Who made the deal with the pro-impeachment folks to allow it to be tabled in return for not funding the Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan wars in the military budget?
And I agree that having the NIA and NIH budgets cut is a bad thing - right now very few top research proposals even get funded, especially by new scientists.
It would be better if journals didn't have a bias towards only publishing "good" results - we learn more by failed experiments, frequently, than from successful ones (e.g. if I learn that gender has nothing to do with survival rates for a cancer, I won't bother with certain avenues of research, and I can presume that it won't be an important difference in future study designs).
1. Medical research usually takes ten years from basic research discovery to delivery precisely because:
a. Humans have long lifespans (initial studies are done with worms, mice, and shorter lifespan creatures)
b. Genomes and pathways don't always map from one creature to a human
c. Human systems have feedback mechanisms - there is not just one biochemical pathway in play, but many
d. Side effects differ between individuals (we are not all identical like chips that are fabbed)
e. Some side effects won't show up for years
2. Risk ratio is different. If I kill a robot, no one cares much. If a kid dies from a medical drug interaction that we failed to test, it will be a big deal.
3. Part of the problem is the broken patent system.
4. Part of the problem is that medical costs for drug trials are high - people cost money, you have to monitor many things over many years, people don't want invasive monitoring and we can't force them to all eat the same thing, get the same exercise, and live exactly the same way like we can do with mice.
5. The real barriers are lack of financing at the base level, and the fact we deal with humans (if we discover a drug cures cancer we frequently stop the people who are on placebo from treatment and give everyone the drug - this is because they're... human... and so we care if they live or die).
6. Biomedical stuff is not bitwise. No easy On/Off or 1/2/3/4/5/6 answers. Things are growing and in flux as you measure them and the act of measuring impacts how they behave. The number of cells in a tube alters as they are counted - even with high-speed mechanical counting imaging - is a cell about to split one or two?.
The impact can't be off the charts if it results in no net positive increase in either long-term assets or wealth generation.
Let's do a thought experiment.
I take two people - Thing One and Thing Two.
I give Thing One $1 million dollars from a lottery.
I invest $1 million dollars in maximizing retirement accounts for Thing Two.
If at the end of twenty years Thing One has more net assets and/or income than Thing Two has, then Thing One wins. If not, Thing Two wins.
My point is, to be brief, that 99 percent of the time Thing Two wins.
Which shows that winning the lottery doesn't really help, although it does make things a lot easier for your dopehead brother-in-law that stole most of your lottery winnings in a fraudulent investment scheme (just one concrete example of what happens).
Because our historical estimations from geologic and weather events more than 1 million years in the past are so broadly inaccurate, it is highly likely that it was a combination of widescale epidemics combined with supervolcano eruptions and other stress factors.
Sometimes the answer is not A, B, C, or D. Sometimes the answer is A, B, C and D.
But, I would further suggest that anybody who gets a $370 Million payout and has anything less than an off the charts lifestyle impact is a complete moron with no imagination.
And yet, when studies of winners are done, we find in fact that the vast and overwhelming majority of them in fact do not achieve and off the charts lifestyle impact just a few years down the road.
We find that the money basically disappears.
The reasons for that may be complex, but winning the lottery does not normally help one succeed as much as we would like to believe.
It could be the pool of participants itself, or attitudes shared by them, it could be that they are descended upon by friends, relations, and schemers who assist in removing the large concentration of assets they've won. Or maybe they just tend to make bad choices and this is unaffected by the large asset pool they now have, causing the money to disappear.
1. Release games in increment bundles - you buy basic version and get expansions or pay extra for online content.
Pro: Better revenue stream for game producers. Bug fixes easier to release. Con: Consumers feel, rightfully, that they're getting ripped off.
2. Release games with in-game ads and product placements - signs in game and t-shirt logos and decals and maybe songs and optional extras are from adversiers.
