By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Feb 17, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Causation vs correlation.
Scientists and statisticians use this formulation to determine when the proximity between two events is sufficiently close to establish a causal relationship.
It’s an important concept.
Just because two events occur close to one another doesn’t necessarily mean they are related–i.e., the former “causing” the latter (“the cock crows and the sun rises”).
On the other hand, often they are linked and we need to make this important distinction (e.g., smoking leads to heart disease)–and adjust behavior accordingly.
Monday I was scanning my iPhone apps and noticed “Find my iPhone.”
I hadn’t thought about this app in nearly 3 months when I lost my iPhone and searched unsuccessfully for an hour before this app led me to my right pocket, where the iPhone was safely hidden.
Well, lo and behold, on Tuesday I lose my iPhone and have to use this app again to find it again. This time it only took about 8 minutes and it was located in my jacket pocket.
Which made me wonder, Did seeing the iPhone app the day before “cause” me to lose my phone the next day?
The human mind is a complicated mechanism. I think there was “causation.” And if some scientist tries to claim my analogy is more like the “cock crowing causing the sun to rise,” I’ll be the first to point out to the know-it-all that the sun rising is just an optical illusion.
By John Johnson, on Fri Feb 17, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
1985 was the first baseball season when I truly became a fan of the sport.
My team was the New York Mets. I became a fan through the legacy fandom passed on
by my Uncle John, who used to take me to Shea stadium. That summer we constantly exchanged stories about the team, the pitching, and hated St Louis Cardinals, and one very special catcher–Gary Carter.
I remember that summer being the first when I really understood box scores and baseball standings. As Fall approached, I anxiously counted the number of wins the Mets needed to overtake the Cardinals. Realizing as the days of the regular season dwindled the Mets were going to run out of time..there only chance to clinch the NL East was a sweep the last weekend. Time ran out…a 98 win season just wasn’t enough. And disappointment filled me realizing that only one team can win the
championship…and even in a season as long as baseball, there was still such a
thing as having not enough time.
Time running out on the 1985 season was the first thing I thought about today
when I heard that one of the bedrocks of the Mets team in 1985 and 1986, Gary Carter, died tragically yesterday of brain cancer at the age of 57.
The next season–1986–the Mets exploded our of the gate to run away with the NL East. I followed every game that season. 1986 was, to steal a phrase from this website, a season of “recovery”….the unfinished business of a season where they got oh so close but time ran out. Gary Carter was right in the middle of so many of those 108 wins that year. He was the steady presence in the battery raising the game of Doc Gooden, Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez, Bobby Ojeda, and Rick Aguilera. He was a constant home run threat to drive in Lenny Dykstra, Wally Backman, Keith Hernandez, Darryl Strawberry. The stats speak for themselves…24 homeruns, 105 RBIs.
The endorsement by “The Donald” of Mitt Romney will amount to very little when all is said in done in the Republican primary.
To be honest, I firmly believed Trump would endorse Newt Gingrich. Why? First off, I think Trump and Newt are more aligned politically. More importantly, in the last year Trump has said Romney walked away with some money from a company he didn’t create, he closed companies and got rid of jobs, and he wasn’t in love with the job he did in Massachusetts. Trump also didn’t like the fact that Romney wasn’t a popular governor, served only one term, and didn’t like that he didn’t have high approval ratings. Trump wanted the individual running for president of the United States to be the most popular person you can have.
Read the rest of… Jason Grill: Will Trump Boost Romney?
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Feb 16, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
The Politics of Tech
Some members of Congress have been identified by IP addresses as having used torrents to illegally download content, all the while fighting for anti-piracy legislation. [DailyTech]
“The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde: It’s evolution, stupid” [Wired]
Canada’s government is pushing for warrantless Internet spying. Their opponents? Obviously supporters of child pornography. [ars technica]
A picture of a Google maps car taking a picture of someone taking a picture of a Google maps car. [picture]
This is a big, amazing instrument made by Intel. That’s really all I can say to describe it. [YouTube]
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Feb 16, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
After prodding from several friends I’ve finally started the Zija diet.
