2012-08-24 Olympic Roundup 2: Olympic Phrases

Olympic Roundup 2:  Phrases Associated With the Olympics

This summer, the Olympics received some criticism for a rather exhaustive trademark protection effort in London that successfully excluded phrases such as “Summer 2012” from being posted by London advertisers not associated with Olympics.

Thankfully, with McDonald’s, Visa and Coca-Cola sponsorships, Summer 2012 was allowed to continue and we were not all forced to skip from June to September.

Anyway, I decided to use Google’s verbatim search to find phrases closely associated with the Olympics that the International Olympic Committee probably should have trademarked but did not.  I define the Olympic Phrase Index as the proportion of the time the phrase is associated with the Olympics.

Some of my favorites.

Phrase	#Google Hits of the phrase	#Google Hits when ‘Olympic’ and/or ‘Olympics’ is excluded	Olympic Phrase Index
Children under so much pressure	45800	41700	0.09
1980 Invasion of Afghanistan	11400	9590	0.16
Ran out of condoms*	21700	18000	0.17
East German judge	39100	29100	0.26
Tape-Delay	3950000	2680000	0.32
By one-one hundredth of a second	69000	33200	0.52
First three-time host	49200	21800	0.56
Doves were incinerated	5	2	0.60
Barefoot through the streets of Rome	5960	1610	0.73
Competed in the nude**	695000	30800	0.96

*Google SafeSearch set to ‘Strict’

**Google SafeSearch set to ‘Moderate’ as the ‘Strict’ setting filters results with the word ‘nude’.

2012-08-23 Olympic Roundup (Finally!)

It took a while to get around to it, but finally:

So that now that the greatest* spectacle** on earth is over with***, what precisely will we remember?

This Olympics is always a memory of sights.  In no particular order:

We saw the Queen of England in a James Bond skit,

Phelps win lots of swimming medals by doing the same thing over and over again,

a gymnast needing only to land on her feet to receive the gold medal, but landing on her butt instead, and

the country of South Sudan participate without recognition or a flag. 

We saw a runner with no legs in a final,

random East German world records broken,

the long jump result continue to regress, a US 16-year-old nearly beat a Chinese player in table tennis as Bill Gates watched, and

1/400^th of Mitt Romney’s property compete.

We saw Usain Bolt continue to be the world’s fastest 100 m jogger,

Britain celebrate destroying its landscape to make way for factories,

Britain’s four football associations finally managing to cooperate long enough to assemble a football team together, and

said football team ritually losing in PKs to an underdog and vowing to never play together again.

We saw two teams playing in each other in badminton both try to lose the game,

a player get struck 4 times with one second on the clock to lose a fencing match by 1,

that the current Olympic appeals process now involves officially handing over Benjamins rather than unofficially handing them over, and

that someone important enough to handle the scoreboard at an Olympic event doesn’t know the difference between the North Korean and South Korean flags.

We saw McDonald’s grudgingly allow fish and chips at the concession stands,

a Phelps interview dubbed over a tribute to victims of terrorism,

all 302 events, as long as we could stream them at 6 am, and

announcers openly admitting to rooting for temperatures to warm so that female beach volleyball players would be required to wear bikinis.

We saw anti-aircraft guns atop apartments and the locals wondering why they have no Third Amendment,

a constantly updated count of the number of condoms distributed to the athletes,

announcers criticizing a poor relay performance by a US runner before learning that he ran the second half of his race having broken his leg, and

a 2-hour race decided by thousands of a second.

We saw countries win their first ever medals:  Guatamala, Cyprus, and Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago,

another Olympics with no medals for the 150,000,000 people of Bangladesh,

five days pass before the host nation won a gold medal, and

85 countries win medals.

 All in all we saw a pretty good show.

*Greatest number of events

**Or long series of interviews, depending on your broadcaster

***For two more years until the next Winter Olympics

2012-07-11 FIFA scores a hat trick for common sense

FIFA's rules committee, the IFAB, put out three alterations to the football rules, each of which made sense.  Two of them were gimmes, but the third was significant.

1.  Goal line technology implemented:  Excessive and expensive to use Hawk-eye, could have been just fine with high-speed cameras, but it is  much, much better than no replay.  As long as no red light and siren are installed, it is a win.

