunately only about 25 orders materialized and he lost a large amount of money.³  The beauty of Kickstarter is that not only must a threshold be reached to start a project, but the money will be there once the threshold is signup period has successfully concluded. 

 

We are moving to a world where individualization and shared design and intellectual property will become much more common.  The Maker movement provides some fuel for this and grassroot interaction street fashion is likely to become important. Sites like Etsy as outposts for the tiny manufacturers and spaces like Pinterest for matching interests with the makers.  There will probably be a lot of evolution and new thinking in this area - current sites and tools aren't up to the task.  We may be at a diamonds on the beach period.

_________

¹ At once the least musical and most mathematical faculty ever associated with the place

² It turns out the standard countertop height in the US is 36" and was determined in an ad hoc fashion when cabinets began to be mass produced for the great suburban expansion after WWII.  This turns out to be optimal for a 5'4 to 5'5" cook.  Significantly shorter or taller cooks will have ergonomic issues and those who are seriously away from average can experience pain bending or an inability to comfortably reach the surface.  On the tall side the threshold is around 5'10 - certainly cooks 6' or taller should use a higher surface.  The shop own and I both thought this meant a market might exist. If you think you might use one I can give a strong recommendation to AWP.

Before settling on a simple raised table I was interested in an adjustable board.  It presented a challange so I attempted to crowd source some solutions from readers of another blog of mine  here and here adding some notes on design. Some ideas were submitted, but nothing earth-shattering, so I went with a simple table.  There are times when brute force is appropriate.

³ It turns out 20:1, 50:1 or even 100:1 ratio between people who say they will order a product and those who follow through is common in apparel

________________

And a recipe.  I needed chocolate and pistachios recently.  In order to manage my weight and deal with Sukie's chocolate allergy a few neighbors had a happy evening.

 

Chocolate Pistachio Cookies
 

Ingredients

° 185 g  (6.5 oz) shelled pistachios

° 28 g (2 tbl) unsalted butter

° 115 g (4 oz) unsalted butter, sliced into tablespoons

° 115 g (4 oz) bittersweet chocolate, chopped - I used Lindt

° 1.5 tsp vanilla extract

° 60 g (1/2 cup) AP flour

° 35 g natural cocoa powder

° 1/2 tsp baking powder

° 1/2 tsp fine grained sea salt

° 100 g (1/2 cup) white sugar

° 2 large eggs 

° 1.5 tsp vanilla extract - you need the real stuff - mine is rum based

° 120 g chopped milk chocolate - again I used Lindt ..  reliable for baking

Technique

* Place one oven rack at the center of the oven and preheat to 350°F

° Line two cookie sheetswith a silicone mat or parchment paper.

° Spread the pistachios on an unlined baking sheet and bake for ten minutes until golden brown, Remove from oven and immediately add the 28g butter and stir well. Set aside to cool.

* Melt chocolate and remaining butter together in a microwave oven. Stir together until smooth and set aside to cool slightly as you beat the eggs. While the chocolate is melting combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a food processor and pulse to blend completely. 

* Combine the eggs and sugar and beat until they become pale yellow and light in texture. Stir in the chocolate. When it is mostly incorporated, add the vanilla. When the vanilla has been incorporated, add the flour mixture and stir gently to blend. When the flour is almost completely absorbed, add the pistachios and milk chocolate folding into the batter. It will be dark and shiny with a texture similar to marshmallow Fluff.

° Spoon about a heaping tablespoon (or 1.5 inch ice cream scoop) of dough onto the sheet tray for each cookie, arranging them in a 3X4 pattern on the tray. Bake the trays one at a time on the center rack in the oven for 10-12 minutes. The cookies will rise slightly, develop a shiny crust and appear to be just set. Let them cool for two minutes and then loosen the bottoms from the lined tray. Let them finish cooling on the sheet trays or move them to racks depending on the final texture you want - experiment the first time.

 

 

 

from communication modalities to the higgs boson

About a year ago I was walking with with a dear friend in Manhattan completely engaged in idea building together.  Fore me intensely delightful activities like this make the leap to Csikszentmihályian flow and I tend not to notice the time and space I'm embedded in as carefully as I should...  Fortunately she is far more perceptive of these things and carefully guided me through the human and vehicular traffic without indicent.   I've been told I can be engaging and perhaps even interesting during times like this if the subject is something we both love.  But there is this problem - I'm not very good in other communication modalities.

 

Recently I've been asked to give several talks to general audiences.  I don't mind public speaking, but I also tend not be be very good at it (my TED^x talk is a bit painful to watch - fortunately food was not allowed in the auditorium).  I'm ok if there is a subject of mutual interest and have an idea of the appropriate level.  And feedback from the audience is extremely important - especially visual feedback.  But if the feedback goes away I'm toast and the performance - and value of the communication - leaves something to be desired.  

 

Writing has similar issues.  One of the reasons why these posts and my personal emails are full of typos and spelling errors is in an attempt to keep a conversational flavor I don't go back and edit.  The temptation to wordsmith and tighten up on precision is too strong and the note begin to take on the smell of a textbook.  A few years ago I rediscovered this tendency as I was toying with writing a different sort of energy book.¹  I found myself tripping badly in my attempts to describ the underlying concepts. I couldn't get a handle on who would understand this without explanation and who would need four other concepts under their belt before the concept could be explained clearly. Who would want explanations and who would find them boring.  None of the compromises seemed to work well as story telling.  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise - finding the right level and words for this sort of thing is not easy work.

 

The strange thing is I can usually explain this type of physics to most sharp people even if they have very non-technical backgrounds, but often only if we are talking to each other face to face.   The telephone removes too much of the presence required for the explanations to work well and face to face is better than a video link.   Many people are much better than me.  Feynman was an expert explainer, but most of his filmed pieces were responses to questions posed by an interviewer - one on one was his natural high information bandwidth channel. He was also a brilliant lecturer, but the nature of his communications changed to something a bit different and focused on a less general audience.  Carl Sagan was and Neil deGrasse Tyson, and E.O. Wilson are fantastic public communicators - a very rare quality among scientists.  These skills require real work to perfect.  Neil told me he will spend dozens of hours preparing for a five or seven minute interview on the Colbert Report.  It is not natural or easy, but he is so good it looks that way.  

 

The issues I have with different communication modalities and the need for direct feedback from what are sometimes called "out of band" channels² and undoubtedly exist in people from many other fields, but I think they are especially important for science as only a small portion of the public have a notion about how science works and what reported results mean.  At the same time science policy is of enormous importance - witness issues like global warming, nuclear proliferation, healthcare, nutrition, and a thousand other things.  The tobacco industry and a few others on the political left and right discovered that the nature of scientific communication makes it possible to easily manipulate public opinion and leave most scientists almost without defense.³  My book project was a reaction to this.  I naïvely thought that better education would make a big difference, but now I'm not certain this is the best way to spend my time.

 

None of this will settle itself soon. I've been having some second thoughts on the book and alternate ways to get some of the more important bits across.  If I think it could make a modest different I will go ahead and find the time somewhere.  

 

In the meantime I look forward to those wonderful times when I can engage with some of you one on one in playful ideas - but, and this is an important safety tip,  be warned if we are walking that you shouldn't take traffic safety cues from me:-)

 

I leave you with a delightful layman's discussion of the Higgs boson that nicely skates through the jargon.  When I'm one on one with a smart non-physicist this is pretty much how I would approach it, but everything tends to fall apart when I shift communication modalities and lose my way.⁴ Synchronous out-of-band communication channels are the headlights that cut through the darkness for me.

 

____

¹ In talking to industry groups about energy and global warming I found most people lacked a basic understanding of the physics to make informed decisions.  The notion of the book was to concentrate on removing much of the jargon and getting the physics of energy and power on the human scale.  The goal was not to have the reader understand the basic physics or how to solve equations, but rather a good qualitative sense of what is going on.  How do you ask questions like a physicist before moving to the calculations?...

² An enormous amount of information is subtly communicated through prosody, gestures, facial expressions, body positioning and more.  Voice channels can pick up some of this, video a bit more - but face to face is almost always best.  Asynchronous and one-way discussions can miss a lot and a good deal of confusion is possible with neither party recognizing that at the time.

