I'd also suggest R. One of the problems with visualizing complex data sets is that, almost by definition, the prepackaged graphics tools don't allow you to create custom-designed graphics that suit the particular data-set you're working with. But with a bit of programming in R you can get amazing results.
There are some R packages that can help too -- I write about one of them, ggplot, here. (Disclaimer: I work for a company that provides support for R.)
I was also disheartened to hear that my wife, a Japanese national with a green card, might now have to use the foreigners line at customs again. This is related to another law that will be taking effect soon (or already). For those who don't know legal permanent residents (Green Card holders) have been allowed to get in the US citizens line and, I believe, aren't required to give finger prints or have their picture taken (as they are already on file from immigration). This makes it easier for families in which one or more members may not be citizens to go through customs and immigration together (big help when you have kids).
If Google wants to offer insurance benefits that include gay partners, well they can do so.
That's not quite true -- although as a state issue, Prop 8 doesn't have anything to do with this. Like hundreds of other benefits, health insurance has a FEDERAL tax benefit tied to marriage. Even if an employer offers insurance to a same-sex partner, that partner has to pay tax on the full retail value of that insurance, as if it were income. Only a married partner can receive health insurance without the additional tax burden. Because insurance on the retail market is so expensive, the additional tax often makes the insurance unaffordable (as I can attest from experience).
That's one reason the marriage issue is so important to same-sex couples. Many federal benefits are tied up with the act of marriage, in law.
The modified R sources have always been available alongside the binaries at http://www.revolution-computing.com/binaries, and there's now a link on the REvolution R download page as well.
If you want to get a Linux binary, download the sources and compile it. It should work fine on recent versions of RHEL and SLES if you have the necessary toolchain, but YMMV on other variants of Linux. That's the only reason why we currently don't provide free (as in beer) binaries for Linux -- there are so many variants that it's difficult and costly for us to test and support them all.
As an open-source company we support and respect the GPL. We're here to support R and R community, and changes to core R made by our development team (such as 64-bit support on Windows, which we're working on now) are contributed back to the development community via the GPL as they should (and must) be.
That can be a problem (but Google returns meaning results for searches involving R these days). That said, there's a *lot* of information out there about R. The r-help mailing list in particular is very active (making r-help a good term to add to a Google search).
R isn't just free as in beer, it's also free as in freedom: it's under GPL2. It's the freedom given to all those statistical and programming experts to tinker with R that's made it what it is today. (The use of the word "freeware" by the SAS person seemed like a deliberate slight on FOSS to me.)
There are non-free-as-in-beer (but still free-as-in-freedom) versions of R too: I work for a company that provides support for R (under the name REvolution R) with a model similar to Red Hat Linux. The market share for R is now more than large enough for it to be viable for commercial organizations to support it.
And even that understates the real extreme risk. In your example, $50M is the minimum loss 1% of the time only when the model is correct (more details here). But if the model's wrong (and it is when everything's going to hell), the minimum loss is probably much much larger, as many banks recently discovered.
I would even go so far as to say VaR is a decent number used by the wrong people. From a statistical perspective, VaR is a perfectly decent statistic, given the model's correct. Even if the model's wrong (and all models are), as long as it's measured consistently it's a useful indicator when the underlying financial processes are changing, in much the same way as six-sigma analysis is useful in manufacturing. Part of the problem is that there's often pressure from non-statisticians to change the way it's measured ("stuffing the tails" from the article), or for using it for inappropriate purposes (like in financial statements), or simply persisting on continuing to use it when the model is clearly now wrong (LCTM in 1998, everyone except Goldman Sachs today.)
And if you want some insight into the effects of truly extreme pressure changes on the human body (next to which the vacuum of space is peanuts) I recommend reading about the Byford Dolphin diving bell accident. Not for the squeamish.
I think the guy exploded from the inside out from rapid decompression - but I think that could of been a little Hollywoodish. I used to think of the human body exploding due to decompression being pure Hollywood, too, until I read this:
Subsequent investigation by forensic pathologists determined that diver D4, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient, violently exploded due to the rapid and massive expansion of internal gases. All of his thoracic and abdominal organs, and even his thoracic spine were ejected, as were all of his limbs. Simultaneously, his remains were expelled with force through the narrow trunk opening left by the jammed chamber door, less than 60 centimeters (24 inches) in diameter. Fragments of his body were found scattered about the rig. One part was even found lying on the rig's derrick, 10 meters directly above the chambers.