Pro: Better revenue stream for game producers. Targeted ads from game registration. Con: Consumers may feel they are oversold. Note: If done only to level of real world or fantasy world normal experience, without flashing vids and noisy ads, this has higher buy in from consumers and doesn't feel bad to them.
3. Release games at lower cost and take money from CEO/exec pay while not stiffing game developers.
Pro: Investors in game producing firm get same return. Developers feel not as ripped off. Games cheaper. Con: Fantasy. Game execs will never do this and will fix things so this never happens. Better off shooting the execs dead to practice marksmanship skills for in-game experience.
Any number of tickets with the same number win - and divide the pot.
And many people win various pots of money from lower sequences as well.
Additionally, the number of participants in the higher jackpots increase as more people participate, which increases the probability of more than one person having the same number.
It's not that simple.
But, as you state, your odds of winning (assume you hold ticket with winning number, regardless of if others do) do increase as the pot grows.
Still, half of every dollar is usually taken off the table, so...
Still better off buying a raffle ticket - normally prizes are donated, it's for a charity, very few participants, so you have a very good chance of getting more than you paid.
Anyway, this article was clearly not done by a statistician. It doesn't even do a basic analysis of variance on the winning numbers, which is a measure of normal distribution. I would not put much stock in either the methodology or conclusions.
Good point.
However, we're assuming that it has a normal distribution. We might want to validate that underlying assumption first, before we attempt to fit a statistical model to the data.
As an example of why that might matter, I work in bioinformatics on medical genetics data. Our normal distribution is actually a very long tail - most people don't have a disease or condition, and very few have the disease, and yet we're primarily concerned with those few people who have the disease, which is not normally distributed per se.
But at least they're questioning the distribution of resultant numbers, in other words, questioning the assumption that the data is in fact normally distributed.
Ah, as I recall the figure was something like $180 million payout when I used to buy lottery tickets in BC in the 80s, before your chance of payout became equivalent.
However, while I'm not saying that your odds won't change due to circumstances - e.g. how many people choose your number, how random selection is, how many people are in the pool at the drawing, and how many dollars there are in the pool - on average, you're still better off buying a raffle ticket from a local charitable organization than you are buying a lottery ticket.
I have participated in both lotteries (and have won up to $1000 in them, and made more than I ever spent).
I have also participated in raffles - and won similar payouts.
As to the lifestyle impact, it is a provable truism that most maximum payout winners do not actually improve their lives.
It's like when I got an inheritance - the best thing you can do with that is max out your retirement funds and pay off debt, and then put much of the rest in paying down your mortgage. Most people blow it, though.
The difference between being rich and poor is usually how much you save and what you buy. Lottery tickets can be a fun diversion, cheaper than getting drunk, but they are not a wise use of cash.
The characteristics that make you a good gamer are normally not those that help you as a leader, in that one typically is anti-social or lacks social skills beyond those relevant to the gaming environment, and is too focussed on specific issues and not on the broader perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm shaking my nunchuk in anticipation of the Wii port of Fable II!
Do you think they'll sign that?
Who made the deal with the pro-impeachment folks to allow it to be tabled in return for not funding the Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan wars in the military budget?
That was a smooth trade.
It's based on the manga and anime series in Japan, and I think it's still available on newgrounds.com and other sites to play.
Watermelons!
no, I work in the Department of Medicine at the UW. Before I worked in the Biochemistry Department.
HIV/AIDS vaccines were developed with collaborations by a number of departments. Yes, plural.
Actually, the university I work at has developed two AIDS/HIV vaccines.
But we're a lot larger than a garage.
The restrictions by HIPAA are there for a reason.
And I agree that having the NIA and NIH budgets cut is a bad thing - right now very few top research proposals even get funded, especially by new scientists.
It would be better if journals didn't have a bias towards only publishing "good" results - we learn more by failed experiments, frequently, than from successful ones (e.g. if I learn that gender has nothing to do with survival rates for a cancer, I won't bother with certain avenues of research, and I can presume that it won't be an important difference in future study designs).