³ A few great reference books:

Don't be Such a Scientist by Randy Olson ...  I don't agree with everything he says, but his book pointed out major problems I was unaware of and has allowed me to repair a few (unfortunately not all) of them.

Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway  A well researched and incredibly important book to anyone who worries about science policy and the issues of science and the public.

⁴ When I try to explain the Higgs field I use an analogy of a "fame" field and actors walking through a room of people vs the rest of us to explain the concept of a coupling constant.

sharpen your dot connection skills...

Scientists are skilled dot connecters as that is one of the more powerful tools of the trade.  Years ago Greg, another physicist, recommended visiting "companies that make stuff"and see if they'll give you a tour of their process.  Making physical things presents multiple challenges including human factors and social challenges and, if you get someone who is proud of what they're doing, you can dive in and ask a lot of questions getting some real depth in the process.  

 

Over the years I've visited companies that brew beer, cartoon, make rocket engines, fabricate ICs, build large gas turbines, do precision wood work, build submarines, bake cakes, make ultrasound machines, pull wire, smelt copper, make exotic steels, make potato chips, make electric motors, make dresses (many companies here - it is a rich area), craft bespoke shoes for athletes, build exotic batteries, make LED lamps, and build bikes (that is a small list - it has been going on for years).  

 

All of these tours have been worthwhile and some of the visits have given serious insight for problems I have worked on years later - the potato chip factory visit provided just the right clue in thinking about mesh networking. Although the reasoning is a bit difficult to explain, all of a sudden the network problem became obvious in light of the clues I had learned watching a quality control step at the Utz factory in Pennsylvania.  

 

Post 9/11 it has been more difficult to get tours (I tired for a few years to get a tour of the place that makes water tanks for buildings in Manhattan before having success) and many companies are giving up the fabrication phase at this point.  But don't let that stop you - there are a lot of places that are thrilled to have someone take an interest.  Except for the Mars company (M&Ms) - one I will probably never crack...

 

I've learned a lot from bicycles including their design and fabrication.  Simple machines  hold a special interest as you can easily wrap your head around the integrated design.  So this 1945 film on the fabrication of Raleigh bikes is particularly good.  I'm keeping this short today as I spent the 17 or so minutes watching.  Comments from the company:

Our resident historian (HR Manager Frank Ellis) tells us that the bike was a “Low Gravity Carrier” (a Butcher’s Bike to you and I) and “The guy putting ball bearings in the bottom bracket took me back….he had that authentic piecework dance…people used to say that if you worked at Raleigh long enough you started doing the dance in your sleep!” 

Frank, who carried out time and motion studies when he joined Raleigh as an apprentice in the 70s, said: “The hub lacing shot towards the end was great to see. It used to be done by hand by women and the first frames capture the classic fanned spokes that the women achieved with a simple flick of the wrist…try that one and see if you can get them anywhere near as evenly spaced! I’m always telling people the top women pieceworkers were faster than the automatic hub lacer, but I might be exaggerating just a little.”

Give it a view - great stuff!

 

 

Bike manufacture has changed considerably in the 65+ years since then and that is another story...  I've been involved in it a bit myself and for someone without a mechanical engineering background it has been a terrific education and has expanded the pool of dots in my quiver.

 

Nothing like ending on a mixed metaphor...

 

 

leading horses as well as choosing them

Earlier today I received a note from Jheri about her grades for thetwo remote courses she recently finished.  I had offered to help her with differential equations if she had any problems with the course, but other than suggest and grade some interesting practice problems I didn't do anything.  She is exceptionally motivated and breezed through this and a biology course. It must have been challenging as she has a career that involves a boatload (well - planeload) of international travel.  

 

So three cheers for Jheri!  I am toasting her with some proper homemade ice cream tonight.

 

Jheri is now in her mid 20s and was a poor student in high school.  There were some reasons for this, but the bottom line is that she wasn't ready to learn.  We have an education system that assumes a readiness on the part of the student across many subjects that is probably optimal for a small minority.  But now she wants it and is focused on learning biology and has been finding math and science come easil to her.  I'm not surprised - she has a sparkling curious mind and has discovered the wonderful ignorance that science provides..  She has a career, but is getting a bit of schooling in her spare time and will soon quit and go full time.  I wouldn't be surprised to see her go on for an advanced degree.

 

I'm finding something similar about myself.  I was extremely interested in math and science as a kid and far to focused. (another Jeri knew me a bit then and will probably vouch for that)  Then I found myself as an undergrad in a school that was really a glorified trade school.  I tested out of many of the "non important" subjects and continued my singular focus.  Grad school was a mentor relation that focused almost entirely on physics.  As a result I'm extremely narrow - something that has been bothering me a lot. I have been developing interests in history, art and music playing with these a bit as a curious amateur. Perhaps one day I'll go to a real university and learn how to ask a few questions in these areas in much greater detail.  At least I am identifying my ignorance and am curious enough to learn.  It doesn't matter that I don't know much - at least not to me.  

 

Being ready to learn happens in areas you may not immediately suspect.  The men's volleyball team at UC Irvine took the NCAA Division 1 championship this past weekend.  Except for volleyball they have an unremarkable athletic department, but head coach John Speraw is one of those remarkable characters who is both cerebral and humble.  He knows that he doesn't know and seems to delight in learning.

 

Speraw hasn't been with Irvine that long, but has managed to put together three national championships.  During the last season he raised eyebrows when he hired a female psychologist with no volleyball experience as one of his assistant coaches - even though the program is too small to support full time assistant coaches.  This weekend he praised her noting she gave him and the team the right tools to do the remarkable.  Of course they, as an organization, had to be radically different from the standard men's volleyball team in order to understand, modify and implement what she was telling them.  Speraw observes, experiments and learns from his successes and failures.  He has turned his staff onto his techniques and the players are doing the same.  UC Irvine now has a learning organization that is crushing organizations with rich histories and much larger financial resources.  My guess is more than a few men's programs will hire psychologists and most (all?) of them will be too inflexible to learn and adapt.  In the meantime John will find other tools.

 

One wonders about the parallels with other organizations - corporations for example.  

 

When are companies ready to learn and can you identify them by the questions they are asking?  Does their thinking become calcified over time and do they see a need to learn and adapt?  Where do they find the questions to learn from and what are their mechanisms for dealing with the questions? Do they have an institutional learning process and an institutional memory to take advantage of their learnings?  Do they recognize the value of failure?  Do they recognize the value of play?  Are those charged with running the company curious enough to ask questions or have they followed a path that has given them success to date giving them an artificial sense of confidence?   How do they select and promote employees at all levels and is the ability and readiness to learn part of the process?

 

My guess is learning organizations are probably rare.  I'm reasonably familiar with Apple and Pixar and both are great examples where learning is central. I'm also familiar with many others that are mostly unable - or at least unready - to learn. 

 

Is your organization curious enough?  Does it actively identify, cultivate and celebrate its ignorance?  Is it diverse enough to connect dots and identify potentially new areas of ignorance  - areas that, when explored by the right people will illuminate opportunity that others hadn't considered.

 

Think about the last paragraph and imagine Apple and Pixar. Try it again with average organizations you know.

 

 It makes me think of how new ideas and techniques are identified and, if useful, implemented.   Many companies follow bandwagons - some companies sort out the world by asking the right questions and blaze their own paths, but many become little more than buzzword compliant with a considerable amount of time, talent and money in the process.

 

I think data mining and "big data" (I dislike both terms for a variety of reasons - sit me down with some cold milk and fresh cookies and I'll go into detail) are a great example of the potential success and failure of institutional learning.  A few organizations will understand what they are doing deeply enough to be able to play in this area effectively, but many are probably going to fail as has been true with many "next big things" over time.

 

You really need to understand something deeply enough to know if there is a there there.  I was drawn to physics as, in principal, it is so simple.  Simple enough that you have some hope of asking fundamental questions in a productive fashion.  But add a bit of complexity and the world rapidly becomes far too complex to understand at a fundamental level.  There may be levels of possible understanding that describe it that, if you are sufficiently clever, allow you identify those techniques that will work for your organization.