2.  More officials:  The physical demands on them are considerable, so probably a good choice.

3.  The interesting one:  Modification to the kit/uniform to allow Islamic headscarves so that woman's football can be better promoted in the Middle East.  They were previously banned due to safety concerns, as well as being a religious symbol, but are now classified as a cultural element of dress rather than a religious element.  The safety issue was solved through the development of sports headscarves that use a Velcro arrangement of some sort to prevent injury.  It seems silly, but they should be applauded for doing whatever they can to encourage participation for anyone and everyone.

12-06-25 Bad Day at the Office

How else can one describe a situation where a guy's only job is to watch a line and see if the ball crosses it, and then potentially decide an entire tournament by screwing it up?

That's what happened in the Euro 2012 in the Ukraine-England match.  To make matters worse, the bad call helped cause the elimination of the host nation.

Then you have the poor called out on Twitter by the FIFA president himself.  Ouch.

Update 6/24...England go out on penalties...again.  I feel for Joe Hart, wanted him to save Mario's kick :)

12-06-09 Greeks Rate Themselves Hardest Workers In Europe

Pew Global's review found that alone of any country in Europe, Greeks consider themselves the hardest workers in the EU.  Every other European country polled chose Germany.

Sometimes it does not require sophisticated analysis to determine why a country is in trouble...

12-05-26 Once in many lifetimes?

How do you calculate odds for something that only one instance is known to have occurred?

A few days ago, a fan at a baseball game caught two home run balls hit by consecutive batters, as has been widely reported.

Calib Lloyd’s amazing day at the Cincinnati Reds’ game earlier this week had me wondering what the odds were, but there were no mentions that I could find of anyone else having this happen.

That does not mean we cannot give an estimate of the likelihood of the event, it just suggests that the estimate will be lousy.  Anyway here’s my take:

There are 2430 regular season games per season, and maybe ≈5,000 seats or so in the outfield, and each team averages roughly ≈1 home run/game.  Last year it was .94 HR/team/game, whereas in 2000, the steroids era, it was 1.17 (STATS LLC).  Then, using Poisson to inform us the likelihood of various numbers of home runs by a team in a game is simple.

There are about 40 plate appearances per team per game (baseballgurus.com). A little bit of math tell us the number of consecutive home runs in a game per team would be about 0.013.

We guess the odds of a ball being caught by someone is ≈0.8, since some leave the stadium and some land in the bullpens or in the area in center field where there are no seats.

Thus, in a given game, the odds that this might happen to someone is about

So, in a hundred years of baseball (yes, there were formerly fewer games per year, but this will only affect the calculations by a factor of two at most probably) this would happen roughly once.  That it would happen to you at a game would be about 1.5 billion to 1.

Of course I am not the only one to ask this question, so we can compare it to others’ calculations:

http://www.morethanafan.net/2012/05/24/off-base-percentage-what-are-the-odds/

Here, using an slightly higher average number of home runs per game and a different methodology gave about twice the likelihood of its occurance.  That is not atypical for this type of calculation, and either calculation does suggest that there is a good chance that Caleb Lloyd is the only person to ever catch home runs hit by consecutive batters.

12-05-13 Is a Pythagorean Triple

That is all.  Cheers.

12-05-13 Atypical City

After an exciting season in the Premier League (English Football/Soccer), Manchester City F.C. stood atop the standings and was looking today for a first league championship since 1968.  Some background information is necessary to set the stage.

After the Chicago Cubs, Manchester City might be the world’s next most famous cursed team.  The label fans and the media have attached to the continuous heartbreak this team has offered its fans for 132 years is “Typical City”. 

Lists of their failures are available elsewhere, but the important thing is that they have suffered the same confluence of a rabid fan base, historically bad leadership and painfully bad luck that the Cubs have endured.  To make matters worse, Manchester United is their crosstown rival, and is of course one of the world’s most successful teams.  Thus, a good parallel might be if Cubs fans had to watch the White Sox in the World Series almost every year.

