2008 in numbers
A few numbers to round off 2008.
The year has seen 327 posts (0.89 per day), the second biggest calendar year to date after the 413 posts of 2006. (The heaviest 12 months ran from March 2006–February 2007, 428 posts. The lightest 12 month period was the 2005 calendar year, a mere 224 posts.) 2008’s posts elicited 347 comments, or 1.06 comments per post.
2008’s peak came in September, with 37 posts, and after a rather lacklustre start to the year, April onwards saw an average of over 30 posts per month.
There are now an estimated 242,472 words of tat, printable in Times New Roman 12 point on an estimated 612 pages of A4. If you choose to do this, please go double-sided.
Despite the relative regularity with which my tangential thoughts, nay ramblings, have brought themselves to the fore as posts herein, I’ve grown a little tired of the blog over the last two or three months. It needs some fresh impetus which I’ve not had the inclination to give it of late. Hopefully early 2009 will give me some fresh insipration and some new food for erudite thought. Alas, maybe erudition is a little too much to expect. Why start now?
Happy new year, one and all.
The St. Petersburg paradox
Simon introduced me to the St. Petersburg paradox the other day. Here’s how it goes. Basically, you flip a coin over and over again until you get a tails. You win 2^n dollars, where n is the total number of coin tosses, including the failed tails toss. So a tails straight away wins you $2; HT wins you $4; HHT $8; HHHT $16 and so on.
The question is: how much should you be willing to stake to play the game?
Now the answer is different depending on whether you play repetitively or you only play a single game. If your pockets are infinitely deep and time is not an issue, then any amount of money, no matter how large, is worth the investment in a game. Here’s why.
The expected earnings from a game can be calculated by multiplying the earnings by the probability of those earnings for each eventuality, and summing these. The possible outcomes are shown below, with the columns showing the coin pattern (C), the associated winnings (W), the probability of that event happening (P) and the expected value of that line (E) respectively.
C W P E
=======
T 2 0.5 1
HT 4 0.25 1
HHT 8 0.125 1
HHHT 16 0.0625 1
HHHHT 32 0.03125 1
…
As you’ll notice, the expected winnings of each line is $1. So summing these for the infinite series gives you infinite expected winnings. Each remote possibility of a long string of heads comes with it a winnings pot commensurate with the remoteness of it happening.
So it’s worth a trillion dollars per game. You’d need 29 heads in a row to win back that amount or greater, but over time, the odds are such that you’d do it. And if you got 35 heads in a row, you’d win $68 trillion. And you could pick any stake greater than $1 trillion, and the numbers would always show it’s worth it.
But if you only had enough money for a single game, what would you stake? The game is certainly worth $2, as that’s the minimum you could win. And it’s arguably worth $3, as that would give you a 50% chance of losing a dollar, and a 50% chance of winning a dollar or more. At $4, you have a 50% chance of losing $2, a 25% chance of breaking even, and a 25% chance of winning $4 or more. The decision as to how high a stake is worthwhile is subjective based on the value of money to that person. Or more importantly, the detrimental effect that losing a proportion of the stake would have on the player. If you have $1m in the bank, then you might risk $10 for a game. If you’re down to your last $10, you’re unlikely to do the same.
Very interesting conundrum.
Facebook can teach the direct marketeer a thing or two
Facebook has done something that Direct Marketing has largely failed to do for 15 years at least: personalise the message.
Although Facebook occasionally struggles with genders, not all applications having access to sufficient personal details to choose an appropriate pronoun, it certainly has a go. Instead of listing as separate updates people whose profile pictures have recently been changed, it comma-separates those people in a single update element.
The direct marketeer often struggles between the richness of data available and the possibility that for some people, many elements of this data are likely to be missing. The data on offer through a 100+ question lifestyle questionnaire may look like a marketeer’s dream, but its so many variables make the automated personalisation of a message very difficult. And does missing data mean a lack of interest in something or a lack of interest in the very act of answering that question?
In reality, it shouldn’t really be that difficult. Analysis should be able to identify those variables that the marketeers should be interested in, either because of the targeting of the message or the correlation of such a variable with uplifted response rates. And once the variables of interest have been chosen and prioritised, relatively targeted messaging can be tailored around the values of these. An interest in golf may be the trumping factor, after which a salary in excess of a certain figure, followed by being male, being single then being over a certain age. The messaging behind each of these segments can be tailored appropriately to make the communication suitably targeted, with other variables like gender allowing for more localised tweaking of the English.
More transactional data sources (e.g. Ocado’s buyer history) can allow for much more extensive customer sets, the personalisation behind each one likely being more straightforward than the lifestyle data mentioned earlier. (”As someone who’s bought Macleans toothpaste in the past, you may be interested in their new mouthwash.”)
In either example above, each cell (in the marketing sense of the word) needs to be represented by a line in a spreadsheet in order of priority, with the columns representing the variables whose values will vary because of the targeting: pronouns, pieces of prose, URLs, link texts etc.