Now, this was a 6atm almost instantaneous decompression. Jumping into space would be at most a 1atm differential, so nothing like this is likely to happen. Gruesomely cool, though.
According to sfgate.com:
"The source of the power failure appears to be an explosion in a transformer vault under a manhole in a plaza at 560 Mission St. in San Francisco... Witnesses said they heard an explosion at about 1:50 p.m., then saw flames coming from the manhole."
Besides I would *pay* to see 1000 people win on the same suite of numbers, it's be a real life "Bruce Almighty" moment and really quite funny.
It's happened before. 109 people won the Powerball second prize in May 2005, when usually only 5 or so winners are expected. Turns out they'd all eaten from the same batch of fortune cookies.:)
Those games wouldn't be any less enjoyable if you took out the customized Miis...
Y'know, while that *seems* logical, I suspect it's not true. There's something more fun about smacking your best friend in the face compared to some generic avatar. I'm sure someone with a psych degree could explain how there's something in the face-recognition software that's fundamental to our brains that really changes the experience when we see someone we recognize (even in Mii form), but I'll leave that to the experts.
That's true of a lot of Wii games, it seems. Sometimes, the controls are just *difficult*, but if you practice it can be very rewarding.
Tiger Woods Golf is another example. The control system IS finicky and frustrating when you first start playing it. But once you learn how to finesse the controls, it's a great game. Refreshingly, there's no one "right" way to swing the controller, it's all about learning your own style. Kinda like real golf, actually.
You're not thinking of this case, are you? A woman in the UK gave birth to twins: one white and one black. They both had the same mixed-race father, and the genetic lottery gave one child "white" genes from the father, and the other "black" genes. (Yes, I'm oversimplifying.)
Mutations also occur at random in nature. Mutations produced in the lab could occur spontaneously in nature as well, although some may be unlikely.
This is correct, but it misses a vary important difference between spontaneous mutations and genetically-engineered changes in the genome. A given mutation might occur in one plant in one field on a farm, but a genetic modification occurs, simultaneously, in a largish percentage of the crop that we eat. There's a HUGE difference in the potential effect that change might have downstream.
I don't have anything against genetic engineering per se, but it does amaze me that GM food products are not subject to the same level of scrutiny that pharmaceuticals are. It takes many years -- often a decade or more -- to bring a pharmaceutical to market, involving extensive trials on animal and human subjects. And yet GM corn -- which will be exposed to many more consumers than most pharmaceuticals -- can be brought to market with just 90 day animal trial? That doesn't sound at all safe to me.
Yes, you can simply put your swap partition on a flash device as opposed to the hard disk. An experienced Linux user can do this in a few seconds at the command line, and it wouldn't be hard to automate it with a HAL script if anyone thinks it's worthwhile.
That's hardly the same thing. Simply putting the swap file on a flash device is unlikely to be beneficial, and probably harmful. From what I read in the article, the Windows feature selectively uses flash when it would be faster (random access reads) but defers to the disk for block-sequential reads, which would be faster than flash memory. Seems smart to me, and according to them gets you a 20% performance boost, which is nice. It also encrypts the data on the flash drive, so you don't have sensitive info unencrypted on an easily lost or stolen thumbdrive.
Doesn't seem like Linux can do that. I'm not making any judgement on the relative benefits of Windows and Linux here, but the kneejerk fanboy "linux can do that too!" response needed to be addressed.
I thought the same thing as you when I first got my Wii. It seems like you're just moving the Wiimote to get a sympathetic motion of the cursor, but that the Wiimote isn't actually pointing at the cursor. For me, it feels like I'm pointing a bit below the on-screen cursor.
But try this: hold the Wiimote up to your eye, and look along the Wiimote like using the sight on a handgun. In actual fact, it lines up perfectly, at least for me. It just doesn't feel like it does. I'm not sure why.
Typing with the Wiimote is easy compared to using the Xbox 360 controller (say), but they could easily make it better. I just wish they would let you hold the B trigger as a SHIFT key, rather than having to click on-screen. Also map controller buttons to SPACE, BACKSPACE and RETURN, and you've got yourself a handy-dandy typing tool, without the need for a big-ass keyboard sitting in your lap.
Yes, there is a battery indicator. You can press the Home button on any Wiimote at any time and it shows you the charge status of all connected controllers while pausing the game.
This is a great example of using similar procedural techniques to generate entire environments, not just textures, and Elite was indeed a pioneer in this area.