The team has been known for its quirkiness.  Its anthem is the not-terribly-inspiring “Blue Moon”, its mascot is a pair of space aliens from the moon, and fans bring large inflatables of animals or fruits (particularly bananas).  They wear the colors of AC Milan as their away uniform simply because a random assistant manager (Malcolm Allison) in the midcentury decided they should wear the uniforms of a good team.  They also have a famously good-natured fan-base, and have won two UEFA Fair-Play first-place recognitions (a feat matched by only Viking FK of Norway).

Today, Manchester City and their rivals Manchester United were tied for the league lead with the final game to be played today.  City held the tiebreak over United so they required only a win in their game today.  Manchester City was playing today against Queen’s Park Rangers (QPR).  City was playing at home, where in the first 18 games of the season they had won 17, drawn 1 and lost none.  QPR in 18 away games had won 3, drawn 2 and lost 13.

After a perfunctory first half, Manchester City led 1-0, having totally dominated possession as QPR played for a draw until City scored shortly before halftime.  With the title all but clinched, the stage was now set…for Typical City.

City’s important playmaker Yaya Toure left the game with a hamstring injury shortly after helping cause the first-half goal.  Within three minutes of the second half, QPR scored to tie the game.  It is important to note that with a draw, QPR could clinch a place in next year’s league (which keeps the top 17 teams of 20 and the other three are replaced by the best teams in the league one level down). 

It was thus bizarre that Joey Barton (QPR captain, has a hot temper and has been ejected several times this season) got himself deservedly ejected for a violent elbowing of a City player during a stoppage of play.  Even more bizarrely, after receiving the ejection he attacked another City player, and continued his one-man brawl until he was literally removed from the pitch by stadium security.  One cannot make up this stuff.

So City now had an extra player, and in typical City fashion gave up a silly goal to a QPR team with no remaining forwards, as the stunned crowd could only gasp in horror.  Then, City, despite continual attacks, could not score as the QPR keeper made repeated amazing saves, and needed two goals.

Now it is important to note that the Premier League plays the final games of the season simultaneously for all teams, so that no team knows more about what result it needs (particularly if a draw is sufficient) compared to the other teams.  It is also important to note that due to Barton’s antics, the City-QPR game was running behind the other games.  Particularly important was the Manchester United-Sunderland game (which United won comfortably) and the Bolton-Stoke game, in which Bolton needed a win plus a QPR loss to overtake QPR and steal their place for next season.  Bolton actually held the lead in their game until Stoke managed a draw in the last 15 minutes of the game, but with five minutes left in the City game, the Bolton game and the United games were approaching their conclusions, and City fans were resigned to perhaps the worst Typical City in 50 years.

Then, City scored on its 18th (!) corner of the game, and City had life, and 3.5 minutes to score another.  A minute later the QPR fans and bench saw the official result of the Bolton draw, and burst into wild cheers as they were now safe in the top 17.  Also, several of the QPR players who had been defending so resolutely and learned this and, between their exhaustion and satisfaction, lost concentration (one can clearly see several QPR players standing around in the replay!) and MCFC’s Sergio Aguero received a great pass from Mario Balotelli and scored.

So, City won the game and stole the championship from their arch-rivals even as United’s players and fans stood on the pitch at Sunderland waiting for the trophy ceremony.  I have been a Manchester City fan for a long time, admittedly, but I think regardless of their team such an incredible story is worth telling.  For once, City fans experience euphoria, while the United fans got to experience Typical City instead.

12-05-12 Technology Marches On (or Something)

This is a few days old, but you cannot beat this for an example of business logic and cost-cutting taken to the extreme:

One might imagine the bad press a bank would receive if someone walked into a bank and was told that making a deposit was impossible.  Apparently, it is happening, at least in Norway.

The web address tells it all:

http://www.thelocal.no/page/view/bank-tells-customer-we-dont-take-cash-anymore

The 98-branch Nordea currently handles cash at only nine of its branches.  However, one can still make withdrawals using ATMs, just not deposits.  That said, I doubt many people will would want to deposit money in such a bank.

