Shoulder Tapping

Let's say that for some reason Justin Bieber picks up the habit of tapping people on the shoulder. Then, of course, in a few days every kid in America is tapping everyone they see on the shoulder. The next logical step is some parents get concerned about the health effects of shoulder tapping and make sure that scientists studying shoulder tapping get funded.

Let's say that 200 studies are started. Each study picks a different health effect that seems like it could be connected (impact on bone structure, passing of germs, social anxiety...) and checks if it is correlated with shoulder tapping. These are real scientists who know what they are doing so they properly account for external factors and other correlations and thanks to all the funding are able to get such a large sample size that each study has a confidence level of 99%.

Then a journalist or study of studies scientist comes along and asks every scientist what they found. Turns out that with 99% confidence shoulder tapping causes peripheral vision loss.

There's no theory why shoulder tapping causes peripheral vision loss, but if there's a study showing a chance it is true then best to try to kill the new trend right?

Well, actually, even if there is no correlation between shoulder tapping and any of the studied health effects, the odds that 1 or more studies out of 200 would show a correlation with 99% confidence is 87%. (1-0.99^200). It is actually rather likely that there would be a false positive (even with only 69 studies there's a 50% chance of false positive, and with only 10 studies there's a 10% chance of false positive, much smaller, but still 10x worse than the quoted 99% confidence level).

While the individual studies were done with proper statistics the news story/study of studies was actually done with very poor statistics. Now if a scientist read the news article and then repeated the study of peripheral vision loss and again found a correlation with 99% confidence that would be worth reporting. Of course there would still be some question as to causation, but at least it would be true that there is very likely a correlation.

Wheel of Time 4-7

I figured there's no point in putting up a post for each Wheel of Time book. But I just hit the half way point by finishing book 7. Since I'm in the weird position of being 5,926 pages into the series and thus would have to write a whole book just to summarize and yet only half way in so not even sure where the whole thing is going I won't say much other than good stuff so far.

Actually I take back the summary thing - several young adults plucked out of a small town are exposed to the larger world and meet a variety of other people while on their mission to fight evil using their newly found magic and special powers. I could totally be an author, all Robert Jordan did was fill in some details.

More TV

Better Off Ted: Apparently there were two unaired episodes of Better Off Ted at the end of season 2. They are on netflix streaming, but their order is flipped - what netflix calls episode 12 (swag the dog) is clearly supposed to be the last (13th) episode of the season.

I'm still amazed how badly they messed up the promoting of that show. I know I had no interest in watching the show after seeing the ads since they completely failed to play up the arrested development style humor or the pointed comments about corporations that so well match the post 2008 national attitude. I bet that if they had just used the Veridian ads as the better off ted ads the show would still be on the air. Oh well...

TV

First Chuck: Chuck producers, the woman we've all be waiting to see isn't Chuck's mom, it's Summer Glau. And here's how her episode should go. First a mysterious, large box should show up at castle. There should be some commotion over opening it then Chuck should kick it open and Summer should jump out naked (in a surprisingly non-sexual way). Then there should be a mission where Summer has to act as a ballerina and shows off some dance moves. Something strange should happen during the mission causing her to beat up Casey in a series of very fluid motions. Afterwards Morgan should laugh about Casey being beat up by a 90 pound girl. After that Summer should act more cold and distant and take on a stiffer fighting style where she acts almost like she is indestructible. During that time she should run into Chuck's mom and make a comment about how Chuck's mom looks different than she remembers. To make sure the joke lands, Chuck's mom should make a comment about expecting a body builder instead of a little girl. During one of these fights something should land on Summer's arm forcing her to wear a cast. Then she should meet up with Morgan and flirt with him in a weird, nerdy way. While Morgan is busy flirting with Summer, there should be an important phone call to the Buy More and Lester should cover for Morgan by doing a dead on impression of him. Throughout the episode Summer should make slightly off comments. The episode should be written and directed by Joss Whedon. It would also be nice if they could fit in some references to some of Summer's previous roles.

Second SGU: Anyone else think that while a few SGU episodes are about progressing the plot (mostly stacked at the start and end of a season) and a decent number are about building the characters (all thousand of them), that they set aside several of the mid season episodes to be more about how the story is told? I do think it is cool that they play with the format a bit. But in some of those episodes every character acts exactly as you'd expect and so does nothing to build the characters and the plots are so obvious you know the ending 15 minutes in. Which I guess is fine if it is all about how the story is told rather than the story itself, but does seem like making those stories a bit stronger would do a lot to improve the episode. I also don't think they have fully adapted to the idea that the crew is isolated so making it look like someone (especially someone we've seen more than once or twice) is going to die is extra unbelievable.

Third Caprica: I'm so disappointed Caprica is being canceled. Partially because I like the show, but even more so because I feel like I put in a season of watching them build up the world in order to get the payoff in later seasons and now it turns out those seasons won't be made.

Travel Costs

I've found that when I'm looking at ticket prices to travel somewhere I tend to evaluate the cost of the ticket based on factors such as the cost of other modes of transportation, ticket prices at other times of the year, ticket prices to other destinations... But rarely try to evaluate how much the trip is actually worth to me.

Say that it costs $1000 to fly home for thanksgiving. Sounds outrageous since say it is usually $400 around thanksgiving time and $250 other times of the year. But what if you are asked what is it worth to you to get home for thanksgiving? Or why does spending $1000 to go to Egypt seem reasonable, but $2000 seem unreasonable? Do I actually know the value I would get from a trip to Egypt to within $1000? Is the purchase of travel tickets purely based on a game of trying not to be the chump?

Priceline sort of gets at this, although it always shows you the normal prices before you have to name your own. I bet if it didn't do that it would be incredibly difficult to decide what to pay and in the end the decision would probably mostly rely on a guess of what prices should be.

Maybe that's more universal than just airline flights, but I do think that when I buy items there's typically a question of how much is this worth to me, rather than just, how's this compare in price to similar (but not equivalent) items. (The "not equivalent" is important, because unlike say a different smart phone, I can't buy last year's ticket home instead of this year's and a ticket to someone else's home wouldn't make sense, but still factors into the acceptable price calculation).