Make predictions for three events which will happen within the next: year, decade and century. Specify whether the event would have been true were you to make the prediction this time previously - i.e. for a prediction of an event in the next year, would it have come true if you had predicted it a year ago.
You can choose what headings you want to make predictions under.
( Mine )
( The Problem )
EDIT: It works, by using a different method to how I was thinking though.
Complete and utter cop out.
I am not amused.
Now to watch the rest of the episode, and attempt to get off my high-horse.
EDIT: Still not happy, but, well... I want a Jenny spin-off.
Edits: Okay - questions are now in place above the poll.
( Creativity , Fairness and Income )
I don't have too much work to do right now so I thought I'd have a play with implementing some system with actual data, and thus try to determine which produces the 'best' results. This is where you people come in.
We are going to be hosting an election for the 'best' colour. The candidates are:
i) Red,
ii) Blue,
iii) Green,
iv) Yellow,
v) Orange,
vi) Purple,
vii) Pink,
viii) Black,
ix) White,
x) Brown.
Can you please comment with the following [See below for descriptions of the voting methods]. Assume in all cases that a single member is to be elected:
i) A 'true' ordering of your preferences - that is a ranking independent of any tactical concerns regarding which options you think are most likely to win.
[For the following two please consider strategic voting concerns (see notes below) - if these do not change your preferences then you may indicate 'as above']
ia) A ranking of candidates for use under an 'instant run-off' (single transferable vote) voting system.
ib) A ranking of candidates for use under a 'Borda count' system.
ii) Which single candidate you would vote for in a 'plurality' (first past the post) voting system.
iii) Which multiple candidates you would vote for in an 'approval voting' system.
iv) A score for each candidate in the range of 1 - 10 points (using whole numbers only) for using in a range voting system.
If you have any questions or comments can you make independent comments for votes and queries as to ensure a private ballot comments and screened by default - however I may choose to un-screen useful queries or comments.
NOTES:
* ( Plurality voting )
* ( Approval voting )
* ( Range voting )
* ( Instant Run-off )
* ( Borda Count )
EDIT: There is also a straw poll being conducted by
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
atreic on her journal now if you want some idea of the popularity of various options.i) Something I should be more worried about?
ii) My body telling me to quit exercising for a while?
iii) My body telling me to cut back a while?
iv) Of no concern at all - just a consequence of exercise which will go away / something I need to put up with?
v) Good - an indication that the muscles are being strongly exercised and will thus grow stronger until I become SUPER NEIL - ABLE TO LEAP LARGE PUDDLES IN A SINGLE BOUND!
vi) Something else.
DID YOU KNOW:
...that in a few villages and towns of southern France and Spain it is illegal to die, and that there are attempts to have the same law in a town in Brazil?
...that Ben Affleck died while shoveling snow outside of his house, leaving behind an unexpectedly small estate speculated to be worth as little as US$20,000?
...that John F. Kennedy was shot dead in an ambush by government agents who had foreknowledge of his whereabouts?
...that American entrepreneur Timothy Dexter defied the popular idiom and actually made a profit when he sold coal to Newcastle?
"So - no Mrs Socrates today then?"
"No - left her at home. Although I expect by now she's helping your brother in the food preparation area. The woman's incorrigible it pains me to say it - I mean I married her in all good faith... but between you and me you do realise... She's Straight?"
"No - Xanthippe's straight?!"
"Keep your voice down - you hadn't guessed then? Zeus they're cunning these heterosexuals."
"Its such a shock - I mean; is this a harmless lifestyle choice or..."
"Oh hardly. Not when she fancies people of the opposite gender."
"Oh!"
"Oh - she doesn't fancy me thank goodness."
[Edited to reflect comments - transcriptions is hard.]
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Which Discworld Character are you like (with pics) created with QuizFarm.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| You scored as Lord Havelock Vetinari You are Lord Vetinari! Supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork! Cool, calculated, and always in control. You graduated from the assassins guild, but failed a course on stealth and camouflage, because the professor never saw you there (even though you attended every class). You always seem to know what everyone is thinking, and after a conversation with you, people feel that they have just escaped certain death.
|
New Scientist discusses the test at: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shorts
Basically the test will ask you to identify either an image or a word as 'good' or 'bad' - good words include 'friend', 'happy', 'pleasant', bad words include 'hate', 'enemy', etc. Interspersed with the words are images of candidates which at the beginning of each round will be assigned to being good (i.e. one does not select good words, but good words or images of candidate A) - another candidate images will need to be placed with bad association.
Now I wonder whether this test may not so much have identified my attitudes towards the four candidates, but instead just shown how differentiable they are - that is it is a lot easier to identify an image of Hilary (a woman) over any of the men, and easier to identify Barak Obama over the two white men. I question whether the test truly identifies my attitudes, or simply reveals that I am better at identifying a woman over a man?
Presumably this test should have been calibrated for this, but given the length (under ten minutes) I doubt whether the effect could fully have been corrected for. Or maybe I do indeed, apparently like the author of the New Scientist blog entry, have a secret crush on Ms. Clinton.
Let us all have 1 minutes silence.
