Kevin's Blog

Happy New Year

2008-12-29T23:00:00.001-07:00

How about this for new years trivia:
It's December 29th, and this is my second post of the year.

*tear*

Maybe I can do better next year.

Take 2

2008-02-19T23:20:00.001-07:00

I know I havn't written in a while, but I've had some writer's block at work. I'm hoping some blogging will cure it.

Life is busy. I now stay home with Kyle in the mornings while Mindy works. Mindy's new job has been nice from a monetary standpoint, but it means we have less time together. That's not as fun as you might think. I also watch a little boy, William, for a couple hours in the morning. I'm convinced they conspire between the two of them to make mornings more interesting. One takes a morning off, while the other finds new ways to mess up something. Maybe we should get out of the house more often.

At work, I'm somewhat proud of implementing my simulation to run on a cluster (think large network of computers). UA has a cluster for general research purposes (and another, larger cluster being installed soon). I havn't run anything huge yet, I've gotten enough of a speedup in computation time to claim the new implementation a total success. It always seemed that the old implementation would limit the quality of simulations I could run before a deadline. Now I can be happy for the next few months thinking everything is faster. If history is any judge, It won't be long before I find some way to be dissatisfied again.

So, you think YOU are smart

2007-08-10T22:51:00.000-07:00

What you see here is Kyle plugging RCA cables into the front of the TV.

Yes, the corresponding colors are correctly connected.

I'm turning Pro

2007-07-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

It's looking increasingly likely that there will be a spot for me next year in the Tour de France.

Boo Rasmussen

I saw a movie

2007-07-05T16:51:00.000-07:00

It's somewhat ironic to me that the Transformers motto is "more than meets the eye", yet the movie relies on visual appeal.

Luckily, visual appeal is all this movie needs.

To the San Antonio Spurs

2007-06-17T23:55:00.000-07:00

I hope your National Championship means as much to you as it does to me.

Not Convinced

2007-05-30T14:42:00.000-07:00

I know the Suns have been out of the playoffs for a while now, but I was out of town. Plus, I'm still bitter. Given the sleazy way the Spurs played I must find a way to say that they are not a better basketball team - and I have.

Sure the Spurs won the series 4:2, but did they significantly outscore the Suns? Let's do a test of significance.

We are trying to show whether the Spurs score minus the Suns score is statistically different than zero. A simple paired t-test will suffice. This test will show whether the difference in scores is due to random game to game fluctuation, or whether the Spurs statistically outscored the Suns during the series and are therefore a better team. If the Spurs score was statistically different (i.e. 'significant'), the P-value will be less than 0.05.

Lets look at some data:
Format (Spurs Score, Suns Score, difference)
Game 1: (111, 106, 5)
Game 2: (81, 101, -20)
Game 3: (108, 101, 7)
Game 4: (98, 104, -6)
Game 5: (88, 85, 3)
Game 6: (114, 106, 8)
Average: (100, 100.5, -.5)
Std Dev: (13.3, 7.9, 10.8)

And finally:
t-value: 0.1136
p-value: 0.9140
Degrees of Freedom: 5

Wow, not even close to significant. In fact, the Suns averaged more points than the Spurs in the series, thanks to their 20 point victory in game 2. Even if you don't include game 2, the P-value is barely less than 0.25.

In review, I must recommend the Suns-Spurs series be extended a few more games.

Crummy Computer

2007-05-07T14:19:00.000-07:00

This is inexcusable.

Checking the cable on a bad hard drive is almost always the first thing you do.

Kryptonite

2007-04-30T10:35:00.000-07:00

You may have heard last week that scientists found a mineral matching very closely the characteristics of Kryptonite. Kyrptonite is, of course, the green radioactive material known to harm Superman in comic books and movies.

The troubling part is that this new mineral is neither green nor radioactive. Which means the only common characteristic between it and Kyrptonite is that it kills a fictional superhero.

I wonder how they tested that.

Krazy Kyle

2007-04-08T22:18:00.000-07:00

It's Kyle in tunnel vision!

He insists on taking a "truck" with him everywhere - including church on Easter Sunday!

The 5 second rule

2007-04-04T10:36:00.000-07:00

The 5th grade version of me would be disappointed. Don't you wish you could research this?

Your probably didn't know who he was

2007-03-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

He was one of the true inventors of the MRI.

Things to do on your 25th Birthday

2007-03-23T17:21:00.000-07:00

1) Get nice gifts from your family
2) Go out for pizza
3) Eat cake and ice cream
4) Go back to work till 11pm

Things to do the day after your 25th Birthday
1) Give a presentation
2) Go to a Diamondback's Spring Training game
3) Get 2 hotdogs & a beer (bought by a faculty advisor)
4) Get rained out after 3 innings

My new claim to fame

2007-03-15T21:58:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I was in a Katharine McPhee Video.

What do you think?

Weird

2007-02-27T09:22:00.000-07:00

I have more interest now in reading my undergrad text books than when I took the respective classes.

Is that weird?

God and Orals

2007-02-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

Evolution vs. Intelligent Design is NOT the same thing as Darwin vs. God.

On a happier note, yesterday I passed my oral comprehensive exam!!!!

Old Pueblo

2007-02-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

Every year we manage to not race the "24 Hours in the Old Pueblo" in spectacular fashion. This year is no exception.

Maybe I'll do it solo next year. Then I can't be disappointed when others back out.

Not Impressed

2007-02-09T12:36:00.000-07:00

Functional MRI (fMRI) is all the new buzz. It's all over the news, especially in the last week. The idea is straight forward. Different areas of your brain are "activated" when you move your arm, tap your finger, tell a lie, etc. In practice, it's a LOT more difficult.

It's not the science of fMRI I'm unimpressed with - it's the media coverage. There IS some bad science - there was a group several months ago that claimed fMRI as a foolproof lie detector, which wouldn't be such a bad idea if there was currently any evidence for it.

Moving on, I find that "the news" grossly distorts findings in my field (MRI). It's likely accidental. Some of the stories miss details. Others miss the entire premise. The big examples this week were in fMRI. For instance, this news story broke about Super Bowl advertisers using fMRI to gauge audience reaction to commercials.

Then, there was this story today about using fMRI to determine whether a person was adding or subtracting 2 numbers. They make it sound like you think "addition", and a notice pops up on the computer screen saying "this person is adding". What they don't tell you in the article is that you had to think addition 32 times while they took 155 images (times 8, cause each subject did it did it 8 times), after which they did enough statistics on the images to make you want to forget about addition altogether.

Splash

2007-01-31T21:42:00.000-07:00

Today marked the 4th day of measurable rain so far this year. Kyle marked the occasion by playing outside.

Breaking news!

2007-01-21T20:03:00.000-07:00

It snowed....in Tucson
And a "snow advisory" is in effect until 5pm MONDAY!

The easy life

2006-12-21T12:56:00.000-07:00

Mentor: When do classes start?
Me: I don't care.
Mentor: Oh right, why should you?

My final final

2006-12-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

My take home applied math final is finished, marking the end of my last class. It had 6 questions, and 13 pages of written answers.

It's time to celebrate!

A new application every day

2006-12-05T20:47:00.000-07:00

Did you know Pringles aerodynamically designs their potato chips such that they don't fly off the production line?

2006-12-01T17:05:00.000-07:00

A little T-day football!

And I quote

2006-11-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

...from a scientific paper:

"Because details are still lacking on these subjects, the temptation to speculate will not be entirely suppressed."

Oh, I passed all 4 of my comps questions!!!