Quote of the Week (I love Canada edition)

Couple of blog posts coming your way today, starting with your Quote of the Week, which will be a little lighter for a change. I gave some serious consideration to this eye-opening quote from Vladimir Putin, extolling the virtues of group sex (seriously, can you imagine Obama dropping a bomb like that on the campaign trail?), but nahhhh.

Instead, I'm going to keep things a little closer to home, heading up to America's hat. From Quebec...

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Someone (possibly wearing super villain gear, although that’s pure speculation on my part until they’re apprehended) broke through security at the Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve in Quebec and made off with $30 million worth of Canada’s sweetest export."
                                         - Brad Moon, Wired
 
Whoa, whoa, whoa... Canada has a Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve? That... is... AWESOME.

Here in the good old U.S. of A., we maintain a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to be tapped during times of supply disruptions or other emergencies (like, you know, a Presidential election... side note, amazing that the link there doesn't mention Fed policy at all when discussing the impacts on crude oil prices... savvy). At any rate, a petroleum reserve is one thing, given the outsized impact that fuel prices tend to have on our economy. But up in Canada, it's apparently maple syrup that's the prized commodity. Terrific.

This news item plays into all of the awesome stereotypes that I already want to have about Canada, so I'm not going to bother to do any further research into this matter. Canada is an awesome land of flapjacks and maple syrup and flannel shirts and lumberjacks and hockey and all of those things combined into something called "lumberjack hockey", and that's how I'm going to leave it. I love you, Canada.

[Wired]

Statistical significance vs. significance

Alright, it's time to start plowing through some of my unfinished drafts here, in no particular order. I've been sitting on this one for a while, and it follows in the theme of this post and this post, both of which discussed the questionable validity of study results. From the Freakonomics blog... 

A new paper by psychologists E.J. Masicampo and David Lalande finds that an uncanny number of psychology findings just barely qualify as statistically significant.  From the abstract:

We examined a large subset of papers from three highly regarded journals. Distributions of p were found to be similar across the different journals. Moreover, p values were much more common immediately below .05 than would be expected based on the number of p values occurring in other ranges. This prevalence of p values just below the arbitrary criterion for significance was observed in all three journals.

Alright, yeah, I know that's a little stat-wonky/jargony, but the basic point is that a large number of clinical trials that report "significant" results are in fact barely scraping by on the statistical validity scale.

In any statistical study, the "goal" is to show a result that is too extreme to have occurred simply by random chance. A "p-value" of .05 means that there is only a 5% chance that the study result could have occurred simply by chance—low, but not impossible. What we're seeing here is that a large number of "statistically significant" studies are scraping by in this little margin-of-error window just on the "right" side of that 5%. Hence, there's a pretty decent chance that at least some of those studies are reporting something as significant that is actually dumb luck or chance—indeed, probably about one out of every twenty is reporting a significant result when none in fact exists.

Now, I don't really want to go too far down a road talking about bell curves and standard deviations on normal distributions, so I won't. But the point of the matter is, the incentives to report a "statistically significant" result are typically pretty strong, and so we should take a lot of the study results that we read (you know, stuff like "Coffee causes cancer! Also, it prevents cancer and cures cancer, but only when taken in specific doses at pre-determined times over several decades! So drink coffee, and also, don't drink coffee!) with an enormous grain of salt.

A lot of the time, the stuff we're reading is just a reporting of statistical noise and random chance, with a catchy headline attached. So please, people, don't fall prey to the people who want to confuse us with numbers—they're seriously everywhere these days, especially in an election year. Know the statistical background, and you'll be better able to determine for yourself whether a study result is actually significant, or just statistically significant.

[Freakonomics]

Song of the Week(end)

I've been having a little fun with the Cowboy lately because of his apparent and recent obsession with country music. I didn't realize Chicago was south of the Mason-Dixon line, but hey who am I to judge? I guess he's just growing into that "Cowboy" moniker, slowly but surely. Good for him.

Hey, speaking of the South, this time of year down in Virginia, it's football season, it's starting to cool off a bit, jeans and hoodies start to make their way out of the closet, and country music just sorta starts to feel... right. Not all country music, mind you... stuff like this is still hokey and terrible, no matter where you're living and what season it is. But I can handle a little Jason Aldean every now and again, so that's your Song of the Week(end).

Have a good weekend, all you Northern aggressors out there...

This about sums it up

So, this morning's jobs report was, once again, pretty terrible. No worries! Markets are higher because now everybody's convinced that the Fed is, once again, riding to the "rescue". We've been here before.

(Inspired by this)

Clip of the Week (NASA edition)

With all my posting this week, I still can't seem to make a dent in my backlog of unfinished drafts. So be it, some day I'll catch up. For now, it's Clip of the Week time.

