The problem is that a lot of his uncertainty comes from systematics, not statistical error. If it was pure statistical error, then you could definitely do that based on 3 elections, but he was either going to get essentially every state right (if the systematics were small) or every state wrong by about the same amount (if they weren't).
Real scientist here... astronomer, actually. And while we often use metric, and we never ever use Imperial units, we do often use units that are the natural scale. Mass is usually in solar masses; length can be in Astronomical Units (=the radius of the Earth's orbit around the sun), parsecs, or solar radii; power is in solar luminosities. And there's a good reason - knowing that a mass-to-light ratio is 2 M_sun / L_sun tells you a lot more than knowing that it is 10000 kg / Watt.
Yes it is. It's not that modern medicine doesn't make mistakes, it's that it learns from them. If a treatment is demonstrated repeatedly to do no better than a placebo, or even worse to do harm, it stops being used. Homeopathy says that if it doesn't work for you, you're doing it wrong.
Can they put some of that money into ensuring that the stations broadcast with a usable amount of power? Most of the stations seem to put out enough power for decent reception only in their immediate vicinity - places that are far enough away that the analog signal is only slightly fuzzy (but still entirely watchable) get nothing thanks to the all-or-nothing nature of digital.
That's not true - they do have some clues. They know how long the event took, they know it has broad absorption lines, they know it slightly changed colour during the event, they know it brightened by at least a factor of 100, and they know that the object is normally very faint. They haven't come up with a scenario that explains all of those facts, but they put limits on what sorts of things do and don't make sense.
Interesting... so their best matches to the spectrum are DQp WD (a type of very magnetic white dwarf) or a BALQSO (quasar with broad absorption lines from surrounding gas). While the light curve kind of looks like gravitational microlensing, it changes colour which microlensing events normally don't(*) - although they could if the object that's being lensed is resolved. So the best option would have appeared to be a somewhat nearby lensed BAL QSO - except that in that case it would definitely have been seen in the reference images. So the best option is a DQp that either had some sort of surface event that brightened it by at least two orders of magnitude (probably the most likely option) or got lensed while undergoing minor colour changes.
(*) The timescale also seems to make the lensing option unlikely, but not impossible if the relative speeds of the source and lens happen to be very low.
While I certainly hope you're correct, do you have any basis for that? If it were a majority government, I suspect it would pass easily, and if Harper really wants to make everything a confidence vote, the Liberals aren't going to choose digital rights as the election issue.
Aren't most amateur telescopes still below r_0? Depends what wavelength you're looking at, obviously, but I wouldn't have thought that you would get multiple speckles until you get up to diameters of 50cm or more (or maybe my sense of amateur telescopes is way out of date...).
Not exactly, but there are some techniques in the radio that are kind of similar. The problem is that the timescale for gas clouds between us and a given object to change configuration is usually longer than an observation. But in some cases you can look at how fast you see certain kinds of fluctuations that are due to intervening gas clouds and infer the size of the object, even when that object is too small to have been resolved.
I tried it out using better definitions of elliptical galaxies and using a more sane ellipticity estimator (I don't know what the hell he was thinking... let's take galaxies that are dominated by component A, fit them to a combined A+B model, and then use the ellipticity of component B!) and I find it at a 2sigma level, not 13sigma. So I would definitely put it in the interesting-but-needs-a-lot-more-work-before-I-bel ieve-it pile.
Coincidentally enough, the axis he finds is very close to the North Galactic Pole. Whether that means that the Milky Way would participate in this alignment then depends on whether the typical elliptical galaxy is more oblate (flattened in one direction, so kind of like a disk like the Milky Way), in which case the Milky Way would participate, or more prolate (elongated in one direction), in which case it is oriented exactly wrong to participate. The evidence from other sources is that ellipticals are more prolate than oblate, though more often they're somewhere in between. So I would conclude that it probably doesn't.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that a lot of his uncertainty comes from systematics, not statistical error. If it was pure statistical error, then you could definitely do that based on 3 elections, but he was either going to get essentially every state right (if the systematics were small) or every state wrong by about the same amount (if they weren't).
Oh my, that brings back memories... thank you. Or maybe damn you. I'm not sure.
I suspect that Apple is not legally allowed to own record companies, as part of the settlement with Apple Records.
