1 in a million! but it's a chance!

Hello!

'There's a chance!' exclaimed Jim Carrey's character in the brilliant and ridiculously funny movie "Dumb and Dumber" Hahaha :) I still laugh about it... come to think of it, I should watch it again sometime... anyway, this was his response to his love interest in the movie rejecting his advances with the familiar '1 in a million' that she would be interested.... Hmmm... here's to hoping, obviously the eternal optimist...

It sounds funny, and we laugh, and cry (the movie is that good!) exactly because of the ridiculous response he makes in thinking that 1/1,000,000 is actually a possibility. And yet, when I think about it, most of us believe that yes, that is a chance worth noting... Let me explain briefly what I mean, the way I understand basic (and I mean basic) statistics is that you can actually calculate the probability of tossing a coin, and getting 'heads' every time. This is a small number, but it's a 'calculatable' probability and well, most of us would say yes it is a 'possibility'. Why?
Why do we laugh at Jim Carry's character, and not at ourselves?

Do we realize that we could spend our lives tossing that coin, and never ever observe it land heads every time we toss it? And hence, as observation doesn't match theory, perhaps we should say that there are certain probabilities that are actually so improbably as to be impossible?

Hmmm.... well, what about if we had 1,000,000 people toss a coin each, what would be the chance that one of them would always get heads? The chances of consequitive heads 'intuitively' sounds now (at least to me), to be more likely.... so what is going on here...? (Aside note, I read somewhere this amazing quote, which is quite pertinent: Intuition is the product of thousands of years of not thinking, so with this in mind, let's continue.)

Perhaps there should be a statitics which takes into account not only the probability of an event occuring but also the number of tests done? Maybe there already is such a statistical framework?... talking with a bio friend of mine, seems like Baysian stats is something along these lines. As soon as I get a chance I will take a look at this... and we'll see where we go...

But right now, I'm trying hard to write up my PhD... it's hard and soul destroying, and just impossibly difficult, because especially when I am most pressed for time do I find myself branching into other sciences and discovering the most amazingly interesting books and theories. For example, recently walking around the Natural History Museum (again... I have been to that place so many times now :)) I stumbled upon the creatures from the Burgess Shale... Wow :) I love the little note that is attached to their drawings... "Relationship to living organisms unknown." So from this I stumbled upon Stephen Jay Gould and his book (I am reading...) "Wonderful Life"... and then I can't wait to finish that one and read Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained"... and then .... oh, I can go on and on! and on and on!!! ....
But when I wake up in the morning... I feel great and elated for the few minutes it takes to download my life back into my brain... and then all the pressures and stresses of the new day weight heavy... so this is why I am writing in my blog!!! ....

Okay, seriously, back to it! :)

Bayesian Stats

Feel like I'm onto something interesting here....
(http://www-biba.inrialpes.fr/Jaynes/prob.html)

okay, probably, quite obviously :)

Skeptic

Hmm... so today I received my first ever 'Skeptic' magazine! :) Very interesting, especially the article on 'climate change'. And apparently it is Darwin's 200 year anniversary .... so lots of info on that and 'how to argue with creationists'. Hahaha! I would say that with people who are 'religious' creationists you can't argue faith... hmm... but it's about time religion was gone as a meme... jeez... to paraphrase, or quote, (or something in between) Schaupy - religion is like a glow worm it glows brightest in darkness. We should really move on!

Anyway! Reading Dawkin's 'Blind Watchmaker' again... and I get the feeling my mind was elsewhere the first time I read it, because I don't remember being in so much agreement with him (still too early in the book to get to the sticky points). Hmm...and I know everyone says this and thinks so already, but gosh, the guy can write! Very well thought out, and leaves your mind feeling organized and clean, which is refreshing.

Liars, damned liars and scientists

"Even after half a century of quantum theory and under the present impact of information theory and cybernetics, one often finds the rather outdated opinion that the application of statistical methods to a problem is dictated by our inability to solve it 'exactly'. Yet unless statistics are understood as a mere averaging process, the opposite is in fact true. A random quantity can be considered as found when not only its mean value, but the entire probability distribution about this mean value is known. In certain rare and usually idealized cases, this probability distribution is such that the mean value is, in the limit, the only value the quantity may assume and in this case the quantity is no longer random. In this special case of a single value instead of an entire distribution, we have a (so-called) 'exact' solution; this is of course much easier to find than the statistical solution, which includes the 'exact' solution as a special case. From this point of view the two opposites are not 'statistical' and 'exact solution', but 'general, statistical solution' and 'idealized limiting case'. "

YEAH! :)
Just wanted to write this out, because I think its particularly relevant today to the interfacing problem of science and society, and also because I keep wanting to remember it, and want to stop carrying the book around with me :)
"The Scattering of Electromagnetic Waves from Rough Surfaces" - Petr Beckmann, Andre Spizzichino, page 71.

Nonsinusoidal Signals

Wow :) I am speechless, this is why I am blogging... :) Hahaha, okay, overwhelmed and stunned. I have stumbled upon the works of Henning Harmuth. It's just amazing, so many of my questions already worked out, and so many things which I have read by people already, worked out by him years ago it seems.

Here is just one paper by him, which is freely available: http://www.emph.com.ua/18/harmuth.htm

and hmmm... I hope to I am not yet a complete invalid in mathematics that I can fully understand his work. It's rare when you read something and notice that you are feeling light headed because you have stopped breathing :)

Metamaterials!!!

Wow :) This is my first exposure the an 'official' debate among the leaders of the scientific community in the area of EM engineering :) Very cool :)
The topic is the existence of 'metamaterials' (of course Wiki has an article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial), negative refractive index is the cool bit :) I have to admit having read just a bit about them, I do not have a very good idea what either side is really talking about but it feels very interesting :)
So find the official debate in the IEEE Microwave Mag (Vol 10, Num 3, May 2009) and stay tuned :).
I know who I'm cheering for :) Metamaterial guys of course, makes life more interesting if there's the possibility of a negative refractive index, flat lenses, etc.

I'm still alive

Barely, I've just had a little time to peruse my fav news site - slashdot between Matlab crashes....stupid Matlab... and found this very potentially useful book for most women: "How to be a geek goddess" by Christina Tynan-Wood. Looks very cool :) I'm so glad she wrote about this stuff! About time :) Check it out here: http://geekgirlfriends.com/