Often, marketeers see the swathe of data available to them and regard the problem as insurmountable. It’s not. It just takes some careful planning, and demands a focus on a manageable number of variables and cells rather than trying to truly personalise the message.
Contradictory headlines
BBC News’ headline "Adams ‘poised for administration’" is at odds with BBC Sport’s Arsene Wenger quote: Adams will be a success.
Which is it to be?
33<36
I’m not very well at the moment. I’ve been struck down for the second time in as many months by something akin to ‘flu’, and am now dosed up on antibiotics and Nurofen, looking forward to a hacking, alcohol-free Christmas.
Among other things, I’ve been suffering mild hallucinations in the night, with particularly vivid dreams and semi-conscious illogical thought processes. But I think the symptoms started on the way to an afternoon party on Sunday. I’d bought a present for the hosts’ son, who will be three in March. The present had a "36 months +" warning attached. I struggled in my head all the way down the hill from Sainsbury’s to the Smoke Rooms to figure out whether the boy was less than or greater than 36 months of age, despite knowing he was two years and nine months. Eventually I convinced myself that 36 months was actually one and a half years, and was content in the suitability of the toy.
Very bizarre.
(I’ve since warned the parents, btw.)
No spam day/week
I have received 4,087 spam emails in the last 30 days. And because of my need to turn off the captcha for comments on this blog because of its incompatibility with the new version of php, I’m getting swathes of spam comments here too. (They’re all pre-moderated, so none of them make it to the site, thankfully. Which begs the question: why do they bother hitting me?)
Could we have a spam-free day? Or better still, a spam free week? I know these people have very few morals, if any, but it’s worth asking them isn’t it? Can I propose the first Wednesday in February, which this time will take place on 4 February 2009? Or else the first week of February (2–8 February).
It might be nice not to get any, for a little while at least.
While on the subject, I’m intrigued as to why spam messages are so dreadfully bad. Full of typos and illiterate English, surely this in itself makes them more easily detectable. Or maybe the poor, modern-day English standards make them blend into the rest. Who knows?
Obama, McCain, Kerry, Bush
Inspired by some comments Alan made today detailing Lycos’ top 50 searches of 2008, I decided to check Google Trends for the relative popularity of Barack Obama and John McCain searches on Google.
Here’s a link to the 2008 timeline, below is the chart.
McCain is red, as per his party’s colours; Obama is blue.
Only at one point in the year did John McCain searches exceed those of his rival, around August/September.
Here are the comparable trends for John Kerry and George Bush in 2004 and below is the chart.
That time, the losing candidate, John Kerry, is in blue. A much more mixed picture, with Kerry enjoying several peaks above those of his rival. Interestingly, the news searches always favoured Kerry, likely because of the Democratic bent of the early adopters, given that Google News was then in its infancy.
Complimentary spam
Below is the opening line from each of the last twelve comments I’ve received:
- Hehe! Good work!
- Very good site! Thanks!
- Very pretty design! Keep working. Go on!
- Great work!
- Thank you!
- Very nice site, i love it!
- Very useful information was found here, thank you for your work.
- You have an outstanding good and well structured site. I enjoyed browsing through it.
- COMPRAR VIAGRA COMPRAR
- Not much on my mind right now, but it is not important. I have just been letting everything happen without me. I just do not have anything to say right now.
- Well done!
- Very superior site. Good job. thnx.
Unfortunately, they were all spam comments, each succeeded by a bunch of links to sites no doubt promoting their wares. But that’s not the point: why can’t the genuine commenters be as complimentary?
Cell mutation
I’m always confused by the Mute/Unmute toggle button on my mobile phone, which I often use while on conference calls during which there is background noise at my end.
When I’m unmuted, it says “Mute”, and while muted, it says “Unmute”. The confusion arises for two related reasons:
- The button doesn’t look like a button. It’s an unstyled rectangle alongside Speaker On, Hold, Note, Contacts and End
- There is a suble difference between offering me a status update and offering me an action.
If the button looked more like a button, perhaps I’d immediately understand its label to represent an action, and know exactly whether or not the phone was muted.
But when I look at the phone and it says “Mute”, I have to think whether this means it’s currently muted (always my immediate reaction), or whether pressing the “button” will mute it. I think a status symbol (not in that sense) would be useful to immediately tell me whether or not people at the other end of the phone can hear me.
I’m just saying…
Server-side fonts
If I wanted to present my website in a non-standard font, is there any way of doing this without generating images of the content? Can I put the fonts on the server and get the client machine to access these files to correctly render the font? And if so, and I’ve bought the font, is it OK to put it on a readily-accessible server for all and sundry to download?
Any help greatly appreciated.
Next stop: Newry
Today I called Next to see whether a couple of items I was interested in buying online could instead be picked up from the Tottenham Court Road branch, or else another London branch.