 

The term "data" is highly contextual - so much that I try not to use it.  It isn't a fundamental piece of information, but rather is a cloud of information surrounding the core of what you think it is.  Some of this cloud may be obvious and some may be hidden.  As an example consider this well-known description of an email problem.  The system is relatively simple (I've written successful email gateways so they must be simple), but the description assumes you have a bit of familiarity with the subject.  Feel free to skip over it if your eyes glaze over - the point is there was an obscure condition that eluded detection resulting in some puzzling behavior.

 

The following is the 500-mile email story in the form it originally appeared, in a post to sage-members on Sun, 24 Nov 2002.:

From trey@sage.org Fri Nov 29 18:00:49 2002
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 21:03:02 -0500 (EST)
From: Trey Harris <trey@sage.org>
To: sage-members@sage.org
Subject: The case of the 500-mile email (was RE: [SAGE] Favorite impossible
    task?)

Here's a problem that *sounded* impossible...  I almost regret posting the
story to a wide audience, because it makes a great tale over drinks at a
conference. :-)  The story is slightly altered in order to protect the
guilty, elide over irrelevant and boring details, and generally make the
whole thing more entertaining.

I was working in a job running the campus email system some years ago when
I got a call from the chairman of the statistics department.

"We're having a problem sending email out of the department."

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"We can't send mail more than 500 miles," the chairman explained.

I choked on my latte.  "Come again?"

"We can't send mail farther than 500 miles from here," he repeated.  "A
little bit more, actually.  Call it 520 miles.  But no farther."

"Um... Email really doesn't work that way, generally," I said, trying to
keep panic out of my voice.  One doesn't display panic when speaking to a
department chairman, even of a relatively impoverished department like
statistics.  "What makes you think you can't send mail more than 500
miles?"

"It's not what I *think*," the chairman replied testily.  "You see, when
we first noticed this happening, a few days ago--"

"You waited a few DAYS?" I interrupted, a tremor tinging my voice.  "And
you couldn't send email this whole time?"

"We could send email.  Just not more than--"

"--500 miles, yes," I finished for him, "I got that.  But why didn't you
call earlier?"

"Well, we hadn't collected enough data to be sure of what was going on
until just now."  Right.  This is the chairman of *statistics*. "Anyway, I
asked one of the geostatisticians to look into it--"

"Geostatisticians..."

"--yes, and she's produced a map showing the radius within which we can
send email to be slightly more than 500 miles.  There are a number of
destinations within that radius that we can't reach, either, or reach
sporadically, but we can never email farther than this radius."

"I see," I said, and put my head in my hands.  "When did this start?  A
few days ago, you said, but did anything change in your systems at that
time?"

"Well, the consultant came in and patched our server and rebooted it.
But I called him, and he said he didn't touch the mail system."

"Okay, let me take a look, and I'll call you back," I said, scarcely
believing that I was playing along.  It wasn't April Fool's Day.  I tried
to remember if someone owed me a practical joke.

I logged into their department's server, and sent a few test mails.  This
was in the Research Triangle of North Carolina, and a test mail to my own
account was delivered without a hitch.  Ditto for one sent to Richmond,
and Atlanta, and Washington.  Another to Princeton (400 miles) worked.

But then I tried to send an email to Memphis (600 miles).  It failed.
Boston, failed.  Detroit, failed.  I got out my address book and started
trying to narrow this down.  New York (420 miles) worked, but Providence
(580 miles) failed.

I was beginning to wonder if I had lost my sanity.  I tried emailing a
friend who lived in North Carolina, but whose ISP was in Seattle.
Thankfully, it failed.  If the problem had had to do with the geography of
the human recipient and not his mail server, I think I would have broken
down in tears.

Having established that--unbelievably--the problem as reported was true,
and repeatable, I took a look at the sendmail.cf file.  It looked fairly
normal.  In fact, it looked familiar.

I diffed it against the sendmail.cf in my home directory.  It hadn't been
altered--it was a sendmail.cf I had written.  And I was fairly certain I
hadn't enabled the "FAIL_MAIL_OVER_500_MILES" option.  At a loss, I
telnetted into the SMTP port.  The server happily responded with a SunOS
sendmail banner.

Wait a minute... a SunOS sendmail banner?  At the time, Sun was still
shipping Sendmail 5 with its operating system, even though Sendmail 8 was
fairly mature.  Being a good system administrator, I had standardized on
Sendmail 8.  And also being a good system administrator, I had written a
sendmail.cf that used the nice long self-documenting option and variable
names available in Sendmail 8 rather than the cryptic punctuation-mark
codes that had been used in Sendmail 5.

The pieces fell into place, all at once, and I again choked on the dregs
of my now-cold latte.  When the consultant had "patched the server," he
had apparently upgraded the version of SunOS, and in so doing
*downgraded* Sendmail.  The upgrade helpfully left the sendmail.cf
alone, even though it was now the wrong version.

It so happens that Sendmail 5--at least, the version that Sun shipped,
which had some tweaks--could deal with the Sendmail 8 sendmail.cf, as most
of the rules had at that point remained unaltered.  But the new long
configuration options--those it saw as junk, and skipped.  And the
sendmail binary had no defaults compiled in for most of these, so, finding
no suitable settings in the sendmail.cf file, they were set to zero.

One of the settings that was set to zero was the timeout to connect to the
remote SMTP server.  Some experimentation established that on this
particular machine with its typical load, a zero timeout would abort a
connect call in slightly over three milliseconds.

An odd feature of our campus network at the time was that it was 100%
switched.  An outgoing packet wouldn't incur a router delay until hitting
the POP and reaching a router on the far side.  So time to connect to a
lightly-loaded remote host on a nearby network would actually largely be
governed by the speed of light distance to the destination rather than by
incidental router delays.

Feeling slightly giddy, I typed into my shell:

$ units
1311 units, 63 prefixes

You have: 3 millilightseconds
You want: miles
        * 558.84719
        / 0.0017893979

"500 miles, or a little bit more."

 

 

This example is really easy - it involved a well-defined system built around logical constructs.¹  Understanding humans and human behavior is much more difficult and anyone who says they can is naïve and/or lying.  Data mining may give candidate shards of information, but they are highly contextual and you must know the steps used to gather, filter and process the information and how reliable they are.  You had damn well know the errors and error propagation.  And even then the resulting information may not be terribly useful as human behavior isn't exactly an axiomatic system.

 

It is more important to develop a deep understanding of what you need to know.  You must learn what it is you need to know and how to get a "good enough" approximation.  For companies like Apple, Pixar, Trader Joe's, and Lululemon success doesn't rest on data mining, but on other techniques.  It is likely data mining techniques wouldn't be terrible useful to these companies for their current products.  It may be that Apple finds some great uses as Siri builds out, but for now great design doesn't rest on it.

 

I suspect the companies successful with data mining will be vendors who sell to the masses and don't really care about the results as long as the money keeps coming in along with a few companies who have learned there is a solid niche for them and can ask the right questions to know the information produced is robust enough to make a material difference in their bottom line.  I suspect the later group will be made up with companies who are indeed ready to learn.

_________

I'm very proud of Jheri!  Here is the ice cream I'll make in her honor defrosting some wild blueberries that were picked last Summer at peak season.  I'll follow it with a quick recipe for something really simple.

The photo is of Colleen enjoying the same recipe on one of her visits.  You always give the dasher to the honored guest.

There are many ways to make ice cream - I use a simple refrigerated freezer that gets reasonably cold.  Liquid nitrogren techniques are even better if you have access.  Drop me a note if you are interested.  Also I have more than a few great ice cream recipes from years of experimentation starting with Steve in the dorm basement at Stony Brook.  We literally wore out three freezers during our experiments.