( Read more... )
EDIT: Am listening to them now, reliving teenage angst :: smile ::
Sings: "Yesterday was the worst day ever, and tomorrow won't be better... it's history repeating"
Its something for which I have been searching, on-and-off for a fair amount of time, and while the current map isn't perfect (the resolution is quite bad, 312 by 312 points covering a larger area than the UK itself, and I suspect that it isn't a true representation of the population density, but in fact a representation of the density of the population of the local government region within which a point is found [if that makes sense]) I'm already able to think of a number of interesting things to do with it.
The first is to attempt to find the 'centre' of the UK population. This is a complicated thing to define as there are several contradictory ways in which you could choose to define this, for instance as simply the 'mean' location in population (i.e. as a weighted centre of gravity definition) - this yields a centre a little to the North East of Birmingham.
Other ways of defining it may be as a function of radius - for instance popdensity*radius will give a point where, subject to certain horrendous assumptions, all of the UK could drive and minimise the total time. This turns out to be a similar point to the previous. Finally suppose that you want to build an attraction or business to which having to travel a distance will put people off. Here one would get something like inverse radius relationship (distance places are less attractive) and the point of maximum popdensity/radius would give you the best location for your site. Unsurprisingly this turns out to be in London.
I'd like to do other things with the data, but it will take me a little while to get around to them - for instance:
i) What would be a mathematical best transportation network covering the country?
Assume that all journeys are person-to-person. The number of people going from and to a given point is thus simply a function of population density. We can define a function, probably of the form 'a/r^{b}', to give a 'benefit' function of the benefit of having a transportation network nearby, and a 'cost' function of something like 'c*d', where d is the length of the network. By maximising the benefit relative to the costs we can get an idea of where in the country it would be best to build our network.
ii) 'Fair' constituencies.
The scale of my current map is currently probably too small for this to work, but it could be done for the EU parliamentary election regions...
Consider a parliamentary constituency. To ensure that no party is offered an advantage by the placement of boundaries it would be best to define some kind of (mathematical?) definition of what makes a fair region. Ideally we would want each constituency to have the same population, for each to be as compact (i.e. have as small as possible boundary given the area) as possible (to reduce transportation costs for candidates) and for boundaries to pass through regions of as low population as possible (to prevent towns being arbitrarily split in half). We can again write a cost function, running it would give us a 'fair' division of the country.
Of course it reality this probably wouldn't be a reasonable way to make constituencies in the UK. The boundaries thus defined would bear no relation to present cultural, political or geographic regions (i.e. a region may cross the boundaries between England and Wales, or place both N. Ireland and parts of Wales in a single region).
Any other ideas?
The 'centre of gravity' of the UK population is located just to the North-East of Birmingham.
If you want a site which is close to a lot of people, the London seems to be the way to go.
I suspect that the results would be somewhat different without my game of 'Mafia' - speaking of which - does anyone fancy starting another game on-line, or meeting up one night (Birmingham people) to play for real ;).
Anyway - the thing which interested me was the attitude of Supermarkets and how it accords almost entirely with my own perceptions of them, for instance in terms of farmed Chicken for meat the situation of the supermarkets was pretty much as follows:
* Waitrose is almost already 'there' with all their branded Chicken produced in properly farmed sites - although they do still use a fast growing breed.
* Sainsbury's has made a commitment to changing their practices, and hopes to bring all their Chicken up to a 'Freedom Food' standard.
* Tesco acknowledges that there are welfare problems, but is aware of the issues faced by poor families in terms of buying meat.
* Morrisons is happy to stock a range of differently farmed Chickens.
* Asda refuses to acknowledge that there is even a problem.
Maybe I'm just projecting here, but its interesting how sometimes prejudices about companies do appear to be justified.
Gay Switch:
Homosexuality in fruit flies can be switched on and off by using drugs to alter the strength of nerve-cell junctions in male flies' brains. The changes makes males unable to sense a pheromone that normally stops them mating with other males (Nature Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1038/nn2019)
Is it just me or is this bad reporting. I mean, there are two issues I primarily have with it:
# It implicitly assumes that Homosexuality means having sex with the same sex: This is a somewhat outdated attitude isn't it? I mean its one of those things whereby a homosexual is a person who chooses* to have sex with people of the same sex, but someone who has sex with people of the same sex is not necessarily a homosexual. The flies here would appear to mate with both males and females which in my book would (without my second issue below) make them bisexual.
# Its not about homosexuality anyway - my reading of this article is that the chemical changes prevent the male from determining the sex of an individual. As sexuality is explicitly dependent upon sex and gender if one cannot recognise gender then one surely cannot have a sexuality? If I were to remove the ability of a fruit fly to discriminate between living and dead flies, would I be able to conclude that this led to necrophilia?
Anyway. Meh.
Neil.
* N.B Chooses here being used in a somewhat subtle manner to mean 'is not compelled by circumstance', therefore excluding rape and those who manifest homosexual behaviour in extreme environments such as prison. I don't take a stand on nature versus nurture origins of homosexuality, but acknowledge that it is not a 'choice' in the same way that becoming a vegetarian is a choice.
I wasn't expecting bald, was expect younger, and - I dunno, he's got such a smooth voice I was expecting a smoother presentation (if you know what I mean).
"There are 90 billions 11 digit numbers..."
Erm, well no - there are 100 billion - its just that some (well- 10 billion of them) have leading zeros, still - I suppose one could argue that from one perspective (minimum decimal representation) you're right.
However - YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT PHONE NUMBERS! They ALWAYS have leading zeros!
Stupid advert.
