“The average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain.” — Thomas Edison
Superconducting disc locked in upside-down levitation.
From The New Scientist: Superstuff: When quantum goes big.
Sports and Math: Where Leisure and Learning Meet
From Only a Game:If you need more proof that playoffs don’t necessarily result in the better team coming home with the trophy, consider this. Brian MacDonald, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the US Military Academy at Westpoint says since 2000 the team with the better regular season record in Major League Baseball and the NFL only won the playoff match-up 50-percent of the time. For the NHL, the statistic is even lower.
Billy Beane and Peter Brand reinvented the way the Oakland A’s evaluated players and Brad Pitt turned their story into the blockbuster movie, Moneyball. If an NHL team sees fit to hire Brian MacDonald, he won’t count wins…or even goals. He’ll start by counting shots, blocked shots, and missed shots.
“I don’t think there’s any coaches that go into the locker room saying, ‘We’re playing really well. We’re down 1-0. What we really need in this period is way more missed shots than we had in the previous two periods,” MacDonald told a full room at the Joint Mathematics Meetings.
MacDonald says shots, missed, blocked, or successful, are indicators of some very important things in hockey, like possession and territorial advantage. And, unlike goals, they’re not usually based on luck.
How to I.D. Genetically Modified Food at the Supermarket
From Spence Cooper’s post at Friends Eat Blog:
For conventionally grown fruit, (grown with chemicals inputs), the PLU code on the sticker consists of four numbers. Organically grown fruit has a five-numeral PLU prefaced by the number 9. Genetically engineered (GM) fruit has a five-numeral PLU prefaced by the number 8.Isn’t that simple?
Between The Lines
Excellent article from L.A. Magazine by Dave Gardetta about parking and how it affects our cities:
“Imagine what would happen at Dodger Stadium if every seat cost the same and went on sale game day,” says Dan Mitchell, an engineer at DOT. “Everyone would run for that seat behind home plate—it would be insanity. But that’s what we have now with parking—equal pricing.” This spring the DOT plans to introduce an $18.5 million smart wireless meter system based on Shoup’s theories. Called ExpressPark, the 6,000-meter array will be installed on downtown streets and lots, along with sensors buried in the pavement of every parking spot to detect the presence of cars and price accordingly, from as little as 50 cents an hour to $6. Street parking, like pork bellies, will be open to market forces. As blocks fill, prices will rise; when occupancy drops, so will rates. In an area like downtown, ideal for Shoup’s progressive pricing, people will park based on how much they’re willing to pay versus how far they are willing to walk to a destination. In a trendy area like Melrose Avenue’s shopping district, where parking on side streets is forbidden to visitors, Shoup would open those residential blocks to market-priced meters, wooing home owners by guaranteeing that meter profits would be turned over to them in the form of property tax deductions. (That benefit could add up to thousands of dollars a year per household.)”