 

Blueberry Ice Cream

       Ingredients

           

        (all ingredients should be very fresh)

° 2 large pasteurized eggs 

° 1.25 c white sugar (if the berries are extra sweet, cut the sugar a bit)

° 2 c blueberries - or flash frozen from last season

° juice of 1/2 lemon

° 2 c heavy cream

° 1 c whole milk

Technique

• toss blueberries, lemon juice, 1/2 c sugar in a small bowl, cover and refrigerate for a few hours tossing every half hour or so

• wisk eggs until fluffy, wisk in the sugar a bit at a time and then blend in the cream and milk

• mash the berry mix by hand and mix with dairy mixture

• churn freeze and season if you can stand the wait - I usually just eat it immediately!

 

^{OK now the simple recipe.}

The Un-Egg Cream

Too simple to talk about ingredients or technique.  I like the idea of an egg cream and this is a simple variation.  Get some seltzer or, better yet, Cherry 7-Up chilled to near freezing.  Pour some milk based drink, properly chilled into the glass - perhaps 50 grams or so (about two ounces).  Pour about five or six times as much of the bubbly fluid on top and rapidly stir with a long thin spoon.  

Very refreshing.  My favorite combination is Sunkist Naturals Pina Colada Protein Smoothie and Cherry 7-Up (diet or regular ... diet is probably somewhat healthier)

^_______

¹ There is a class of computer "failures" that are, at their hearts, insufficiently understood systems.  Often "data" is the issue

solving problems

When I was a junior undergrad - sometime in the late Pleistocene -  I decided to write down what I had learned about problem solving. It has a bit of a Polya-ish flavor, but it reflected the bits and pieces of what I had learned.  I still keep a copy over my desk.  Some of the pieces, particularly those on creativity, mean much more to me now and I would go on for pages, but just seeing them calls all of that up. 

 

Problem selection is more of an art and I have never written much about it as new problem spaces tend to only present themselves when you are hard at work on something else that is at last partly related.  I have never had a problem with finding a list of great problems to work on …  a larger issue is which ones should I be working on.  That can have different answers depending on what the goal is (who or what I'm working for)

 

I was a physics and math double major, but I've found it useful in many other areas.  I should probably write a bit about problem selection other than picking something that you might have a bit of hope on gaining a bit of understanding.

Of course there are many other approaches - this is just mine. Not every problem would have all of these steps.  

 

So here goes: 

1. Understand the problem

 

- do you understand all of the words and equations in the problem?

- can you restate the problem in your own words?

- can you think of a picture or diagram to help understand the problem?

- what do you want to find or show?

- what level of accuracy do you need?

- is there enough information to find a solution?

- is the problem a relevant problem or is it gibberish?

- what is the scale of the problem?  can you do it in an hour or will it require unobtainium?

2. Devise a plan

 

- guess and check

- consider special cases.  what are the boundary conditions?

- select your tools

- do you fully understand your tools?

- draw a picture

- solve a simpler version first

- create a model

- use approximations - but understand their impact

- work backwards

- be ingenious …  this comes with experience and often with re-thinking the problem in a different context.  

This and the next step - connecting the dots are the non-trivial piece!!  Remember:

play and your ability to fail with grace are essential

curiosity is your driver - remember informed ignorance rules in science and math! never lose fact that your final job is to expand your ignorance - results are a by-product!!

- connect the dots - this is a subset of being ingenious

serendipity is another driver.  remember that serendipity is making discoveries by accident, but you must have enough sagacity to note what holds potential.  

dot connecting is best done using averted attention.  Don't tool constantly on your problem.  Focus hard, but pivot off to equally long period of something completely different. This may even fool others into thinking you have a life. 

3. Carry out your plan

 

- find a quiet place with no interruptions.  nature is your friend

- use some care and be a craftsman

- if you get stuck, take some time off and try to forget about what you are doing

- if you fail, use another approach

- know when you have failed

- if you are working with others know where the strengths are and divide appropriately

4. Check with reality

 

- does your answer make sense?

- can your solution make testable predications?

- ask an expert in your field to examine your work for flaws

- reflect on what you have done and examine was worked and what didn't

 

5. Next steps

- what are the new areas that expose new and even beautiful ignorance on your part?  These may be diamonds on the beach to explore.  Perhaps even a new beach and that is your reward.

 

_____________

A Recipe

Cherry and Chocolate Scones

Ingredients

For the scones:

 
° 500 g  all-purpose flour (4 c)

° 55 g white sugar (1/4 c)

° 8 g baking powder(1-3/4 tsp)

° 5 g baking soda (1 tsp)

° 4 g kosher salt (1-1/2 tsp)

° 250 g unsalted butter, cut into half inch pieces (2¼ sticks)

° 300 g cups heavy cream (1-1/4c)

° 125 g dried cherries (1-1/2c)

° 150 g chocolate chips (1 c)  depending on your taste regular Hershey's or the good stuff.  I use a mixture of chocolate chip sized quality milk chocolate and half 60% chocolate

 

For the glaze

 
° 85 g confectioners’ sugar (2/3 c)

° 2 tbl skim milk

° 1 tbl cherry puree

 

Technique

 

° Preheat oven to 350°F with racks in upper and lower thirds.

° Whisk flour, sugar, powder, soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Using a pastry cutter, cut in butter until combined with some pea-sized lumps. Stir in cream, cherries, and chocolate chips until combined.

° Put quarter cup sized scoops of dough on 2 buttered baking sheets and bake, switching sheets half way through (and you were worried about the rack arrangement:-), until golden and cooked through, something like 15 to 20 minutes.

° With the scones baking, make the glaze by whisking together sugar, milk, and cherry puree in a small bowl.

° Once scones are cooled, spoon over glaze, set and cool to about room temperature if you can stand the anticipation, and then scarf down.

 

clues to the mind and the mind-body connection

We're all aware of cute optical illusions.  Some play tricks with our perception of color, size, or motion ...   This particularly beautiful example plays with our perception of brightness - both turn out to be equally bright inside and out.

 

 

Optical illusions are an interesting tool to study how our brain puts together sensory input sent by the eye and there have been some major surprises and there have been revelations that address the question of how much of reality do we sample through our senses as we observe the world.  To what degree are we sampling reality?

 

I stumbled across this example in a PNAS paper by Bruno Laeng and Tor Endestad of the University of Norway in Oslo.   The illusion is well known, but they looked at something else - how the pupil responded.  

 

If you look at something bright your pupils constrict to adjust to the new brightness level.  This takes place in about a tenth of a second - reasonably fast on our level of perception - and it was thought to be a pure reflex that helps protect the retina from damage.  Reflex mechanisms should be fast to prevent as much damage as possible and this one was thought to occur in in a few dedicated cells in lower brain structures.¹  What is curious with this illusion is our pupils contract even though there is no real brightness - the reflex is in response to what we think we see rather than what really exists! 

 

This is fantastic.  Perceptual errors behave more liked learned phenomena and may be adaptations.  Perhaps evolution has made us more adroit at encountering our environment.  

 

A lot of visual information is ambivalent and noisy.  Perhaps there is some contextual processing going on to construct a "reality" that is more useful.  Maybe the reality our mind assembles is a bit better for our functioning that what really exists in nature.

 

The same goes for other senses - particularly hearing, but taste also comes to mind.²

 

As I am writing this it occurs to me that there are many other evolutionary tricks that help us to deal with how we relate to the environment.   We read stories of animal athletes - cheetahs that can sprint to 70 mph, our cats and dogs that can make jumps that appear amazing - and sometimes think humans must be unathletic in the scheme of things.  But we are amazingly good at endurance running.  We probably evolved to this as our ancestors may have had to run down prey in order to get close enough to dispatch it, but whatever the reason we are wonderful aerobic machines.³

 

Many people report a "runner's high" after exertion.  I find it around the sixty minute mark with my rowing and, if I make it that far the resulting rush is enough to encourage me to continue for as long as an extra half hour.  It is a feeling of real euphoria.

 

It turns out the body under heavy aerobic load produces endocannabinoids which are substances that act as neurotransmitters.  The name probably rings a bell - endocannabinoids are chemically very similar to the active ingredient in cannabis.  

 

The runner's high is the real thing and the euphoria can be an excellent reward.

