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Thu - May 1, 2008Pale Horse Coming - A ReviewThe other day, Bill Wood lent me a
copy of Stephen Hunter's "Pale Horse Coming," and voiced effusive
enthusiasm for it.
The first thing that grated on my ear was the voice of the Sam Vincent character, in both his external and internal monologues. The dialogue seemed stilted or wooden. I didn't think the writer put a whole lot of craft into that character's voice. It was as if he thought that sounding stilted and wooden was just how Southerners in 1947 would sound. Then, he sends this former Arkansas prosecutor into a corrupt Mississippi prison town which is isolated from any societal oversight. There, the author has him threaten and challenge the authorities, counting on due process and respect for the law to bend those authorities to his will, in a setting where those authorities are accountable to no one. Any Southern man, period or modern, would understand that to be a Very Bad Idea. To take a man who had been a prosecutor in Arkansas and have him not understand that was simply not believable. What the writer cares about is guns, and the idea of hunting humans. He gets every detail of obscure firearms and cartridges right. The movie critic shows through as he recasts The Magnificent Seven, and, by extension, The Seven Samurai, in a Mississippi swamp. The cowboys he assembles for this are avatars of famous gun writers or movie people: Elmer Keith becomes Elmer Kay, Jack O'Connor morphs into Jack O'Brian. Earl Swagger brings in six of these folks from Mr. Hunter's pantheon, with their only motivation being that they will get to hunt and shoot humans. Apparently they share the author's fascination with this concept. But the crowning touch for me was after the shootout in the main street of the town. The Audie Murphy avatar, Audie Ryan, shoots the last of the bad guys down. Slowly, doors open, and the oppressed people of the town come out on the street. An elderly black man walks up to Audie Ryan, and says: "I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy." Shameless. Posted at 06:48 PM Thu - February 21, 2008"Next Man Up": A Roger Bertholf ReviewFrom my great friend, Roger
Bertholf.
------------------------- “Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today’s NFL” by John Feinstein The Baltimore Ravens ended their 2004 season with a meaningless 30 – 23 win over the Miami Dolphins. Just three years removed from their upset victory over the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXXV, the Ravens’ season began, as most NFL teams’ seasons do, with hopes of a championship. And in Week 17, the Ravens still had a chance for a wild-card berth in the playoffs, but a Broncos victory over the Colts officially eliminated the Ravens from the postseason. John Feinstein, a journalism graduate of Duke University and sports commentator, has fashioned an enviable career revealing the human—and business—side of big time sports, including the PGA Tour and NCAA basketball. In his book, “Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today’s NFL,” Feinstein recounts his experience after spending the 2004 season with the Baltimore Ravens. In some respects, it might have been his most challenging project. NFL football is a $5.5 billion industry, and growing. No other sport has tapped anything close to that mother lode of cash flow. The late Pete Rozelle, who was Commissioner of the NFL from 1960 until 1989, deserves the credit for creating the economic juggernaut that the NFL remains today. Rozelle speculated that professional football would captivate the American desire to witness human physical confrontation by extraordinary athletes, and was able to sell the franchise owners on an economic model that required them to pool their wealth in a way that would ensure the financial viability of the sport; his model is often termed “League-think.” Look up “visionary” in the dictionary and Rozelle’s picture will certainly be there. Feinstein’s penetration into the closed world of the NFL is remarkable, and due mostly to the good graces of the Ravens’ owner Steve Bisciotti and Head Coach Brian Billick, who allowed Feinstein unprecedented access to virtually every facet of their operation. From the weekly coaches’ meetings in which every player is evaluated, to a tense meeting between Billick and a player he is about to release, to private discussions between the men who play the physically brutal game of professional football, and to personal thoughts of the young, maverick owner of the team, Feinstein reveals, in his characteristically detailed and sparkling commentary, the inner workings of an NFL franchise. For a shameless NFL football addict like me, it was absolutely riveting. A glimpse inside the locker room, the head coach’s office, the owner’s suite, and the heads of these elite athletes humanized the violent game that is played behind layers of polycarbonate armor and corporate secrecy. Casual fans of professional football see the game as a chess match, with coaches moving and swapping interchangeable pieces to