Courtesy of tested.com, Adam Savage brings us an hour-long interview with Andy Weir. Savage's gift of gab combines with his interest space exploration and a genuine love of the book to make for a good interview.
June 17, 2015
Adam Savage Meets the Martian
If you haven't heard of Andy Weir's novel "The Martian". This hard science fiction novel about an astronaut stranded on Mars has impressed even NASA astronauts and JPL engineers with its technical accuracy. Besides that, it's just an engaging read. If you like to read books before their movie adaptations, you only have until October 2.
Courtesy of tested.com, Adam Savage brings us an hour-long interview with Andy Weir. Savage's gift of gab combines with his interest space exploration and a genuine love of the book to make for a good interview.
Courtesy of tested.com, Adam Savage brings us an hour-long interview with Andy Weir. Savage's gift of gab combines with his interest space exploration and a genuine love of the book to make for a good interview.
June 9, 2015
The Coriolis Effect
You've heard this, no doubt. Toilets, and drains in general, empty in opposite directions in the northern and southern hemisphere. There's at least one reputable science channel on YouTube that says this is nonsense. Yet it's an undeniable fact hat hurricanes rotate in opposite directions in Earth's two hemispheres.
Two YouTube channels on science, Smarter Every Day and Veritasium, have teamed up to perform a controlled experiment. Performing the same procedure at the same latitude in both hemispheres, they demonstrate that the Coriolis effect is real and explain why the results in your toilets and sinks might vary.
Two YouTube channels on science, Smarter Every Day and Veritasium, have teamed up to perform a controlled experiment. Performing the same procedure at the same latitude in both hemispheres, they demonstrate that the Coriolis effect is real and explain why the results in your toilets and sinks might vary.
Northern Hemisphere by Smarter Every Day
Southern Hemisphere by Veritasium
June 6, 2015
Why Report this Way?
This has bothered me for a while now. Why does the media report monthly fluctuations in the economic numbers?
For example, Bloomberg recently told us that jobless claims rose from 264,00 to 274,000 That's a 1.04% increase. This is just noise.
There have been much larger increases from month to month, even while the overall trend was downward. There have been equally large month-to-month decreases while the overall trend was upward. Such fluctuations are part of any statistical data set. I can't speak to most media, but if there’s any of them I would expect to know this, it would be Bloomberg. If they didn't, they wouldn't be qualified to report on economics. Why then do they report noise as news?
The measurement interval itself is a matter of convenience. We have to choose a sample rate and months are a unit we're all familiar with. But a month's just a collection of days, which means that 1.04% increase is an average. It masks its own ups and downs.
What if I picked a different interval, say the 15th of one month to the 14th of the next? That suggestion isn't as far as out as it might seem. Consider that many companies have fiscal years that're different from the calendar year. A company could chose July 1 to June 30 as its fiscal year, for example. I'm proposing as a thought experiment a "fiscal month", in this case from from the 15th to the 14th. Now I have a different set of data points, and a different average.
I don't mean to pick on Bloomberg or make a point about jobless numbers. This is an example of what seems to be generally true of media report on any economic indicator.
There have been much larger increases from month to month, even while the overall trend was downward. There have been equally large month-to-month decreases while the overall trend was upward. Such fluctuations are part of any statistical data set. I can't speak to most media, but if there’s any of them I would expect to know this, it would be Bloomberg. If they didn't, they wouldn't be qualified to report on economics. Why then do they report noise as news?
The measurement interval itself is a matter of convenience. We have to choose a sample rate and months are a unit we're all familiar with. But a month's just a collection of days, which means that 1.04% increase is an average. It masks its own ups and downs.
What if I picked a different interval, say the 15th of one month to the 14th of the next? That suggestion isn't as far as out as it might seem. Consider that many companies have fiscal years that're different from the calendar year. A company could chose July 1 to June 30 as its fiscal year, for example. I'm proposing as a thought experiment a "fiscal month", in this case from from the 15th to the 14th. Now I have a different set of data points, and a different average.
I don't mean to pick on Bloomberg or make a point about jobless numbers. This is an example of what seems to be generally true of media report on any economic indicator.
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