 

Recently it has been learned that a few mammals that are good aerobic athletes(humans and dogs) produce serious amounts of endocannabinoids during aerobic exercise while other mammals that aren't aerobic athletes (ferrets) don't.  It may be we have evolved a reward system to encourage this type of activity - I know it is one of the few things that keeps me on the rowing machine for lengthy periods.   Colleen is more geared towards bursts of power, but she notes that she loved the feeling of euphoria that came over her after an hour or so of intense training and the reward was enough to encourage her to go on for several hours more. 

 

My niece Magi is a runner.  A remarkable runner.  She is a single mom with two very little kids and is struggling with raising them, working a couple of jobs and going to nursing school.  A few years ago she took up running and found it came naturally.  She's done several marathons and does respectable three hour times - not bad for someone who can't run every day and rarely more than an hour at a time and also lacks the money to get coaching - shoes are a major expense for her.

 

She lives in the Phoenix area and has always been comfortable in the mountains.  A few races were in the back country and she found she really liked them.  Also she learned that she's good with distance. Her quarter times on the Boston Marathon were all within a minute with the last quarter being the fastest.   About a year ago she started trying the longer distances and did very well in several fifty mile runs.  

 

With those under her belt it was time to get serious.  Last Saturday she ran the Zane Grey - not a race for the faint of heart.  Rather than writing about it, I'll print the email she sent and add a few images.  Do read the links from the race director and another runner for more color...  like

...

The course runs along the base of the Mogollon Rim, constantly dropping in and out of the little canyons and crossing multiple creeks and streams.  The route is entirely single track trail and is extremely rugged.  Despite a ton of work our volunteers have done on the course, entrants will have to navigate over or under fallen trees, through thick wickets of Manzanita bushes, and over very rocky terrain.  There are also sections where the trail just disappears and route finding can be challenging.  The middle section of the course, known as the “burn area” had the trees burned down from the Dude Fire in the early 90’s. Runners are exposed to the heat of the Arizona sun and have to travel as far as 11 miles between some aid stations.  An unprepared runner can sometimes run out of fluids in these long hot stretches.

 Not easy terrain down there. The Mogollon Rim is rough, tough and relentlessly difficult

...

 

with that, Magi's email:

 

Here is my first race report. I apologize in advance if you do not want to read this much about me, nevertheless this was an incredible experience and I am really excited to share it!

 

The Zane Grey 50 has earned a reputation for being one of the most grueling ultras out there. I had spoken with friends who had completed the race and the consensus was I could expect to add about 2 hours onto my avg 50M time (if there is such an avg) prepare to trip, get scratched, sprained, dislocated, lost, broken, etc.,, this all sounds like adventure right?! The race was a bit of a blur so I am sorry for the lack of detailed trail accounts.

 

 April 21st 2012 was the big day of the notorious race, in anticipation of this I had prepared with all sorts of hot, hilly, long, and really fun desert mountain runs. Emmet was prepared to crew for me race day, this made a huge difference. Knowing that someone 100% reliable is waiting for you at designated aid stations on the course with water and nutrition refills, sunblock, an icy towel to wipe down with, words of encouragement, and anything else you may possibly need is beyond words. I say this because when you are running 50 miles through some of the most unpredictable Arizona terrain, your entire life is narrowed down to the steps it takes to get your butt from aid station to aid station. Emmet has accompanied me on many training runs so he knows my pace, my weaknesses, my strengths, and he also knows how to tell me what I need when I may not realize it, this is important. The weather was predicted to be 90 degrees, I wasn't to concerned about this, by default I have to train in the heat and have learned to be very smart about hydration and electrolyte balance. Unfortunately the heat was by far the biggest hazard on the course that day for many of the runners, out of 126 starters only 84 finished.

 

this link is an interview with the race director

 

 

this link is by a runner, he has great pics of the course in his blog

 

 

In the two days prior to the race I have a total of 5 hours sleep, this was the only stimulus for self-doubt weighing in my head. The night of the race I was lying in bed with the "I want to cry but I'm so mad I can't" feeling. The alarm clock went off at 3:15 am and all that nonsense turned into baloney, it was race day, wheee! We arrived at the start 4:30am, just enough time to hit the bathroom, check in with race officials, and stay warm in the car until just before the 5:00am race start. And just like that the race started, off we went into the woods, all 126 of us with our headlamps beaming in the dark. Actually mine was lightly beaming, I think the batteries died just as the sun rose enough to see without it, lucky me! It was 8 miles to the first aid station, I was equipped with all the nutrition and water I would need to get me to the second aid station (mile 17) where Emmet was planned to meet me, the first 8 miles flew by, it took about 3 miles for the runners to spread out and about 40 minutes for the sun to rise. Running with a headlamp is really fun, the small illumination for your footfalls on new terrain makes me feel like a little kid exploring with a flashlight. Admittedly it really slows me down as the few falls I have had in the past all occurred while running in the dark, thus I now go a little slower. The logic is I'd rather be 5 minutes slower than broken. As we came into the 8 mile aid station we were greeted with cheers, and even better Emmet was there to make sure I was doing OK, (I had started the race with a new hydration pack and he wanted to make sure that it wasn't leaking) I ran through the station on my way to mile 17.

 

 

Miles 8-17 were beautiful, the morning was cool and this portion of the trail was through pine forest ascending to views of the Mogollon rim, I was on fresh legs and trying my best to hold back for the many many hills and miles to come. There were numerous river crossings over precarious rocks that really added to the adventure feeling, the course at this point was on an easy to follow single-track trail, well marked with yellow tape and glow sticks. Coming up on mile 17 I could hear the cheers as runners came into the aid station, this was so encouraging I cried a little! Emmet had prepared an area with everything I could possibly need, I quickly toweled off the crusty salt-sweat, exchanged my hydration pack for a freshly packed one, took 2 ibuprofen to help ward off inflammation and set off again----DANG IT! I didn't take my sunglasses, I was running without a visor on purpose as I didn't want to risk missing any trail markers in my periphery, the trail was now becoming more treacherous and it is very easy to get lost. Many experienced ZG runners have lost hours going in the wrong direction.

 

Mile 17-33 was brutal, I was told to expect the worst during this part, the majority of the trail is an old exposed burn area. Tons of direct sunlight (grrr no sunglasses) lots of elevation to climb, and lucky you if you don't get lost as you have to be super aware of trail markers. This part of the trail has to recover from a harsh winter so the area has a ton of dead tree fall, new dry grass/shrubby growth, and lots of crumbly unsteady soft red rock. At mile 23 there is an aid station only assessed by the official race crew, this aid station is an oasis---it's called Hell's Gate from mile 23-33-- as I ascended into the station the volunteer shouted out "Welcome to Hell, how you doin'? I was doing pretty good considering all the runners were in the same hot boat, I was conditioned for the heat so I knew as long as I kept hydrated I would have no problems. I filled up my pack with water, chugged another few cups of water, and threw a handful of ice down the back of my shirt, off I went into Hell. At this point in the race runners were beginning to drop, many people started out to fast, spent their energy, and were not prepared for the heat. I was not really going to fast but I managed to pass many people during this stretch. The race is organized so that there are rescue workers stationed on the course about every 7 miles with radios, their job is to account for each runner as they pass and make sure nobody goes missing. About mile 25 I came up on a man who had passed me around mile 20, he was hunched over on the side of the trail, he was obviously unprepared with not enough water or calories, as I was offering him some of my water he vomited, nothing I could do for this guy except for run on ahead to tell the next rescue crew they had a runner in trouble. There were some pats of trail during this leg where I would think to myself "seriously?? I am supposed to run this?" and other parts where I had to remind myself that I had trained to go faster and harder, hiking was the only option for many parts of the trail, however dragging my feet was not. My head needed to be reminded to move my feet!