fool the opponent and create strategic advantages. But the game is far more complex than fantasy leagues and video games. I was disappointed that Feinstein gave only superficial attention to the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NFLPA and the owners penned in 1994 (after the players’ strike) which created the salary cap that dominates the way NFL teams operate today. Simply put, franchises (like the New England Patriots) that are able to effectively and responsibly manage their salary cap are likely to be successful, and teams that don’t (like the Washington Redskins, as an extreme example), may enjoy short-term success, but inevitably face a period in which they cannot field a competitive team. Professional football is a business, and the salary cap, coupled with free agency, ensures that you cannot assemble an all-star team for any extended period of time, like the Steelers did in the 1970s, the 49ers did in the 1980s, and the Cowboys did in the 1990s. As my sportswriter friend Vic Ketchman is fond of saying: “It’s professional football; it’s about the money.” A secret to most fans of NFL football is that the persistent goal of most NFL head coaches is not to win the Super Bowl, it’s to make the playoffs year after year. Winning the Big One requires the confluence of too many variables over which coaches have little control: injuries, momentum, schedule, a quarterback on a hot streak, key players reaching their peak during the playoffs. Get your team in position often enough, and eventually the stars will align. For Brian Billick, the stars aligned once, in 2001. The 2004 season that Feinstein spent with the Ravens ended when they narrowly missed the playoffs. After the 2007 season, in which the Baltimore Ravens finished last in the AFC East with a 5-11 record, Billick was fired. For professional football players, it’s about the money. For their coaches, it’s about winning. Posted at 10:44 PM Wed - November 14, 2007The Recent Reading ListBlackwater : the rise of the
world's most powerful mercenary army,
by Jeremy Scahill.
There is now a private army in this country, with private military bases. This book helped me understand the size and scope of this enterprise. This book helped me understand why this private army can do no wrong in the eyes of the Bush administration. This is a private, Christian, army. It donates heavily to Republicans, but never a dime to Democrats. In fact, a few weeks after Blackwater got its first sizable government contract, Blackwater's founder made a donation to the Republican party in an amount precisely equal to the amount of that contract. That's better than tithing. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks. Mr. Ricks is an experienced military reporter, as the Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post and as the author of a well received book about Marine boot camp. It is fascinating to read about planning for the war. I learned that among the officer caste, there was widespread apprehension as the plans of the civilian leadership unfolded. This apprehension was not widely reported. I learned that the civilian leadership actively got rid of anyone who tried to bog down the invasion with planning for Phase IV, the security and stabilization phase. When George Bush stood before a Mission Accomplished banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln, it was because the administration had achieved the final item on their plan. We win, now we bask in glory, end of plan. The civilian leadership failed to heed expert advice, and systematically purged dissenting general officers. There was docile acquiescence by those who remained. If anyone needed reassurance that this country is not ripe ground for a military coup, they have it now. So the civilian leadership launched this invasion without plans for the security and stabilization phase. The military, deployed in a hostile environment without a plan, went into default mode. The default mode is, Break Things And Kill People. The problem was that for the first couple of years there was no command focus on counterinsurgency tactics. The battlespace was for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. The civilians dropped the ball by failing to provide water, electricity, and security. The military dropped the ball by killing, incarcerating, or humiliating a large number of innocent and initially neutral Iraqis. It's no wonder that the insurgency became so ferocious that the troop presence had to be escalated if we were to stay. Making Money, by Terry Pratchett. After the above, I needed some serious attitude adjustment. Fortunately, the new Terry Pratchett book is out. I treat these books like Elizabeth treats Harry Potter. Trips to Discworld are certainly escapism. Posted at 02:00 PM Mon - November 5, 2007Quote du jour "If they can get you asking the wrong
questions, they don't have to worry about answers."
-- Thomas Pynchon Posted at 05:13 PM Mon - August 27, 2007"This Is Your Brain On Music" -- A Roger Bertholf ReviewA review of "This Is Your
Brain On Music," by Daniel J.
Levitin.
