Dogs

The following conversation actually occurred during my class today.

Student 1:  A calculator is a man's best friend.
Student 2: I thought that a dog is a man's best friend.
Me: Ah, but since you can program a dog into your calculator, the calculator is really your best friend.

I then proceeded to enter aforementioned program into my calculator, which reads as follows (in calculator-language):

4->A
While(A>0)
Disp "Food?"
Pause
Disp "Play?"
Pause
End

For those who don't speak programming, this creates an infinite loop where the calculator dog asks you alternately for food and to play.  I thought it was pretty accurate.  I also am very happy that Kaylee is much more sophisticated than a dog:

She also sleeps where my feet go.  Bravo Kaylee.

 

 

 

Math and Mathemagic

I had a fun lesson today in Statistics.  We just started talking about experimental design and actually how the statistics works (fuck off linear models, we're moving to important things now) and I really wanted to leave a good impression for when we start talking about confidence intervals and p-values.  So I came up with an activity to do.

The big question of the day that I wanted to answer was, "How do we know that an event is due to factors OTHER than random chance?"  The best example I could think of was a question I had on a statistics test.  "How many times would you have to a six on a six-sided die out of 120 rolls in order to be 95% confident that the die is loaded?"  Now, since I'm a good gamer, I don't have any loaded dice.  But I can force a card.

Pick a card, any card....

 

So I forced the card and then later in the lesson I revealed the card.  How can we be certain that I wasn't just plain lucky?  It spawned a fun discussion and realization that, no matter what the situation and what the sample, there's a small random chance that the unlikely happens.  And thus, we never "prove" or "disprove" anything with statistics.  We can only be 99% confident.

Statistics is fun.

My mind is melting....

I was getting my Daily Show on.  Because it's the weekend and I have time.  Now, sometimes Hulu says, "would you like to watch the long-form commercial of something or another instead of the normal commercial breaks?"  Normally I say no when I'm watching a 30 minute show on the off chance that I get a 2.5 minute long commercial when normally I only get 1.5 minutes of commercials (I'm a mathematician; I can't help it).

Hulu very politely asks me, "Would you like to watch the Kohler advanced toilet long-form commercial?"

Like the questions "Do you want to smell this?  It smells awful," and "Can your farts save your buddy from drowning," (If you haven't watched at least one episode of MANswers, you should give it a shot just to see how dumb the male species is) this question only has one answer:  Fuck yes.

So I'm watching in awe as a camera pans around a bathroom which is nearly the ballsiest I've ever seen (the first being in my grandfather's house).  In the middle of the room sat the toilet, and on three sides were full room-height windows.  "Lid and seat open and close automatically," drifted across the screen.  "Fuck me," thought I, "this device can prevent 25% of all divorces in the United States!"  Next came, "heated seat" and "warms your feet."

But wait, there's more.  This toilet comes with a wireless touchscreen remote control.  If you haven't passed out from shock, perhaps you didn't hear me.  A WIRELESS TOUCHSCREEN REMOTE CONTROL.  FOR YOUR TOILET.

All this can be yours for the low low price of $4,000.