 

Whoo-hoo I made it to mile 33 aid station! The delirium sets in completely about this point, as I came into the station Emmet was yelling "go this way, now go this way, now this way" leading me from the check in to the car where all my gear was. This is where it makes a difference for someone who knows your habits to intervene, I was spot-on for nutrition and hydration but with the heat every ones sweat factor was major--Emmet made sure to impose upon me the importance of taking saltstick caps--these are electrolyte tabs to swallow--if you had seen all the salt crusted on my face/shirt/body it's pretty obvious I was depleted, I now swear by these caps! Seriously, all I could tell you at this point was which way is up or down. My brain was only focused on watching my footfall to not trip and keeping a keen eye on trail markers. A funny note here, about a week prior Max had told me in his cutie voice "Good job Mommy" when I pointed out a local peak I ran to during a training run. During the race I had his cute little voice in my head rewarding me with a "Good Job Mommy!" every time I came upon a trail marker!

 

 

So onto miles 33-44, Emmet loaded me up with 2L of water on my back, 32oz in my hands, about 800 calories in my pack (all of which I would use) and I was on my way! This was serious fun, the trail was about 60% run-able so now I know I need to improve my hiking skillz, other than this I was focused on the next 11 miles of adventure. I think my most proud accomplishment for this race was not falling once, I don't fall often but still this terrain is really 'trippy' (funny right?) so now blur blur blur, hill, hill, up , up , up , and I arrive at mile 44!

 

 

The crowd is cheering all the runners as we descend into the station, Emmet leads me to the car and preps me for the last 6 miles. Hmmm 6 miles, how long might this take...try 1 hour and 40 minutes...uuuuuffffff. This last 6 miles was long and exhilarating, and hard. The terrain was pretty pine forest but my legs were shot, there was spot about mile 42 where some thin ice patches were still frozen on the ground, it just made sense to me to come to a stand still stop to look at them and contemplate lying down on one--I chose to keep on trucking but now I was day dreaming of cold pools to dip in and icy drinks. After what seemed like an endless stretch of trail I rounded a corner and was in earshot of the finish, what a rush! I picked up the pace as best I could and finished strong, the 35th finisher and 8th female to be exact. The whole race took me 12:40 minutes and every second was great!

 

 

I will definitely do this race again, it was a total adventure! Thank you so much for all the encouragement

For many reasons I'm very proud of Magi:-)  Today - a week later - she's running a regular marathon "for fun"

She obviously is mostly slow twitch or red muscle.  This comes from both sides of her family, who tend to be gracile and endurance/non-sprinter types.  I'm really slow and a terrible jumper, but I can go for a long time.  In college I would regularly ride "centuries" (100 mile bike rides) on most weekends and never had any exhaustion problems.  Even now when rowing I specialize on going for an hour to an hour and a half rather than intense five minute intervals of burst effort.

________

¹ This is similar to what happens when you burn your finger. Your finger touches a red hot burner and a signal races towards the closest area that can make a decision - the spinal cord in the case of the finger.  A response is quickly generated and sent back causing the muscles to jerk your finger out of the way.  This happens "reflexively" - long before signal can be processed by the brain and long before pain is even felt.

² By taste I am referring to flavor which really isn't the conventional five tastes on the tongue, but the mixture of taste, touch and smell that generates "flavor" in our mind.

Also color is generated in the mind as is music.

³ This is one of the reasons why our bodies respond so well to aerobic exercise and why we tend to fall apart when we become sedentary.  At risk of sounding preachy, your body and brain with greatly benefit from regular aerobic exercise so find an excuse to just do it.

_____________________

A Very Simple Simple Pea Soup

 

Ingredients

° 2 tbl unsalted butter

° 1 diced medium sweet onion

° 1 clove garlic, sliced

° Kosher salt to taste

° 2 c thawed frozen sweet peas (fresh only if picked on the same day!!)

° 1/2 c lightly packed fresh tarragon leaves

 

Technique

° Melt butter over medium low heat.  When it foams add onion, garlic and salt. Cover and cook until the onions are soft, but don't brown!  Stir frequently - not a walk away and forget it stage

° Add a quart of water and bring to a boil. Add peas and tarragon and cook 'til tender - a few minutes

° take off heat, purée and strain.  

° Reheat if necessary and serve.  I like to garnish with a few whole raw peas and a bit of plain greek yogurt

 _____________

bonus non-recipe

After 80 or 90 minutes of hard rowing I'm soaking with perspiration and am in need of something cold with a lot of protein.  Here is my current favorite - not vegan friendly though.  "Shake" is tongue in cheek - I can make a quality milkshakes.  Ask if you visit and we'll do one.

Berry Yogurt "Thickshake" with Nuts and Chocolate

Ingredients

° A good handful (about 100g) of slightly thawed frozen blueberrys or raspberries

° About 200g plain greek yogurt - I like to use 2%

° a half frozen banana - I remove the skins on very ripe bananas and tightly wrap them in plastic wrap and freeze.  A great way to deal with ripe bananas

° 2% or whole milk.  Start with 100g and adjust

° something sweet - maple syrup, honey, sugar

° 15 to 30g of dark chocolate broken into small bits

° 15 g broken pecans

Technique

° Blend banana, fruit, and about 50g of milk.

° Add the yogurt and milk as necessary to get a good enough consistency.  Add sweetner if necessary

° Pour into a serving glass or bowl depending on thickness.  Stir in pecans and chocolate

 

 

the equal sign

=

 

Equations are profoundly simple in concept - two calculations (one of them may reduce to something trivial like a statement) that may seem quite unrelated that have the same meaning. The "=" sign makes the connection.  Oddly enough, even though mathematics is very old, the symbol has been around for less than 500 years.  

To avoide the deiouse repetition of these woordes: is equalle to: I will sette as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of paralleles, or gemowe lines of one lengthe: =, bicause noe .2. thynges, can be moare equalle. 

Robert Recorde coined it as a shorthand for "is equal to" when he wrote The Whetstone of Witte in 1557.  The OED says gemowe means something like twin.  It proved useful and stuck.

 

In math the meaning of the equal sign is usually rigorous.  In science and many other disciplines it is often more nuanced whether we appreciate it or not.

 

One of the profoundly curious things about Nature is that so much of her can be approximately described using the language of mathematics.  A theory is often stated as a formula and extensions are sometimes made using rigorous mathematical extensions that turn out to describe something previously unseen.  At the very least these formulae give a powerful mechanism for playing with Nature and trying to understand a bit more deeply.  

 

It is dangerous to become too enamored with these relationships as they can fall apart when you are in new territory or if you are in a bit past your own understanding.  In fact this can be precisely where life gets interesting.  You think your measurement of something will give a certain result, but a careful experiment gives a slightly different result. No one has ever made a measurement quite this carefully.  You suspect something is wrong with your experimental apparatus or the steps you used to process the calculation and painstakingly eliminate any potential mistake.  At some point you become convinced that your result is correct and submit your result for peer review.  Ultimately the piece is published and the world takes notice and attempts to replicate your result. When they do it is time to recognize we need a richer description. Theorists may have constructions that immediately work or there may be nothing for years.  You have learned something about Nature at a more fundamental level than anyone else.  It can be an electric moment - the profound discoveries in science are not "aha!" moments, but rather usually begin with "that's odd..."

 

Imagine the discoveries you would make if your measurement tool had been a black and white camera and you suddenly were able to see the world in color.

 

This is why  improved tools that allow you to measure Nature in previously unexplored areas and at better accuracy are important.  Our senses, which turn out to be much more powerful than those of most animals, turn out to have dramatic limits.  Hearing only gives access to a tiny portion of the world of acoustic sound, our vision only explores a tiny section of the electromagnetic spectrum 

 

But the old equation still works for any measurement less accurate than yours and it still may be very useful to people.  You may only be thinking at the leading edge preferring the delightful ignorance you have just uncovered, but most of the rest of the world may be built on the earlier theory.  

 

Many of us build models of one type or another.  It is centrally important to construct an appropriate model.  It may be simple or complex, but it should be appropriate.  There are times when what you are interested in may be too difficult to measure, but a simple model may allow you to easily set an upper and/or lower limit that gives you insight.  And you have to avoid bias and not wed yourself to a model or the conclusion that an inappropriate model or calculation might give.¹  Unless you are doing math it is critical to remember that the sweet little notation that Mr Recorde gave us may only give an approximation and you really need to calculate a confidence level to make your result strictly accurate.