The most recent example I can think of is Oblivion, which used procedural techniques to generate the forests. The branches and leaves of each tree were generated procedurally, not pre-defined. (The same may also be true of the positions and species mixture of the trees in the forest, but I'm not sure about that.)
In Australia, the winner always has a majority of the vote. They use an "instant runoff" system rather than new elections, though. For example, if you have 5 candidates, each voter ranks all candidates from 1-5. If counting all "1"'s doesn't result in a majority, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated, and his votes go to the second-preferences of his voters. And so on, until a majority is reached.
This systems results in much stronger third-party candidates. Participation is also over 90%, since every eligible voter must do so by law or face a fine.
I wondered the same thing too, especially when the've shopped in a few episodes for experimental paraphenalia at a well known sex shop in the Castro that caters to the gay leather crowd. So they're gay-friendly at minimum.
Adam has mentioned a wife and kids on the show, though.
There's an old Sci-Fi novel, The Krone Experiment, which has exactly this idea as a premise. Although now I've gone and given away the "big surprise" of the book, it's still well worth a read: it's a gripping good yarn that lays out the purported consequences of releasing a microscopic black hole on Earth. I think it's out of print though -- I got a used copy from Amazon for less than $5.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd also suggest R. One of the problems with visualizing complex data sets is that, almost by definition, the prepackaged graphics tools don't allow you to create custom-designed graphics that suit the particular data-set you're working with. But with a bit of programming in R you can get amazing results.
There are some R packages that can help too -- I write about one of them, ggplot, here. (Disclaimer: I work for a company that provides support for R.)
I was also disheartened to hear that my wife, a Japanese national with a green card, might now have to use the foreigners line at customs again. This is related to another law that will be taking effect soon (or already). For those who don't know legal permanent residents (Green Card holders) have been allowed to get in the US citizens line and, I believe, aren't required to give finger prints or have their picture taken (as they are already on file from immigration). This makes it easier for families in which one or more members may not be citizens to go through customs and immigration together (big help when you have kids).
I didn't know about that either -- I don't think it's gotten much publicity. A little googling turned up an article on an obscure website. Life is about to get a lot harder for legal green card holders entering the the US.
If Google wants to offer insurance benefits that include gay partners, well they can do so.
That's not quite true -- although as a state issue, Prop 8 doesn't have anything to do with this. Like hundreds of other benefits, health insurance has a FEDERAL tax benefit tied to marriage. Even if an employer offers insurance to a same-sex partner, that partner has to pay tax on the full retail value of that insurance, as if it were income. Only a married partner can receive health insurance without the additional tax burden. Because insurance on the retail market is so expensive, the additional tax often makes the insurance unaffordable (as I can attest from experience).
That's one reason the marriage issue is so important to same-sex couples. Many federal benefits are tied up with the act of marriage, in law.
The modified R sources have always been available alongside the binaries at http://www.revolution-computing.com/binaries, and there's now a link on the REvolution R download page as well.
If you want to get a Linux binary, download the sources and compile it. It should work fine on recent versions of RHEL and SLES if you have the necessary toolchain, but YMMV on other variants of Linux. That's the only reason why we currently don't provide free (as in beer) binaries for Linux -- there are so many variants that it's difficult and costly for us to test and support them all.
As an open-source company we support and respect the GPL. We're here to support R and R community, and changes to core R made by our development team (such as 64-bit support on Windows, which we're working on now) are contributed back to the development community via the GPL as they should (and must) be.
That can be a problem (but Google returns meaning results for searches involving R these days).
That said, there's a *lot* of information out there about R. The r-help mailing list in particular is very active (making r-help a good term to add to a Google search).
I maintain a blog about R with the aim of collecting the most useful information in one place. (Disclaimer: I do this as part of my work for a company that provides commercial support for R.)
R isn't just free as in beer, it's also free as in freedom: it's under GPL2. It's the freedom given to all those statistical and programming experts to tinker with R that's made it what it is today. (The use of the word "freeware" by the SAS person seemed like a deliberate slight on FOSS to me.)
There are non-free-as-in-beer (but still free-as-in-freedom) versions of R too: I work for a company that provides support for R (under the name REvolution R) with a model similar to Red Hat Linux. The market share for R is now more than large enough for it to be viable for commercial organizations to support it.