The operator, in India I believe, apologised when informing me that the items in question were not currently in stock for for online order, nor were they in stock in any of the London stores. She helpfully informed me, however, that I could pick them up from the Newry store. I didn’t ask her for driving directions, but Google informs me that the nine hour one minute one-way journey can be achieved via the Holyhead–Dublin ferry.
Head-shaking for no
Head-shaking means no, while head-nodding means yes. Bulgaria, and possibly a few other places in the world, are the exceptions.
The reason, I expect, for head-shaking being associated with "no" is that it’s the easiest way as a child to avoid an approaching spoonful of food that you’re not interested in eating. It merely brings with it the risk of food on one’s cheeks, as opposed to food up one’s nose. As the adult-held spoon follows the mouth to the left, the head can quickly jerk to the right, cunningly bypassing the spoon and its nasty contents. The neck muscles are much better equipped to rapid lateral movement than they are to vertical movement.
The nod for yes I expect will come later, likely contextualised by the previously-learnt head-shaking.
Best Christmas choon ever
Enjoy the Top of the Pops version or a live concert rendition. Equally fabulous, and both equally toothless.
Google Reader–Google Apps. integration
I was going to write a post about my annoyance at Google Reader not being integrated into Google Apps. Meaning that I have a different Google login for Reader than I do for my Mail, Calendar, Docs etc.
But having done a bit of research, and played around a bit, it seems I’ve solved it. I now have a Google Reader account tied to my own-domain email address.
I’m not sure exactly what I did, nor whether I’m doing something that Google intended. But it’s great. I’ve exported and imported my subscriptions from the old account to the new one. I now need to figure out how to get my starred and shared items across. Not sure if I can. Anyone?
Eagerly-awaited lines (part 2)
In addition to the three eagerly-awaited lines in Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson, I feel bound to give similar stature to the following line from Eartha Kitt’s Santa Baby, which attracts significant iPod playtime at this time of year.
- A ‘54 convertible too, light blue.
The enunciation is sublime. Just lovely.
Breakfast room
Anna (or more technically her beloved) recently speculated on how much cereal it would take to fill her living room. Click here to read about the bizarre thought process that led up to it.
Anyway our lounge, with rough dimensions of eight metres long, four metres wide and 3.5 metres tall, would need around 236,786.5 pints of milk to fill. Assuming nine helpings of Alpen (my cereal of choice) in a standard box, and half a pint of milk per serving, I’d need 52,619 650g boxes. (Ocado only allows me to order up to 99 boxes at a time, which is frustrating.)
The total cost of the experiment would be £254,545, assuming the use of six-pint semi-skimmed milk containers and no bulk order discounts. 65% of the cost is Alpen-related; 35% for milk.
I’d need to tape up the doors, and probably re-inforce the windows. I expect I’d have to complete the experiment by ripping up the upstairs carpet and floorboards, and pouring the ingredients through the gap. I would, obviously, trip the relevant electrical switches to avoid any associated disasters.
Stretch marks
Yesterday I read with interest the story of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s intent on giving a guilty plea in the pre-trial hearing at Guantanamo Bay. Albeit not quite as newsworthy, I have to question what on earth Khalid has been doing with his t-shirt. How on earth do you end up with a neck hole quite as large as that?
(Assuming it wasn’t used as a form of leverage by the Guantanamo guards, of course.)
The BBC has since pulled the picture, probably after complaints from his mum ("I always taught him to take care of his things better than that"), but it’s above for your enjoyment.
Hippo < Human < Potato
Yesterday, I discovered that my daughter is lighter than a potato, yet heavier than a hippo. Go figure.
Change request: rejected
My mate in Sydney who hosts this little blog moved it to a shiny, new server and upgraded php in the process. I could swear I didn’t receive a change request to authorise. That’s what you get when you get a free hosting service, I guess 
The adverse impact of the move was, as far as I’m aware twofold:
- Comments no longer worked
- The "Tech stuff" category was broken.
I’ve sorted the former problem by disabling the captcha (that number that you used to have to type in to post a comment), but comments are still moderated. The impact to me is that I have to reject swathes of shitty spam comments, which kicked in the moment I disabled the captcha—comforting that it seems it was doing something all these years.
As for the latter, I have no idea why it stopped working, but I’ve just clicked it, and it seems to have rectified itself. Which is nice.
It seems that pLog didn’t work properly with the new version of php. Time to move to Wordpress as soon as possible.
(As an aside, all of the spam comments are very complimentary about my site. Maybe a better captcha would look for any complimentary comments and remove them, on the assumption that all genuine comments will be derogatory.)
Knowledge management: is it possible?
Lots of organisations bang on about the importance of knowledge management. And they’re keen to differentiate it from information management.
But I question the achievability of the former. All you can do is communicate information to someone and ask them to use that information to operate in certain ways. You cannot manage the knowledge that ensues from that communication. Can you?