October Saturday Football Afternoon

It is a little slice of heaven for me: ND-Stanford game on TV, wife out and about, and I have the lap-top.

This will be mostly non-election stuff.

Evolved and Rational She is doing some taunting here, but she makes an excellent point that speciation has been observed (one species evolving into another one) and discusses an example:

Speciation has been observed in nature yet again.

Some female fish have eyes for their man only. Colourful African cichlids have evolved into new species because females are partially blind to others.

But even as that discovery is made, the species are under threat because the polluted waters they live in are causing them to interbreed.

Lulz on you, cretinshits creationists. How does it feel like being pwned over 9000 times? Is the resulting butthurt enough for you to join us in reality, or are you doing to still delude yourself with your godbot lies and delusions? Choose wisely. [...]

The explanation:

Mutations in the genes for light-detecting proteins called opsins explain why, Seehausen says. His team found that these genes had changed faster than the rest of the fish’s genes, a sign of evolution in action. Red fish evolved red-sensing opsins, while blue fish developed blue-sensing proteins.

Tests in laboratory tanks confirmed that females with red-sensing eyes went for red males, while blue-eyed females followed suit. Hybrid females, just like those in the murky waters, showed no preference at all.

Follow the link to see the original source and to see her advice to those who continue to deny evolution.

Ok, just one sort of political note: many of us love outspoken, attractive spunky women (E. R. certainly qualifies!) But we like intelligent, outspoken, attractive spunky women.

Scientific Advance 3-Quarks Daily has a snipped of an excellent article on how someone who, while having brain function, is so paralyzed that he can’t even talk. He communicates by blinking his eyes “yes” or “no”.

Brain scientists have implanted electrodes into his brain that sends impulses to a computer that can “speak” for him, and he has made some progress.

Elections: I’ve wondered if we (the US) would be better off if we weren’t stuck with the two-party system. But every system has its pitfalls; a Canadian talks about their election dilemma:

I probably need to explain strategic voting to those people who don’t have the “advantage” of living in a multiparty democracy. Strategic voting is where you deliberately vote for someone who is not your first choice in order to prevent another candidate from winning in your riding.

In the context of the current election, it means that a Liberal could vote for an NDP candidate if it was the NDP candidate who had the best chance of defeating the Conservative candidate in a particular riding. The idea being floated right now is that all Liberal, NDP, and Green Party supporters unite behind the candidate who has the best chance of defeating the Conservative candidate and preventing the Conservatives from getting a majority. [...]

Follow the link for the rest of the article. It is a well known mathematical fact that, if there is more than two choices, there will be no “totally fair” way for voters to decide among multiple choices. See Arrow’s Theorem.

Probability, Statistics and our Current Economic Mess.

Hat tip to 3-quarks daily

From Slate

Here’s how to make money flipping a coin. Bet 100 bucks on heads. If you win, you walk away $100 richer. If you lose, no problem; on the next flip, bet $200 on heads, and if you win this time, take your $100 profit and quit. If you lose, you’re down $300 on the day; so you double down again and bet $400. The coin can’t come up tails forever! Eventually, you’ve got to win your $100 back.

This doubling game, sometimes called “the martingale,” offers something for nothing—certain profits, with no risk. You can see why it’s so appealing to gamblers. But five more minutes of thought reveals that the martingale can lead to disaster. The coin will come up heads eventually—but “eventually” might be too late. Most of the time, one of the first few flips will land heads and you’ll come out on top. But suppose you get 11 tails in a row. Just like that, you’re out $204,700.* The next step is to bet $204,800—if you’ve got it. If you’re out of cash, the game is over, and you’re going home 200 grand lighter.

[...]
The carefully synthesized financial instruments now seeping toxically from the hulls of Lehman Bros. and Washington Mutual are vastly more complicated than the martingale. But they suffer the same fundamental flaw: They claim to create returns out of nothing, with no attendant risk. That’s not just suspicious. In many cases, it’s mathematically impossible.

[...]
In other words, the martingale strategy doesn’t eliminate risk—it just takes your risk and squeezes it all into one improbable but hideous scenario. The expected value computation is unforgiving. No matter what ultrasophisticated betting strategy you adopt, you can’t expect to make money in the long run by flipping a fair coin. There’s always a risk of loss—and the smaller the chance of losing, the uglier the potential loss becomes. The result is a kind of “upside-down lottery.” If you play the Powerball, you’ll probably lose the cost of a ticket, but you might win big. In the martingale, you’ll probably win a little, but if all six numbered balls match your ticket, then the bank comes around and takes away everything you’ve got.

You probably wouldn’t sign up for that game. But the news of the last few weeks confirms that we’ve been playing it for years. And it looks like the balls just lined up. Oh, and there’s one more difference between the thickly interwoven financial markets and the lottery: If one person wins the Powerball, just one person gets rich. If one massively leveraged financial firm loses while playing the martingale, it can bring the whole system down with it.

So, what about that rare event? They happen, and often it is impossible to build a model that accurately calculates the probability of such a rare event. For more on this, see Taleb’s work.