And even that understates the real extreme risk. In your example, $50M is the minimum loss 1% of the time only when the model is correct (more details here). But if the model's wrong (and it is when everything's going to hell), the minimum loss is probably much much larger, as many banks recently discovered.
I would even go so far as to say VaR is a decent number used by the wrong people. From a statistical perspective, VaR is a perfectly decent statistic, given the model's correct. Even if the model's wrong (and all models are), as long as it's measured consistently it's a useful indicator when the underlying financial processes are changing, in much the same way as six-sigma analysis is useful in manufacturing. Part of the problem is that there's often pressure from non-statisticians to change the way it's measured ("stuffing the tails" from the article), or for using it for inappropriate purposes (like in financial statements), or simply persisting on continuing to use it when the model is clearly now wrong (LCTM in 1998, everyone except Goldman Sachs today.)
And if you want some insight into the effects of truly extreme pressure changes on the human body (next to which the vacuum of space is peanuts) I recommend reading about the Byford Dolphin diving bell accident. Not for the squeamish.
According to sfgate.com: "The source of the power failure appears to be an explosion in a transformer vault under a manhole in a plaza at 560 Mission St. in San Francisco... Witnesses said they heard an explosion at about 1:50 p.m., then saw flames coming from the manhole."
That's true of a lot of Wii games, it seems. Sometimes, the controls are just *difficult*, but if you practice it can be very rewarding.
Tiger Woods Golf is another example. The control system IS finicky and frustrating when you first start playing it. But once you learn how to finesse the controls, it's a great game. Refreshingly, there's no one "right" way to swing the controller, it's all about learning your own style. Kinda like real golf, actually.
You're not thinking of this case, are you? A woman in the UK gave birth to twins: one white and one black. They both had the same mixed-race father, and the genetic lottery gave one child "white" genes from the father, and the other "black" genes. (Yes, I'm oversimplifying.)
This is correct, but it misses a vary important difference between spontaneous mutations and genetically-engineered changes in the genome. A given mutation might occur in one plant in one field on a farm, but a genetic modification occurs, simultaneously, in a largish percentage of the crop that we eat. There's a HUGE difference in the potential effect that change might have downstream.
I don't have anything against genetic engineering per se, but it does amaze me that GM food products are not subject to the same level of scrutiny that pharmaceuticals are. It takes many years -- often a decade or more -- to bring a pharmaceutical to market, involving extensive trials on animal and human subjects. And yet GM corn -- which will be exposed to many more consumers than most pharmaceuticals -- can be brought to market with just 90 day animal trial? That doesn't sound at all safe to me.Doesn't seem like Linux can do that. I'm not making any judgement on the relative benefits of Windows and Linux here, but the kneejerk fanboy "linux can do that too!" response needed to be addressed.
Don't you mean arbitrage ?
But try this: hold the Wiimote up to your eye, and look along the Wiimote like using the sight on a handgun. In actual fact, it lines up perfectly, at least for me. It just doesn't feel like it does. I'm not sure why.
Typing with the Wiimote is easy compared to using the Xbox 360 controller (say), but they could easily make it better. I just wish they would let you hold the B trigger as a SHIFT key, rather than having to click on-screen. Also map controller buttons to SPACE, BACKSPACE and RETURN, and you've got yourself a handy-dandy typing tool, without the need for a big-ass keyboard sitting in your lap.
Yes, there is a battery indicator. You can press the Home button on any Wiimote at any time and it shows you the charge status of all connected controllers while pausing the game.
The most recent example I can think of is Oblivion, which used procedural techniques to generate the forests. The branches and leaves of each tree were generated procedurally, not pre-defined. (The same may also be true of the positions and species mixture of the trees in the forest, but I'm not sure about that.)
In Australia, the winner always has a majority of the vote. They use an "instant runoff" system rather than new elections, though. For example, if you have 5 candidates, each voter ranks all candidates from 1-5. If counting all "1"'s doesn't result in a majority, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated, and his votes go to the second-preferences of his voters. And so on, until a majority is reached. This systems results in much stronger third-party candidates. Participation is also over 90%, since every eligible voter must do so by law or face a fine.
Adam has mentioned a wife and kids on the show, though.
There's an old Sci-Fi novel, The Krone Experiment, which has exactly this idea as a premise. Although now I've gone and given away the "big surprise" of the book, it's still well worth a read: it's a gripping good yarn that lays out the purported consequences of releasing a microscopic black hole on Earth. I think it's out of print though -- I got a used copy from Amazon for less than $5.