It’s a green powder you put in water and drink periodically throughout the day.
I think.
Don’t hold me to specifics.
I bought some powder that comes in green packets. I assume they go in water and are to be drunk with some regularity.
It seems that I haven’t read the instructions –yet–and am approaching this plan intuitively. provide rare and important nutrients and suppresses appetite.
My first day I weighed myself (benchmarking) and I drank a glass of water with the powder. It tasted all right.
I waited 30 minutes and then weighed myself again. Nothing. In fact I had gained a quarter of a pound.
The second day I didn’t eat much to avoid having to drink more green water, although I did drink a little later in the day. It was the batch I’d made the day before and tasted awful a day later.
It’s now been a week since I started the Zija diet. The past 5 days I haven’t drunk any of the powder bc it tasted so bad that second day. But I’ve still lost 4 pounds.
This stuff really works! Don’t know how exactly but I’m a believer.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Feb 16, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
The Politics of Pigskin
In probably the biggest news of the week that doesn’t involve something player-related, ESPN has pulled Ron Jaworski from the Monday Night Football booth. The plan seems to be to insert Jaws on other ESPN shows and leave the MNF broadcast with a team of two: Mike Tirico and Jon Gruden. [Awful Announcing]
The Tampa Bay Bucs have released DT Albert Haynesworth. Will this end the guys career? Probably, but we shall see. [ESPN]
In honor of Valentine’s Day yesterday Mark Sanchez asked teammate Santonio Holmes to be his valentine over Twitter. [Deadspin]
Peter King mulls over ending his run as a Hall of Fame voter. [Sports Illustrated]
Several TCU football players were arrested in a drug bust that resulted in 17 total student arrests. This does not bode well for TCU, especially as they are making the transition into the Big 12. [Sports Illustrated]
Hoekstra needs to spend three minutes watching the Clint Eastwood Super Bowl ad. It captures, much more powerfully and far more honestly, the real Chinese challenge.
The long-term China threat is not that they finance our debt – we should blame our lack of fiscal discipline and our aversion toward hard choices on spending for that–but the fact that we’re losing ground to a country that is poorer and much less equitable than we are. They are still out performing us and out strategizing us in the fields of advanced manufacturing and engineering, and their top-heavy, command and control economy is proving more supple than our own capital markets. That ought to be a gut-check that Democrats and Republicans should run ads about.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Is Pete Hoekstra’s Ad Racist?
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Feb 15, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
It’s not enough for Mark Zuckerberg to take over our lives with FB. Now he wants to play God and tell us who we can and can’t be friends with.
Facebook just told me I’m about to max out on “friends” and they soon won’t allow me to make any new “friends” unless I delete a current friend to make room for the new one.
Wow!
Really, Mark?
Think of the confusing issues you will now force people to deal with.
Can I still make friends outside of Facebook?
If so, will they feel less of a “friend” since they can’t be a FB friend too?
Is there a name for these new FB-friendless friends?
Are there tips on how to navigate these relationships so these “friends” with asterisks, so to speak, don’t feel further marginalized?
Is it insulting to introduce non-FB friends to other non-FB friends bc their non-FB friend status gives them something in common?
Are non-FB friend friends less demanding on us?
Can we use the ” FB max out” excuse to avoid making a new non-FB friend we are uncertain about?
If I delete a current FB friend to make room for a new non-FB friend I’ll like better, what kind of fall out can be expected?
If I’m wrong and the new non-FB friend is a disappointment, can I switch back without the old deleted FB friend knowing?
How do I delete Tom, the guy in a white shirt who was my first and an automatic friend for all FB new users? I don’t even know who he is! Oh wait, that was MySpace.
Maybe my new excess friends can meet on MySpace. But how do I explain Tom to them?
C’mon, Mark! Making friends virtually shouldn’t be this hard. Maybe those guys in the movie Social Network who claimed you stole their idea know some ways to have more friends on FB. Unless you really are that much smarter and can figure it out first.
(That was mean for me to say….but not as mean as you forcing me to tell people they can’t be my friend “just because.”)
Causation vs correlation.