In light of today's financial news, this realistic depiction of Ben Bernanke and Mario Draghi's policy proposals (h/t Red Cowboy) seems particularly appropriate. I also love it because animals make me smile.

I've also already mentioned that it's election season, which probably means that you can get ready to see a whole lot of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart clips around here in the coming weeks (I highly recommend the awesomeness of that Stewart clip, by the way... great satire, with a terrific Glengarry Glen Ross reference to boot).

In the sports world, outfielders continue to make great catches, as do wide receivers (just like last year). Also, for all you golfers out there, Charl Schwartzel's four-putt is just painful to watch. Enjoy.

But this is going to be a week for science and for recognizing NASA. I came across a couple of videos that showed some of the awesome stuff they're doing down there, even if their funding is coming under fire as we apparently shut down all government functions in order to save Social Security and Medicare. Crap, I'm ranting again, huh?

Anyway, this time-lapse image of all the ocean's currents was pretty awesome, but not nearly as awesome as this depiction of the Mars rover's journey, which is your Clip of the Week. Keep up the good work, NASA. Don't let the bastards get you down.

As for the rest of you, blow this up full screen and enjoy. Remember, America is still a pretty awesome place if we'll let it be, just not on Wall Street...

More on 3-D printing

Amid all my rants and raves and complaints around here, there's one thing that I've consistently touted as being seriously awesome, and that's 3-D printing. I think the potential for this technology is simply mind-blowing, and that it could completely revolutionize the way we think about manufacturing and manufactured products and shipping and basically anything you associate with our "modern" economy.

Like any technology, it's taken a little while for 3-D printing to emerge from its infancy and work out the kinks, but I think (hope?) we're rapidly approaching the point where this could be a viable consumer technology.

Early desktop printers were horrible. For the price of thousands of dollars one got lo-res dot matrix printouts on paper that had tractor-feed holes punched into the margins. It wasn’t pretty, but those early models paved the way for high-resolution, low-cost laser printing.

Today’s hobby grade 3-D printers are similarly crude. They all use Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) technology and are essentially robotic hot glue guns. Fortunately, a new generation of higher-resolution, faster, and more reliable machines are starting to come to market.

This new type of hobbyist printer use Stereolithography (SLA) technology, utilizing light instead of heat to make models. How? A high powered light source hardens a cross section of light-sensitive liquid plastic. The machine then raises the build platform a smidge and the process is repeated. It’s very dramatic — models look like they are being pulled from a puddle of goo.

For those interested in seeing what this looks like in real time (okay, time-lapse), check out this video:



Are there potential issues with this technology? Yes, most definitely, and I certainly hope that the government doesn't fall all over itself to pre-emptively restrict the usage of 3-D printers. But I think that may in fact end up happening, if only because of this:

An American gunsmith has become the first person to construct and shoot a pistol partly made out of plastic, 3D-printed parts. The creator, user HaveBlue from the AR-15 forum, has reportedly fired 200 rounds with his part-plastic pistol without any sign of wear and tear. 

HaveBlue’s custom creation is a .22-caliber pistol, formed from a 3D-printed AR-15 (M16) lower receiver, and a normal, commercial upper. In other words, the main body of the gun is plastic, while the chamber — where the bullets are actually struck — is solid metal.

So, yeah, I can see where the government might step in and try to heavily regulate the usage of these printers. A world in which an individual can print himself a gun (or a grenade, or whatever else) on a whim might make it pretty difficult to regulate the things that government likes to regulate.

But that, in my opinion, would be a significant shame. I believe that this technology has significantly more upside than downside, and I think that there are reasonable ways to limit the potential negative impacts that government might fear. We'll see, but this is one of the few recent innovations that truly gets me excited for the future of our country and the world. If we have to break some eggs to make an omelette, so be it. This stuff is just way too cool.

[Wired]
[Extreme Tech]

Fed buying baseball cards

While the market gives its Pavlovian cheer to the latest kinda-sorta-we're-not-really-printing-money-you-guys-I-swear proposal out of Europe, I thought this would be an appropriate time to pass along my favorite cartoon from the last few months. Courtesy of Barry Ritholtz's Big Picture blog...

Seriously, when can the Fed start buying some stuff that I actually own (no, I don't own Treasury bonds or mortgage-backed securities, and I hope you don't either)? In addition to baseball cards, I've also got a pretty awesome collection of obsolete electronic devices and salvaged golf balls. Sure, you might think of these things as worthless, but I just consider them to be "distressed assets".

Mr. Bernanke, if you want to stimulate the economy, I suggest you start rummaging around in my basement. I'm quite sure you'll find something to your liking down there.