Real scientist here... astronomer, actually. And while we often use metric, and we never ever use Imperial units, we do often use units that are the natural scale. Mass is usually in solar masses; length can be in Astronomical Units (=the radius of the Earth's orbit around the sun), parsecs, or solar radii; power is in solar luminosities. And there's a good reason - knowing that a mass-to-light ratio is 2 M_sun / L_sun tells you a lot more than knowing that it is 10000 kg / Watt.
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What are these texts of which you speak? ;-)
(seriously, I really don't understand the point. Why text instead of send an email, which doesn't have a character limit???)
Yes it is. It's not that modern medicine doesn't make mistakes, it's that it learns from them. If a treatment is demonstrated repeatedly to do no better than a placebo, or even worse to do harm, it stops being used. Homeopathy says that if it doesn't work for you, you're doing it wrong.
Oh yeah, those logic gates with the ping pong balls were awesome! Probably my first taste of programming!
Can they put some of that money into ensuring that the stations broadcast with a usable amount of power? Most of the stations seem to put out enough power for decent reception only in their immediate vicinity - places that are far enough away that the analog signal is only slightly fuzzy (but still entirely watchable) get nothing thanks to the all-or-nothing nature of digital.
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6.9/10 on imdb and 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Attacking Greenpeace is not attacking environmentalism. Greenpeace is the single most counter-productive environmental organization in existence.
Counter-example: by far the best Will Smith movie ever is 6 Degrees, where his role is as far from "typical Will Smith" as you can imagine.
That's not true - they do have some clues. They know how long the event took, they know it has broad absorption lines, they know it slightly changed colour during the event, they know it brightened by at least a factor of 100, and they know that the object is normally very faint. They haven't come up with a scenario that explains all of those facts, but they put limits on what sorts of things do and don't make sense.
Interesting... so their best matches to the spectrum are DQp WD (a type of very magnetic white dwarf) or a BALQSO (quasar with broad absorption lines from surrounding gas). While the light curve kind of looks like gravitational microlensing, it changes colour which microlensing events normally don't(*) - although they could if the object that's being lensed is resolved. So the best option would have appeared to be a somewhat nearby lensed BAL QSO - except that in that case it would definitely have been seen in the reference images. So the best option is a DQp that either had some sort of surface event that brightened it by at least two orders of magnitude (probably the most likely option) or got lensed while undergoing minor colour changes.
(*) The timescale also seems to make the lensing option unlikely, but not impossible if the relative speeds of the source and lens happen to be very low.
I think it might just be an Ontario thing... my mother-in-law from Newfoundland was visiting last month and was also quite amazed by our bags of milk.
That's why I use rot13 not once, but twice!
I'm Canadian, you insensitive clod! ;-)
> I'll leave out the fact that temperatures globally have been flat for several years now
Wise move, since it's an incorrect statement.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
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Thanks, now I have cappuccino spurting out my nose...
Second rule of BGP is you DO NOT talk about BGP!
Oh man, to have mod points right now... I just snorted out coffee.
While I certainly hope you're correct, do you have any basis for that? If it were a majority government, I suspect it would pass easily, and if Harper really wants to make everything a confidence vote, the Liberals aren't going to choose digital rights as the election issue.
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Aren't most amateur telescopes still below r_0? Depends what wavelength you're looking at, obviously, but I wouldn't have thought that you would get multiple speckles until you get up to diameters of 50cm or more (or maybe my sense of amateur telescopes is way out of date...).
[TMB]
Not exactly, but there are some techniques in the radio that are kind of similar. The problem is that the timescale for gas clouds between us and a given object to change configuration is usually longer than an observation. But in some cases you can look at how fast you see certain kinds of fluctuations that are due to intervening gas clouds and infer the size of the object, even when that object is too small to have been resolved.
[TMB]
I tried it out using better definitions of elliptical galaxies and using a more sane ellipticity estimator (I don't know what the hell he was thinking... let's take galaxies that are dominated by component A, fit them to a combined A+B model, and then use the ellipticity of component B!) and I find it at a 2sigma level, not 13sigma. So I would definitely put it in the interesting-but-needs-a-lot-more-work-before-I-bel ieve-it pile.
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Coincidentally enough, the axis he finds is very close to the North Galactic Pole. Whether that means that the Milky Way would participate in this alignment then depends on whether the typical elliptical galaxy is more oblate (flattened in one direction, so kind of like a disk like the Milky Way), in which case the Milky Way would participate, or more prolate (elongated in one direction), in which case it is oriented exactly wrong to participate. The evidence from other sources is that ellipticals are more prolate than oblate, though more often they're somewhere in between. So I would conclude that it probably doesn't.
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