12-05-09 You must be present to win: The Republican Primary continues its absurdity

Earlier I described how the primary/caucus process was broken in that it provided vastly different levels of influence to different populations.  Following on that theme:

As of May, the Republican primary process has basically been over for more than a month.  Despite this, the process is technically continuing, including the district-level caucuses that are the second stage of determining state delegates in many states.  This of course includes states whose initial votes have already come and gone months ago.  The problem is that nobody cares about the process at this point.  If an insufficient number of Romney supporters show up to formally nominate the actual delegates for the convention, they still need to nominate delegates somehow, and Ron Paul’s fervent supporters have been quite willing to shoulder that responsibility.

Consider the following states have had two-stage caucus processes, and the difference in the timing would not be meaningful except that Ron Paul is still determined to collect as many delegates as possible.  Here are his results so far in several states:

State	Ron Paul’s Statewide Result (%)	Delegates	Delegate Proportion (%)
Maine	18	21 of 24	88
Massachusetts*	10	16 of 27 (11 remain to be allocated)	59
Colorado	12	17 of 33	51
Nevada**	19	22 of 28	79
Minnesota	27	20 of 24 (16 remain to be allocated)	83
Louisiana	6	17 of 33 (13 remain to be allocated)	51
*In Massachusetts, the delegates are obligated by law to vote on the first ballot according to results of the primary, but may participate as delegates of the candidate of their choice for all other purposes, including nomination of a VP candidate.  Paul has 0 votes on the first ballot. ** In Nevada, the delegates are obligated by law to vote on the first ballot according to results of the primary, but may participate as delegates of the candidate of their choice for all other purposes, including nomination of a VP candidate.  Paul has 8 votes on the first ballot.

Several other states are operating under the same rules and will likely have similar results to varying degrees, including Iowa, Alaska, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

While this system is not going to keep Romney from being nominated, it may give Paul some leverage at the convention.  It may also lead to a situation where Romney looks out on a sea of people waving Paul banners as he accepts his nomination, which could only be seen as embarrassing.

12-04-26 World Peace Suspended Until Early May

Thankfully this is not news of an airstrike (at least nowhere new, anyway).  Instead, it goes to show that if you rename yourself Metta World Peace (formerly Ronald Artest), people like me will find it highly amusing when you are suspended 7 games for a violent elbowing foul in an NBA game.

That likely seems like an unusually large suspension, but I am sure that it takes into account Artest's previous behavior, which includes being suspended 86 games for entering the stands and physically attacking fans back in 2004.

12-04-15 The Miami Marlins toy

Well, with the start of the baseball season I cannot resist providing the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0H9VthNLh8&feature=related

The Brewers have now lost the title of strangest baseball-related kitschy crowd-pleaser to the Florida Miami Marlins.  The sausage race just does not match with this.

As an extra bonus, before you rename your team be sure to buy the website for it:

http://miamimarlins.com/

Edit:  Posted today, the 15th.  Who knew it would take more than a week to actually be used?

http://www.rantsports.com/bringingheat/2012/04/15/video-miami-marlins-home-run-statue-in-action/

12-04-01

Moved the blog here to scorelessdraw.blogspot.com!  Yay!

Happy April Fools?

12-03-25 Roadblocks

Many suspect that more roads are ‘under construction’ than is strictly necessary, with the main beneficiary being the construction companies themselves, who lobby to receive larger government contracts.  This rent-seeking behavior is extremely annoying and woefully inefficient for society due to the enormous amounts of gas that is wasted.  One suspects that at least some of this effort is intended to make the roads safer, of course.  Not so much with these roadblocks:

Mullinville, Kansas has its Elm Street closed to traffic by a private citizen.  An M. T. Liggett, who owns property adjacent to the road, claims that the city lost the rights to the road due to misfiling some paperwork…back in 1949 (KWCH-12 News), even though the road has been maintained by the city for the intervening 63 years.  Mr. Liggett is demanding the issue be settled in court, while the city would prefer to negotiate.

Two days ago, in Hyattstown, Maryland, an armored truck apparently spilled ‘a snow globe of cash’ onto I-270 (WTOP 103.5 FM).  This accident resulted in chaos as the road was impeded, because 30 vehicles stopped to help…loot the area.  The police are asking for the money to be returned, no questions asked.  Good luck with that.  On the other hand, one expects the discipline for the driver to be severe.

12-03-10 250 to one

It seems likely that regardless of the resolution of this bitter primary fight, one loser will be the caucus system, simply because it is not terribly fair.  Consider these results (calculated by CNN, delegate numbers do not match the total because some delegates are not automatically assigned).