----------------------------------------------- In the familiar Public Service Ad that aired throughout the 1990s, the voice-over intones: “This is your brain. . .this is your brain on drugs. Any questions?” The image of a translucent egg white crackling and boiling violently as its albumin coagulates and rapidly transforms into an opaque off-white color under the intense heat of the frying pan is powerful. Daniel J. Levitin cleverly co-opts this image in the title of his scholarly treatise on the neuropsychological basis of music. Why do humans like music? Why do some people describe themselves as “musical,” while others deny any musical ability? Why do some like classical music, while others prefer jazz? How do children develop an appreciation for music? Was music an essential part of our evolutionary history? Levitin addresses each of these questions, citing many of the 250 or so researchers who are interested in this topic. I have always been fascinated by the notion of “perfect pitch,” and I was not very satisfied with Levitin’s discussion of that phenomenon. Although he notes that only one in ten thousand people have the ability to accurately identify a pitch with its musical notation on the twelve note scale used in Western music, he never clearly defines what absolute pitch is. Folks with “perfect pitch,” or “absolute pitch,” as Levitin calls it, can identify a musical note as a B, G, A-flat, or whatever. But musical notation is not universal; it is the way musicians developed a common language that could be used to translate composition into performance. Not every culture adopts the same notation. So part of “Absolute Pitch” has to be learned, since we aren’t born with an innate mapping of a particular vibrational frequency with a letter of the alphabet. When I hear a pitch, I can usually identify the note within a whole step based on where it falls in my vocal range. But that is due mostly to muscle memory; I can find the limit of my vocal range—usually a G above middle C down to a about an F an octave below middle C. So within a few seconds, I can usually determine where a pitch is relative to one or the other of those limits. It takes me 5 – 10 seconds to make that translation, though, because I have to mentally step through the scale from the top down or bottom up. I suspect that professional musicians, particularly vocalists, who become accustomed to mentally “seeing” the note they are singing or playing—something I don’t do—are much more adept at making that translation, and can do it within a second or two. So Levitin left me unconvinced that absolute pitch is a neural adaptation, rather than a learned skill. One of the most astonishing things that Levitin revealed was a study he conducted as a graduate student, in which he recruited subjects, randomly, and asked them to sing a popular song that they liked. He limited the choices to songs that had a single version, excluding such familiar tunes as “Happy Birthday,” and other songs that have several variations, played in different keys. He chose songs that had been recorded by a single artist, so the subjects in the research study could only have heard one version of the song. The subjects in the study, most of whom claimed no particular musical talent, sang the song they liked at almost exactly the pitch that it was recorded. Studies with children, it seems, confirm the same fidelity to pitch. So perhaps everyone, musician or not, has the potential for absolute pitch. My experience has been that musicians have, rather than absolute pitch, a sense of “pitch memory.” Most accomplished musicians can remember a pitch for period of time—several minutes or so—even if there has been other sensory input in the meantime. One of the greatest paradoxes in the human perception of music, however, is our extraordinary ability to recognize a melody, regardless of the pitch in which it is played, its tempo, its timbre, or even when small changes are made in the intervals—say, when a tune is transposed into a minor key. Levitin systematically reviews the various theories that have been advanced to account for this ability, preferring the notion that the brain creates and stores a prototype of a melody, to which it compares subsequent versions it hears. But the most profound revelations in Levitin’s treatise have to do with the connection between music and human emotions, and whether music was essential to human evolution. Solid evidence now exists that music stimulates the regions of the brain that are most intimately involved with emotion; the limbic system, and neural connections between the cerebellum and frontal cortex. It is likely that music co-evolved with, and might have been a precursor to, language. Evolutionary biologists estimate that it takes 10,000 years for a favorable mutation to be widely incorporated into the genome of a species, so our predilection for music is based on rock stars that lived in caves. Maybe that explains the popularity of rap music. Posted at 09:54 PM Wed - February 7, 2007The Book of DaveI finished reading The Book of Dave,
by Will Self, just under the wire. It is due back at the library tomorrow, and
won't renew because of the number of
holds.