1. Medical research usually takes ten years from basic research discovery to delivery precisely because:
... human ... and so we care if they live or die).
a. Humans have long lifespans (initial studies are done with worms, mice, and shorter lifespan creatures)
b. Genomes and pathways don't always map from one creature to a human
c. Human systems have feedback mechanisms - there is not just one biochemical pathway in play, but many
d. Side effects differ between individuals (we are not all identical like chips that are fabbed)
e. Some side effects won't show up for years
2. Risk ratio is different. If I kill a robot, no one cares much. If a kid dies from a medical drug interaction that we failed to test, it will be a big deal.
3. Part of the problem is the broken patent system.
4. Part of the problem is that medical costs for drug trials are high - people cost money, you have to monitor many things over many years, people don't want invasive monitoring and we can't force them to all eat the same thing, get the same exercise, and live exactly the same way like we can do with mice.
5. The real barriers are lack of financing at the base level, and the fact we deal with humans (if we discover a drug cures cancer we frequently stop the people who are on placebo from treatment and give everyone the drug - this is because they're
6. Biomedical stuff is not bitwise. No easy On/Off or 1/2/3/4/5/6 answers. Things are growing and in flux as you measure them and the act of measuring impacts how they behave. The number of cells in a tube alters as they are counted - even with high-speed mechanical counting imaging - is a cell about to split one or two?.
I think it was called MySims and I watched it on my TV when I connected my Wii to it!
The impact can't be off the charts if it results in no net positive increase in either long-term assets or wealth generation.
Let's do a thought experiment.
I take two people - Thing One and Thing Two.
I give Thing One $1 million dollars from a lottery.
I invest $1 million dollars in maximizing retirement accounts for Thing Two.
If at the end of twenty years Thing One has more net assets and/or income than Thing Two has, then Thing One wins. If not, Thing Two wins.
My point is, to be brief, that 99 percent of the time Thing Two wins.
Which shows that winning the lottery doesn't really help, although it does make things a lot easier for your dopehead brother-in-law that stole most of your lottery winnings in a fraudulent investment scheme (just one concrete example of what happens).
Because our historical estimations from geologic and weather events more than 1 million years in the past are so broadly inaccurate, it is highly likely that it was a combination of widescale epidemics combined with supervolcano eruptions and other stress factors.
Sometimes the answer is not A, B, C, or D. Sometimes the answer is A, B, C and D.
But, I would further suggest that anybody who gets a $370 Million payout and has anything less than an off the charts lifestyle impact is a complete moron with no imagination.
And yet, when studies of winners are done, we find in fact that the vast and overwhelming majority of them in fact do not achieve and off the charts lifestyle impact just a few years down the road.
We find that the money basically disappears.
The reasons for that may be complex, but winning the lottery does not normally help one succeed as much as we would like to believe.
It could be the pool of participants itself, or attitudes shared by them, it could be that they are descended upon by friends, relations, and schemers who assist in removing the large concentration of assets they've won. Or maybe they just tend to make bad choices and this is unaffected by the large asset pool they now have, causing the money to disappear.
But it doesn't normally help to win a lottery.
Yeah, but does it run Linux?
No, it's BSD. But the fabricated duplicates are Gentoo.
But all I got was a wooden goblet filled with a hard resin-like substance not like tea.
of course, if you had invested that same money in DRIP stock contributions in reinvested Australian Mining companies you would have made a lot more.
thus, it's not a good investment. risky. no underlying value. but it is an interesting speculative choice.
1. Release games in increment bundles - you buy basic version and get expansions or pay extra for online content.
Pro: Better revenue stream for game producers. Bug fixes easier to release.
Con: Consumers feel, rightfully, that they're getting ripped off.
2. Release games with in-game ads and product placements - signs in game and t-shirt logos and decals and maybe songs and optional extras are from adversiers.
Pro: Better revenue stream for game producers. Targeted ads from game registration.
Con: Consumers may feel they are oversold.
