An Epic Figure Caption

Wow. Just wow.

Clearly, it needs a figure to go with it.

(Tip of the cap to Jesús Cuevas Maraver, who retweeted this tweet.)

Be Careful with the 'Track Changes' Option

D'oh!

Protip: When doing a big treason, don't track changes in Microsoft Word. https://t.co/DMgE6cdAWM

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 8, 2017

Here is a screen capture so that you can see this in full glory.

(Tip of the cap to Francis Su.)

The Museum of Failure

There is a temporary exhibit in Los Angeles called The Museum of Failure.

Notice the Nintendo Power Glove in the picture...

(I never bought the Power Glove, but I did buy a U-Force. I liked the idea, but the technology wasn't yet ready for practical use. Just image me playing Galaga by waving my hands back and forth. That was just about the only game with simple enough controls that the controller was even usable, and even then it was much harder than using something conventional.)

Is anybody able to tell what the portable game system under the yellow cans is?

The first thing that came to mind when I saw the post was New Coke, of course.

I should go to this exhibit!

Replying to All: Million-Person Edition

Well, this story puts my dark sense of humor on overdrive.

It's probably not a good idea to reply-all when there are more than one million recipients. At least we know why people are getting slow e-mail responses from NHS employees at the moment.

Matching Bar Graphs to Percentages

Good try, NBC2. Thank you for playing.

(Tip of the cap to Maria Satterwhite and at least one person who I can't remember.)

Labeling Fails and Other Classic Job Fails

This compilation includes some rather classic failures. (The fact that only a few of them are present per page and one has to click the 'next' button many times is annoying, so I could nail the website designer for giving us a decidedly modern form of failing.)

(Tip of the cap to George Takei.)

Headline: Food Banks Attract Poor People

Apparently, some church in Winnipeg didn't get the memo. D'oh!

LinkedIn Fail

LinkedIn Fail: Today I got an e-mail notice suggesting that I should congratulate one of my connections on a professional milestone: "[first name] [last name] is celebrating 7 years at [Institution of Higher Learning]"

Dear LinkedIn: You do realize that that means that this person is still a graduate student at that place, right?

For what it's worth, I would laugh at this out of sheer perversity even if that anniversary were mine.

Peer Review Fail

Well, this incident sure is a beauty.

To quote a line the supplementary information of this paper, Emma, please insert NMR data here! where are they? and for this compound, just make up an elemental analysis.... (And also an ethics fail.) Way to proofread! This is an instant classic. (By the way, there is already an update.)

(Tip of cap to Katie Siek.)

Update (8/10/13): Petter Holme has pointed me to this link, which updates the story further. The Editor in Chief is handling the aftermath very well, in my opinion. Of course, things shouldn't ever have gotten to this point, but the situation is what it is.

Applied Mathematics and Statistics are Not the Same!

Applied mathematics is not statistics. And vice versa.

Personally, I think this is an obvious statement, but at least one prominent sexy journal (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) does not get it, and in my opinion this leads to a rather unfair bias against applied mathematics in this journal. Take a look at PNAS's editorial board, and in particular take a look at the three scholars listed under the category "Applied Mathematical Sciences". All three of them --- Peter Bickel, David Donoho, and Stephen Fienberg --- are card-carrying statisticians.

This is a major inequity. (I think it's also a major problem, but instead of arguing that per se, let me instead argue the lesser claim that it's a major inequity.) For example, applied mathematicians and statisticians have completely different notions of the word "model". To a typical applied mathematician, modelling constitutes the development of dynamical and/or generative models. A model might be a set of coupled differential equations that is derived using momentum balances and constitutive laws, it might be a phenomenological set of differential or difference equations that attempts to describe some qualitative features in a biological system, it might be a set of rules for generating an ensemble of random graphs, etc. Wikipedia has a long discussion of what constitutes a mathematical model, and many of these are the "dynamical models" that have long been favored by applied mathematicians. A statistical model, however, is something completely different. The phrasing in Wikipedia states that a statistical model "describes how one or more random variables are related to one or more random variables." Clearly, the Navier Stokes equations do not constitute a statistical model; but they are a mathematical model.

So why am I ranting about the inequity at PNAS? Well, if I try to get a paper in their applied mathematics section, I am going to have to get my paper through a statistician. And I have had a paper desk-rejected because the formulation contained in my paper did not constitute a statistical model. And that's true---it didn't. But I submitted an applied mathematics paper---not a statistics paper---and therefore I want to have it judged by card-carrying applied mathematicians. PNAS purports to represent applied mathematics, but it doesn't. There needs to be truth in advertising. They need to either claim that applied mathematics isn't part of their purview (which, by the way, I do not think is the right solution), or their list of editors in "Applied Mathematical Sciences" must include at least one actual applied mathematician!

Note: There is some overlap between models in applied mathematics and statistics when it comes to ensembles of random graphs, but even then applied mathematicians and statisticians tend to look at these beasts in different ways.

Epic Fail. Just Epic.

You're kidding me, right? Apparently, Tim McCarver has won the Ford C. Frick Award (and his name in small ink in the part of baseball's Hall of Fame museum dedicated to broadcasters) for his excellence in broadcasting. He sucks. He is absolutely one of the single worst broadcasters I have ever heard. He's sometimes correct in what he says, but even then McCarver makes his point in seemingly the most arrogant and condescending manner possible---and then he repeats it almost word for word at least five or six times.

From a baseball awards perspective, this is a nightmare. While we're at it, why don't we also make sure that Juan Pierre gets into the Hall of Fame based on his playing career?

I know this is very much a First-World Problem (tm), but still: What on earth were they thinking?

Epic Fail

EPIC FAIL: When the building is going to be shut down at 5:30 pm and all vehicle access to the building will be shut down along with it, I should be informed of this situation (which was apparently well known to the people who run the building) before 4:40 pm on the same day---especially when I had previously arranged to be picked up at 7pm. SAMSI, this is yet another epic fail on your part. This is what mailing lists are for.