Wyoming Results
Candidate	Votes	Delegates	Votes/Delegate
Romney	822	13	63.2
Santorum	673	7	96.1
Paul	439	4	110
Gingrich	165	1	165
Other	9	0	n/a
Total	2108	29	72.7

Ohio Results
Candidate	Votes	Delegates	Votes/Delegate
Romney	456513	35	13043
Santorum	446225	19	23486
Gingrich	175554	0	n/a
Paul	111238	0	n/a
Total	1189530	66	18023

Thus, a vote cast in Wyoming is worth 250x as much as a vote in Ohio.  This is especially bad given that Ohio is a swing state, and Wyoming is not.  Just for fun, consider that Guam had 215 votes cast (207 for Romney, 8 uncommitted and none for anyone else!) and assigns 9 delegates, for a ratio of 23.9 votes/delegate.

Thus, the Republican Party (who determines the delegate distribution) appears to have decided that they care about each Guam voter (who cannot even vote in the general election) as much as 750 Ohio voters.

12-03-03 Rush Limbaugh

Apparently, even Rush Limbaugh’s sponsors have limits.  In a victory for human civility, Rush was driven to apologize for his recent anti-contraceptive character attack on a Georgetown student.  To be precise, he apologized for his ‘choice of words’.  Rather an understatement, given that he called her a ‘slut’ on the national airwaves, repeatedly, and demanded exotic video from her in exchange for government-funded contraceptives.

12-02-24 HOW much?!?

Game theory can easily explain many financial crimes, as it can be treated as an investment with odds of a positive or negative payout.  Due to the negative payout being rather severe (jail time, for example), one easily-drawn conclusion is that if you intend to make money through financial crime, it is probably advantageous to commit one big crime that if successful will be enough for a lifetime, rather than a bunch of minor crimes.  This could probably be labeled the Madoff Principle over its most famous proponent. 

Like any rule, you can take it to logical extremes.  For example, The police and governance of Southern Italy is usually considered at best amongst the First World’s ‘least authoritarian’, and at worst rather inactive in the face of organized crime.  It turns out that there’s a level of fraud that will draw the attention of the authorities even there.

For example, if you try to conduct a fraud for $6,000,000,000,000 US dollars (Six TRILLION) using fake Billion-dollar US bonds, it will not work.  Someone is going to look into it, even if the police responsible to investigate are from Potenza, a rural inland Southern Italian town of about 70,000 people.  According to Reuters, last week eight criminals were arrested for this crime.  Apparently the “year-long investigation...began as an investigation into mafia loan-sharking, but gradually expanded.”  Hopefully, not too much of that year was required to determine that your average collection of 6000 billion dollar US bonds (about 1/3 of the value of all US bonds issued!) is probably fake, although the U.S. Embassy to Italy mentioned in a press release that “U.S. experts” were responsible for recognizing the fraudulent bonds. 

Also, apparently in northern Italy a similar fraud was attempted and stopped in 2009.  I had not heard of this incident, probably because only the paltry sum of $742,000,000,000 US dollars ($742 billion) was involved that time.

12-02-15 When Madonna is not enough...

You might consider this:  Some people somewhere feel strongly that Weird Al’s universal appeal makes him the ideal candidate for performing at the Super Bowl halftime show.

http://www.change.org/petitions/the-national-football-league-nerds-everywhere-weird-al-yankovic-performs-the-super-bowl-xlvii-half-time-show

12-02-02 Seventy-Four Dead in Cai-ai-ro

Attention turns again to unrest in Egypt, as Al Masry football fans stormed the field to celebrate a 3-1 home victory over Cairo’s Al Ahly.  The result is an upset of sorts, as Al Ahly has been Africa’s most successful team.  The deaths of 74 people resulted as the fans chased the losing team’s players and fans out of the stadium with “knives, clubs and stones” (NYTimes).  Apparently police had been instructed to not search the fans for weapons before the game, and indeed not to interfere in the brawl.  Apparently the national security forces intended to use any trouble at the game as an excuse to maintain martial law in light of the upcoming scheduled transfer of power to the elected government.