Note: If done only to level of real world or fantasy world normal experience, without flashing vids and noisy ads, this has higher buy in from consumers and doesn't feel bad to them.
3. Release games at lower cost and take money from CEO/exec pay while not stiffing game developers.
Pro: Investors in game producing firm get same return. Developers feel not as ripped off. Games cheaper.
Con: Fantasy. Game execs will never do this and will fix things so this never happens. Better off shooting the execs dead to practice marksmanship skills for in-game experience.
But your base assumption is flawed.
...
Not only one person wins.
Any number of tickets with the same number win - and divide the pot.
And many people win various pots of money from lower sequences as well.
Additionally, the number of participants in the higher jackpots increase as more people participate, which increases the probability of more than one person having the same number.
It's not that simple.
But, as you state, your odds of winning (assume you hold ticket with winning number, regardless of if others do) do increase as the pot grows.
Still, half of every dollar is usually taken off the table, so
Still better off buying a raffle ticket - normally prizes are donated, it's for a charity, very few participants, so you have a very good chance of getting more than you paid.
Anyway, this article was clearly not done by a statistician. It doesn't even do a basic analysis of variance on the winning numbers, which is a measure of normal distribution. I would not put much stock in either the methodology or conclusions.
Good point.
However, we're assuming that it has a normal distribution. We might want to validate that underlying assumption first, before we attempt to fit a statistical model to the data.
As an example of why that might matter, I work in bioinformatics on medical genetics data. Our normal distribution is actually a very long tail - most people don't have a disease or condition, and very few have the disease, and yet we're primarily concerned with those few people who have the disease, which is not normally distributed per se.
But at least they're questioning the distribution of resultant numbers, in other words, questioning the assumption that the data is in fact normally distributed.
Ah, as I recall the figure was something like $180 million payout when I used to buy lottery tickets in BC in the 80s, before your chance of payout became equivalent.
However, while I'm not saying that your odds won't change due to circumstances - e.g. how many people choose your number, how random selection is, how many people are in the pool at the drawing, and how many dollars there are in the pool - on average, you're still better off buying a raffle ticket from a local charitable organization than you are buying a lottery ticket.
No, not just statistical, but from life.
I have participated in both lotteries (and have won up to $1000 in them, and made more than I ever spent).
I have also participated in raffles - and won similar payouts.
As to the lifestyle impact, it is a provable truism that most maximum payout winners do not actually improve their lives.
It's like when I got an inheritance - the best thing you can do with that is max out your retirement funds and pay off debt, and then put much of the rest in paying down your mortgage. Most people blow it, though.
The difference between being rich and poor is usually how much you save and what you buy. Lottery tickets can be a fun diversion, cheaper than getting drunk, but they are not a wise use of cash.
Most lotteries (as opposed to raffles) have less than half the money spent by lottery ticket buyers going into the payout pool.
You're already losing by buying the ticket.
One opt out to rule them all
One opt out to bind them
One opt to find them all
And in the freedom blind them
Three levels of security for the paranoid King
Useless and a waste of time
Five cookies for the hapless sap
Who clicked on Track Me For All Time
Seven credit checks for the customer
Whose identity has been stolen
Nine illegal agreements for the click thru license
Soon to be voided
One opt out to rule them all
One opt out to bind them
One opt to find them all
And in the freedom blind them
Not so much a code per se.
Arrr!
The characteristics that make you a good gamer are normally not those that help you as a leader, in that one typically is anti-social or lacks social skills beyond those relevant to the gaming environment, and is too focussed on specific issues and not on the broader perspective.
Are normally released as HD-DVD titles in other countries, so you can just buy them online from Europe.
But this crack will be useful for those few of us with Linux PS3 units.
I think the Simpsons would get off their cases if they just released GTA: Emerald City.
...
Why?
Because the real-life version of Emerald City is Seattle, and it has a Monorail.
Plus, we have a lot of Guitar Hero III players here, now that it's been ported to the Wii in addition to the PS3 and xBox360