It is set in London, both in the present day and about 400 years in the future. In the present day, Dave Rudman is a London cabbie. His divorce provokes a string of increasingly strict restraining orders, until he is no longer allowed to see his son at all. His misery provokes him to write a long screed, about how society should work, with men and women separated, and the children dividing their time strictly between the mommies and the daddies. He stealthily buries this book in his ex-wife's yard, in hopes that his son will find it and better understand his father. In the future, however, some great cataclysm has occurred. The high lying areas of London are now islands. Society functions at a medieval level, with no electricity or engines. It is a theocracy, and for the most part only the clergy can read. However, their deity is ... Dave. They have no knowledge of the world before Dave, and measure the years as A.D. (after Dave). From the artifacts from time before their knowledge, they have deduced that the Creation was the MadeInChina. Dave's book is their Holy Book, and their worldview is that of a London cabbie -- the sky is the screen (windshield), the sun and moon are the foglamp and the headlamp, your sole is your fare, and so on. Heretics are dealt with sharply indeed. I heard a reviewer on NPR sniff that she did not like the book, "because it was misogynistic." I thought the book was actually an interesting exploration of how societies and organized religions can adopt and maintain cruel and discriminatory practices, which are perpetuated by the interests of those in power. However, I at first despaired of getting into this book. In the future, the people speak Mockni (corrupted Cockney, rendered phonetically to denote their illiteracy), and RP (Received Pronunciation, as heard today on the BBC). At first this was not an easy nut to crack, but after the first 30 or pages things started falling into place. Posted at 07:00 PM Sun - October 29, 2006On DeckMade a trip to the library, resulting
in the following books in the on-deck
circle:
HALFBREED: The Remarkable True Story of George Bent—Caught Between the Worlds of the Indian and the White Man. By David Fridtjof Halaas and Andrew E. Masich. THE RELUCTANT ASSASSIN: A Western Story. By Preston Darby. FAREWELL, THUNDER MOON. By Max Brand. Oh, yes, and three Clint Eastwood spaghetti western DVD's. Posted at 04:12 PM Wed - September 20, 2006Same As It Ever WasYesterday, I was reading
The
Virginian, by Owen
Wister.
In Chapter 2, entitled "When You Call Me That, Smile," the narrator watched the card game as Trampas loudly called The Virginian "an amature,", finally hurrying him with "Your bet, you son-of-a-____." (The blank is part of the quotation and is rendered accurately here, rather than Bowdlerized. "The Virginian's pistol came out, and his hand lay on the table, holding it unaimed. And with a voice as gentle as ever, ... he issued his orders to the man Trampas: - "When you call me that, smile." And he looked at Trampas across the table." When people in the saloon started getting ready to run, " "Sit quiet," said the dealer, scornfully to the man near me. "Can't you see he don't want to push trouble? He has handed Trampas the choice to back down or draw his steel." " Afterwards, " "Didn't I tell you he'd not shoot?" the dealer pursued with complacence."You got ready to dodge. You had no cal to be concerned. He's not the kinda man need feel anxious about." The player looked over at the Virginian, doubtfully. "Well," he said, "I don't know what you folks would call a dangerous man." "Not him!" exclaimed the dealer, with admiration. "He's a brave man. That's different." The player seemed to follow this reasoning no better than I did. "It's not a brave man that's dangerous," continued the dealer. "It's the cowards that scare me." The part that resonated with me was: "... that's why I never like to be around where there's a coward. You can't tell. He'll always go to shooting before it's necessary, and there's no security who he'll hit." Posted at 05:55 PM Tue - July 25, 2006Review ResponsibilityI've had the experience tonight of
reading something on a literary site, and finding a short piece which was quite
disturbing.
I've seen some of the ways these sorts of works may be handled. When MOM - Not Otherwise Specified ran into such a work, she went to lengths to explain the work and to give her rebuttal. I am hesitant to draw attention to such a work. In today's marketplace of ideas, there is no such thing as bad publicity. Celebrity trumps all. See "Paris Hilton." Web site hits, the modern equivalent of "circulation," translate into revenue and favorable appearance in search engines, whether from friend or foe. Given that this piece will have limited circulation as it is, I am not inclined to help them. The calculus would shift if the piece was going to have a huge circulation regardless. Posted at 10:14 PM Mon - May 29, 2006Current Reading Southern speech is indirect. Even in
writing about it, I shift to the passive
voice.
I grew up hearing about parts of speech unique to the South. An example would be the "Third Person Oblique." It is used to ask indirect question. One simply does not say "How much do you want for that horse?" This question would immediately mark the speaker as Someone Not From Here, and more. The correct way to ask this question is in the Third Person Oblique: "If a fellow were to want to buy a horse like that, how much do you reckon he would have to give for it?." ( The latter is rendered phonetically as "If a feller were to wanna buy a horse like that, how much d'ya reckon he'd hafta give fer it?") Where I grew up, there is a concept of an act, "to signify." When one commits such an act, their statements serve as a sign or symbol of something else. I am hard pressed to provide an example -- it takes too much set-up time. So, to signify about my current reading, I'll just say that I am reading of the exploits of Jubal Sackett. Posted at 09:59 PM Wed - May 17, 2006On The Plains With Custer and HancockOne of the books in my rotation right
now is "On The Plains With Custer and Hancock : The
Journal Of Isaac Coates, Army Surgeon." It is annotated by W.J.D.
Kennedy.