 

Our models usually don't need to be perfect, but they are an important mechanism to find answers and sometimes a bit of insight.  But remember that a they are never perfect representations and learn where they break down.  So much of what we do is really grey rather than black and white.

 

A Danish friend who happens to be a great Lego fan pointed out this fascinating Marvin Minsky interview where he speculates that mechanical engineers who grew up with legos may be more limited than those who grew up with Tinker Toys. 

 

But Minsky's point is valid even if he said it in jest.  Some models provide a richer insight into how the world works than others.  Playing with a diverse set of models can be enormously important.

_______

¹ Biases are very common.  Recently there was a lot of speculation on the cause for a decrease in miles driven in the US.  Many suggested it was caused by a change in how people between the ages of 18 and 30 relate to cars.  It turns out a more careful analysis shows this is only a small component, but so many people wanted to believe that youth are falling out of love with the automobile that they seized upon it.  In science there have been dramatic examples like the cold fusion debacle.  People wanted to believe it - so they did for awhile.  Some still cling to the belief more than twenty years later.

________

The photo is an Instagram photo by silverstar22b

ignorance and thrivable science

OK - Jean is sitting up now...

 

A few people have asked questions and commented about the notion of ignorance so I'll continue to explain ignorance as cultivated by scientists.

 

The popular form of ignorance suggests a state of being uninformed.  But I'm talking about something that is deeply honest.  A recognition that you really don't know something.  If it is an area you are curious about you can begin to explore.  Is it worthwhile? Do you have a sense it is something that can be explored, how connected is it to other lines of exploration?

 

The process of learning more and exploring is a sharpening of the ignorance. The process of this curiosity driven ignorance is very dynamic whereas the standard form of ignorance tends to be static and dogmatic.   Using the old black cat in a pitch block room that scientists like to use, there are a lot of these rooms - some are empty, some have black cats and some have black non-cats that we might imagine as well as those we may not.   There are some ideas that seem great, but after years of pursuing them carefully you may not find anything, but you have learned something and perhaps can find some other entrances to ponder.

 

This is very different from the public perception of science which favors the great discoveries.  This makes science seem to be a deliberate and reliable method for learning new facts and even getting things done -  Just to this research and you will get a new battery for an electric car.  All you need is a pile of money and a group of scientists.

 

That can work for developing existing ideas.  Frequently the problems are so constrained that you can be fairly certain solutions exist and a scientific approach just works.  This is more of an applied science or perhaps engineering research.  It is the sort of thing that allows people who know the field well to predict slices of the future.  Most industrial labs live in this space. A few, like the old Bell Telephone Laboratories and parts of IBM's Watson Labs, actually did real science.  They, at least pieces of them, focused on what wasn't known.  They relied on the cultivated ignorance of some very talented people and changed the world.

 

As an example I was part of an applied group that had a very good idea of where digital music might be going.  We weren't in a position to predict winners and losers, but it was easy to project that five years out X would be possible and 10 years out Y would.  And we did something very similar for location based services.  Not that any of this was useful to our employer.  It also wasn't science. (scientists can be very good at engineering research)

 

Prediction can be an excellent mechanism for cataloging ignorance.  If you sit a scientist down and ask them to predict what might be in their field ten or fifteen years out, you will get some educated conjectures.  It is really a list of ignorance she has identified as ripe for cultivation and perhaps she is even beginning to sharpen it.  Really good scientific projections are very rare and probably no more than statistic flukes.  But cataloging ignorance is useful as it can illuminate potential pathways and asking your scientist friend what may happen is a good way to engage them in what is, for them, a very exciting process.

 

Cultivated ignorance is terribly exciting. Science is not a terribly easy sport, but this drives scientists to do it.   Admitting ignorance and moving on it is the point at which the questions sharpen and become more real.  It is the start of the journey and the end of the journey, like a great road trip, is not the point.  At some point there may be a discovery, measurement or non-discovery (which, as we mentioned, can be extremely important!), but that is not the goal of science.  What happens along the path is the creation of new questions.  Questions that weren't accessible and perhaps not even possible to express before and you realize the game is still afoot.

 

All of this is self-sustaining and quite thrilling.

 

 It is, I think, a manifestation of what my buddy Jean Russell would call thrivable. 

 

Along the way you've probably wondered why I haven't mentioned hypotheses - after all, don't scientists observe or theorize, make a clever hypothesis and then test it?  

 

I'm not terribly fond of that model. For one thing the real process is much more messy than that simple model.  Another is a hypothesis can be far too limiting.  People tend to come to believe them and not be as skeptical and curious as they should be - at least when you are working in new areas. Too much belief in a potential outcome can often lead you astray or not be sufficiently careful with your experimental procedure.  But there is a place where hypotheses develop more formally and you have to deal with them.

 

Scientists rate the quality of their ignorance as well as their findings.  You measure and report a statistically sound confidence level (scientists tend to understand statistics deeply).  This can get in the way of conveying science to the public as nothing is really black and white - finding can be proven wrong by experiment if that is the way Nature really works.  There is always a chance you haven't measured carefully enough - that something is wrong with your technique or that some other signal is present.  

 

 It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. - Richard Feynman

 

The public expects black and white pronouncements and this breakdown was exploited by the tobacco industry in the 80s and 90s and have been exploited by the fossil fuel industry for more than a decade.  A few weeks ago someone asked me about the consequences of a scientifically literate vs illiterate public and these are beautiful manifestations of some of the issues.¹

 

If you know a scientist and want to really learn more about what they might be doing, the wrong question to ask is "what do you do?"  Some friends have asked me this and I'm sure most come up with the conclusion that I have no discipline and can't describe something that simple.  The right question is "what are you trying to find out?", "what would you really like to know?", "where are you stuck?", "what is unknowable these days?", "is there any progress in how well you can measure something?", "what would be really exciting to work on, but the technology isn't quite there yet?", "tell me about some new questions you would like to ask of Nature that have come to you in the last six months..."  

 

I've spent quite a bit of time trying to explain energy and power at a layman's level and haven't been terribly successful. On the other hand, when confronted with questions - the sort of questions I can't answer, people around me tell me I can be animated and perhaps even a bit interesting.  The level of the material changes from Russian doll science 101 explanations where you keep having to define and explain one set of things to cleanly explain another, to something crisper and much more respectful of your attention and mind.  I'm still hunting for some clear ways to do this and think they are out there, but I need to be more clever.

 

And that is an interesting point - information is being generated at a fantastic rate.  There is no way to keep up with it and that makes any field you aren't a specialist in seem inaccessible.  It reduces experts to high priests in lab coats who speak in a confusing tongue.  It renders science intimidating.

 

Scientists don't really worry about the information explosion at a core level of their curiosity.  Sure they may as necessary part of something they are working on - just ask an experimental particle physicist about his trigger logic or someone sequencing DNA about their data handling issues.  The important task is not information driven, although that is part of the process at some level.  What is important is being curious and able to recognize and cultivate your honest ignorance.  

 

The scientist deals with the explosion of information by realizing ignorance is growing at a much greater rate and this is a good thing.  You can pick a bite-sized piece off and jump in!

 

Dealing with ignorance is something scientists are great at.  Science can thrive - the information explosion is something of a red herring here. Science makes the Universe more accessible and, hopefully, science itself can be more accessible to the public.

 

The black cat and pitch black room metaphor may not be the best.  A great professor of mine explained cultivated ignorance in terms of surfing (this was in Southern California, so do as the natives).  First click here to set the mood with a bit of background music - I loved these guys when I lived there and recommend the electronic version of Pipeline

 

Imagine surfing this big frothy wave.  As you act on your cultivated ignorance (he used the phrase targeted ignorance) you keep moving along and you begin to realize there are other waves that you never noticed before that you can move along to that will take you even farther.  Making it to the beach becomes just silly as you realize you can go forever.