Fans of Tonya Harding will note that Ittihad El-Shorta (Police Union), the team owned and operated by the Egyptian National Police, is currently tied with Al Masry in fourth place in the standings about halfway through the season, and are thus in earnest competition with both teams for African Champions League qualification.

Apparently video footage shows police officers notably not helping deal with the crowd or even the injured.  Against that villainy, it’s still worth wondering why this sport continues to observe such violence.  Notably, while 74 deaths at a soccer match seems like a lot, it doesn’t even crack the top 5 most deadly soccer matches (OddCulture.com).  Interestingly, the top 5 all occurred on different continents, with only Oceania thus far spared a catastrophic game.  With this event, the top 15 have all occurred in different stadiums now.

12-02-01 Republican Primary

As we look at the Republican primary, after Florida, state number 4, Romney is now an 8:1 favorite over the field to be nominated, according to those willing to put their money on the line for it.  CNN and the other stations, however, are going to keep inundating us with details, because there’s really no incentive for them not to do so.  After all, what sort of meaningful content is cheaper than paying some guy to read statistics off a computer screen?  Not to mention the money from the TV ads themselves.

One might think that the media has an incentive to keep the appearance of a close race.  Certainly the losing candidates do, but possibly Romney does as well.  His ratings decreased when he began to act as the presumptive nominee.  They improved again, once people remembered that the alternative is Gingrich.  I wonder how Romney would do against “A randomly selected registered Republican eligible to be president” if such an option were available on the ballot. 

12-01-11 Penny...Penny...Penny

Random fact of the day:  Neither the penny nor the nickel is allowed to be exported out of the United States.  The penalty for such an action is a fine of up to $10,000 dollars and/or 5 years jail time.

Due to either extensive investment or excessive speculation in the commodities market (depending on your point of view and preference for buying such luxuries as food and energy), the zinc market has inflated to the point where the metal within the penny (mostly zinc) had exceeded the value of one cent.  The same policy prevents melting down the coins in the US either (obviously, the US government can do nothing about people melting down coins once they are exported).

Interestingly, this policy was implemented in April 2007, prior to the economic crash.  Even more interestingly, the implementation of this policy correlates with a sudden, rapid collapse of the zinc market that resulted in the metal losing one third of its value by the end of 2007 (It continued downwards into 2008 and dropped precipitously with the economic crash, and has recovered to its end-of-2007 value today).

The unanswerable question is, of course:  How much was the world’s consumption of zinc (an important resource for rust-proofing steel, by the way) modified by people buying lots of pennies, shipping them abroad and melting them down for an approximately 0.3 cent/penny margin?

12-01-07 15 Years for Excessive Celebration

Wow.  This may be the worst celebration of the biggest play of a player’s career ever, and it didn’t happen in soccer.  Almost certainly the 99-yard fumble recovery touchdown by the West Virginia safety Darwin Cook was the biggest play of the guy’s career.  After he scored, he was so euphoric that he ran about 10 yards past the camera people, the mandatory ‘event staff’ people etc. to pile-drive the Orange Bowl mascot (yes, not the other team’s mascot, the bowl’s mascot) into the wall supporting the stands (sportsgrid.com). 

The mascot, a human-sized orange, apparently sufficiently annoyed Cook with its existence that he “was looking for him” by his own admission to reporters after the game.  This apparently occurred because Cook “did not think he believed in us either”, according to his own statement after the game.  His reaction to learning that the performer in the mascot suit was a girl was pricelessly honest shocked shame.  His gaping mouth is one of the first images you find when searching his name. 

It’s hard to resist pointing out that if future girlfriends see this act as the defining moment of his football career, he might end up eligible for (sunglasses) a Darwin Award.

12-01-01 Some Facts

Finding a suitable first blog piece is difficult.  Thus, we will start with the state of the world at the start of 2012.

2012 expected GDP by nation (in T$) (from IMF WEO):

USA	15.5
China	7.7
Japan	6.1
Germany	3.7
France	2.9
Brazil	2.6
UK	2.6
Italy	2.3
Russia	2.3
India	2.2
Canada	1.9
Balance	23.9

Extra Bonus:

US  Population (US Census), ages 20-29: 

Male:               21.65 Million

Female:            21.04 Million