 

_______

¹ As something is verified and re-verified with increasingly accuratue experiments its  confidence level increases it takes on a more solid nature - perhaps this is moving towards an honest and generally accepted hypothesis. Proving it wrong means you have to be increasingly careful when you do your experiment.  The speed of light, the core notion of evolution, and basic quantum mechanics have very high levels of confidence attached to them.  It makes sense to keep testing them as techniques improve, but it is unlikely that you'll prove them wrong (still it would be thrilling!)  

It is usually the case that science usually builds on itself rather than going through true revolutions.  Newtonian physics breaks down in certain areas - the very small and the very fast for example.  In these regimes quantum mechanics and special relativity are better descriptions of Nature, but they are no better than Newtonian physics at describing much of the world we live in.  We can say with some confidence that the simple Newtonian physics that describes the mechanics of a car will not change.  Relativity and Quantum Mechanics both reduce to Newtonian physics as speeds and sizes become closer to the physical world we feel and observe with our naked senses.

 

probing ignorance a bit more deeply...

I'm not happy with the way science is usually taught in secondary school.  It is rendered boring - memorize a number of "facts" and either replay them on a test or use some recalled formulae to plug in a few numbers to find an answer.  It completely misses the fun of science and also something rather fundamental about how new knowledge is found and why, at least to a scientist, answers and fact aren't the real product - even though they may be useful and advance knowledge.  It also creates a view of science that has opened a divide between scientists and non-scientists - something that in a society that depends so much on science and technology is a serious disconnect and perhaps a danger.

 

As it happens a beautifully cultivated ignorance and questions is more fundamental to the forward motion of science. I suspect applying some of the techniques may be very important to other fields where "out of the box" creative thinking is required and I sometimes rely on it in my consulting practice. The recent post on ignorance brought some email reaction, so it makes sense to wade in a bit deeper..

 

The general notion of what a scientist does is to collect data (information is a better term) by observing and manipulating bits of the natural world by doing something called experiment.  There is a methodology - the scientific method - which is based on observation, hypothesis, manipulation, further observation , a new hypothesis and so on...  There is a sense of order, but that turns out to be far from the truth.  You experiment to learn something - ideally to discover something.

 

Discover, dis - cover, is the act of revealing.  What is revealed can be very beautiful and it often becomes a "fact" in text books and teaching, but what many consider the end product of science are known to be unreliable to the scientist.  Nothing is safe - nothing is above question.  Not even something like the absolute speed limit of the speed of light.¹  Scientists don't know things absolutely, but rather report how well it is known.  Newtonian mechanics turn out to be incorrect - but at the scale where humans live and observe everyday things it is more than accurate enough that we still routinely use it as a "good enough" descriptive model.  We know where it begins to fall apart and have made other discoveries to more accurately describe those areas - special and general relativity for example.  

 

In the 19th century it was believed the universe was permeated with with a luminiferous ether to allow a substance through which light could propagate.  It was the wrong path and, in 1907, Albert Michelson became the first American physicist to be splashed with the Swedish holy water for failing to observe the ether in his extremely clever measurements of the speed of light. 

 

Think about it for awhile - Michelson got the Nobel Prize for an experiment that didn't work.

 

Some would later describe the ether as the black cat physicists had been theorizing about, experimenting and trying to measure in a pitch black room for decade.  Literally hundreds of approaches and many many scientist years of effort.  Michelson somehow found the light switch and it became clear the ether didn't exist to a rather high degree of accuracy.  The confusion that resulted led to an entirely new line of questioning - several doors to new rooms, all pitch black with their own black cats, appeared with the light provided by Michelson.  A patent clerk who went by the name of Albert was pushed to a line of novel questions that gave us a fundamentally new understanding of the universe.  And even better he opened the way for many rich new questions - questions that were beyond our imagination until we saw a bit of the nature of his black cat.  

 

Sure we had learned something, but  it gave us a new appreciation for how much more ignorant of the universe we really were.  

 

We keep discovering and adding to this area we call knowledge and people often make practical use of these discoveries, but the meaningful product of science is not facts or knowledge, but rather the expansion of an informed and cultivated ignorance.²  

 

One of my mathematical heroes is Kurt Gödel.  Mathematicians had a sense that everything - at least everything in mathematics - was comprehensible and could be explained with math itself.  Gottfried Leibniz, one of the inventors of the calculus, tried to construct an alphabet of human thoughts that would allow you to take combinations of thoughts and form any idea just as letters can make words and words can make sentences.  A few hundred years later David Hilbert made an attempt to similarly code knowledge. 

 

The impressive achievement of Gödel was to show that all of this was impossible.  Gödel was a shy and quirky person - hardly anyone's candidate for a revolutionary - but he is incompleteness theorems rocked mathematics and physics.  I can't give a rich general level discussion of what he did, but at its core he showed an consistent system in math (like the whole numbers and the operations - like addition, multiplication and so on) can't be complete and consistent.³ This may seem to be a depressing notion - finding a fundamental limit in mathematics, but rather it opened an incredibly rich source of new questions to Gödel and others.  It is fair to say that unknowability and incompleteness led to questions, reasoning and discoveries that have impressively benefited computer science - and to think that computer science is fundamentally based on absolute and complete logic:-)

 

This ignorance - the recognition that we really don't know something as deeply as we thought we did - is a fundamental driver of science.    The problem of the unknoweable isn't a real obstacle, but is really just a serious of paths to deeper understanding.  Also, to a scientist, the explosion of information isn't terribly important either - at least not at a fundamental level.  The rich sources of discovery are more dependent on new questions that arise from cultivated ignorance.  Questions are the goal of science - it just happens to generate results (with attached confidence levels!) that have historically advanced civilization and cultivated ignorance is a necessary component of making the process move.  

 

It is ignorance rather than data that moves science along.

 

A very import and somewhat subtle point of doing science is that scientists use ignorance to work and the management of this ignorance is incredibly important.  Sometimes it is called the taste in picking and progressing with problems.  It is often chaotic with communication and collaboration often being extremely important.  At the leading edge it is often cross disciplinary.  I have a tendency to not be able to describe exactly what I do.  This is really common among scientists and the area they are currently working in is often shifting dynamically.  It is messy and may even seem inefficient, but it is a proven path to real discovery.

_____

¹ Which is why the recent neutrino experiment got so much attention.  People have been testing the limit for over a century and so far all of the results that suggest it can be violated, including the most recent, have turned out to be so flawed as to be invalid.  A good deal of pseudo-science is based on experimental "results" that are incorrect - they are often trivial, but sold to non-scientists as something absolute.

² The time gap between discovery and practical use can be very long.  Faraday thought his early work with electricity and magnetism would have no practical use. A practical use for general relativity seemed a crazy notion for fifty years, but it turns out to be a critical component of making the global positioning system work as accurately as it does.

³ Consistency is the characteristic that a system's rules will not  result in self contradictory statements.  Think of science fiction as a rich source of counter examples - when Captain Kirk defeats machine logic with simple logic puzzles.  Take a card and write "the other side of this card is true" on one side and "the statement on the other side of this card is false" and think about it for awhile:-)

At least two readers of this blog are mathematicians and my appologizes for the very rough high-level treatment of something that is very rich and deep.  If you are a student just study the work!  If you aren't technical I strongly recommend Rebecca Goldstein's book on the subject.

 

_____

Maple pecan pie - really good with vanilla ice cream or gelato!

 

Ingredients

° 1 unbaked pie shell

° 215 grams/2 cups pecans (coarsely chopped)

° 55 grams/¼ cup dark brown sugar

° 25 grams/¼ cup tapioca starch

° 4.5 grams/ ¾ teaspoon kosher salt

° 240 grams/1 cup grade B maple syrup. Grade A or "fancy" may not be strong enough

° 60 grams/¼ cup heavy cream

° 4 grams/1 teaspoon vanilla

° 2 large eggs

 

Technique

° Preheat the oven to 425°F

° Place the chopped pecans in the unbaked pie shell. Whisk together the sugar, tapioca starch and salt in a medium sized bowl. Whisk in the maple syrup, cream and vanilla. Whisk in the eggs. Pour over the pecans.

°  Bake for 20 minutes and then turn the heat down to 350°F without opening the oven. Bake for an additional 30 minutes. Let pie cool at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before serving.