Dr. Coates kept his journal as he came west with the Seventh Cavalry in 1867, riding alongside Lt. Col (brevet Major General) George Armstrong Custer, both of them under the command of Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock. At first this book was difficult to enter. Rhapsodies about anticipated adventure, coached in Victorian prose, were pretty dreadful. At that point I thought to myself that what Coates needed was an editor. However, when the company encountered the native tribes, the writing became much more focused and lean. Perhaps the fear of dealing with what you expect to be strange, savage people is very much like working with an editor. His description of Hancock's treatment of the tribes is striking. It almost reads as if, without any Confederate butts to kick for a couple of years, Hancock was itching for a fight. Hancock is described as swaggering in, talking to the chiefs as if they were children, and basically giving them the choice of unconditional surrender and submission, or death: "This was my first experience in Indian councils; and I have recorded it in full, because the knowledge of such proceedings - even in this age of diplomacy - is very infrequent, because it partially explains the causes of the war, and again to discover to the world how tyrannical, dictatorial, and insolent this Government is over the Indians. It is the same old story of might makes right. Now the Indian is a man in every sense of the word; and like most other men, he has his share of reason, pride, and ambition. And how galling it must have been to those Indian warriors - whose fearless hearts had braved a thousand dangers - to be talked to as if they were children. The "musts" and "wills" and "shalls" were more wounding to them than steel-pointed arrows. General Hancock talked to those Indian warriors and orators as a cross schoolmaster would to his refractory scholars. I do not find fault, in saying this, with the General. He is a soldier, and a soldier's tongue is not given to soft phrases, and then he was sent on the Plains to intimidate and, if necessary, make war on the Indians. " It was fun to read his description of the time they entered an Indian village. The Indians had fled just before the troopers arrived. In the chief's tent was a simmering pot of food: "The odor issuing from the pot was quite savory, and an examination of its contents showed it to contain dog soup. This was a "dish for the gods" according to Guerrier's [the Indian interpreter] palate; and he set to work at once helping himself, now and then pausing to eulogize the delicious beverage and to urge me to join him. Like a good Epicure, wishing to be ignorant of no dish, I joined the half-breed, and for a few minutes, did Indian justice to the stewed canine. It was highly seasoned, decidedly palatable, and taking it all in, I suppose "I ne'er shall look upon its like again." I found nothing whatever disgusting about this great Indian dish, as might be supposed. Now, I would take the meat from a bone, and now a large spoonful of the soup. Though while bearing, thus truthfully, my testimony as to its edible qualities, I do not know that I should take permanent boarding where dog-soup was served daily." When keeping a journal, you can certainly control how you portray yourself. In the annotations, Kennedy compares this to the corresponding entry in Custer's journal: "The doctor, ever on the alert to discover additional items of knowledge, whether pertaining to history or science, snuffed the savory odors which arose from the dark recesses of the mysterious kettle. Casting about the lodge for some instrument to aid him in his pursuit of knowledge, he found a horn spoon, with which he began his investigation of its contents, finally succeeding in getting possession of a fragment which might have been the half of a duck or rabbit, judging merely from its size. 'Ah' said the doctor, in his most complacent manner, 'here is the opportunity I have long been waiting for. I have often desired to test and taste of the Indian mode of cooking. What do you suppose this is?' holding up a dripping morsel. Unable to obtain the desired information, the Doctor, whose naturally good appetite had been sharpened by his recent exercise a la quadruped, set to with a will and ate heartily of the mysterious contents of the kettle. 'What can this be?' again inquired the doctor. He was only satisfied on one point, that it was delicious - a dish fit for a king Just then, Guerrier, the half-breed entered the lodge. He could solve the mystery, having spent years among the Indians. To him the doctor appealed for information. Fishing out a huge piece, and attacking it with the veracity of a hungry wolf, he was not long in determining what the doctor had supped so heartily upon. His first words settled the mystery: 'Why, this is dog.' I will not attempt to repeat the few but emphatic words uttered by the heartily disgusted member of the medical fraternity as he rushed from the lodge. Posted at 06:06 PM Fri - May 12, 2006U.S. Book Production DropsReuters ran a story on Wednesday, saying that in 2005, the
number of new titles published in the U.S. dropped 18 per
cent.
With this, Britain took over first place as the publisher of English language books, despite the fact there is only one Briton for every five Americans. And to think that they did it without Oprah. Posted at 04:29 AM Fri - April 21, 2006"It's Witchcraft, Wicked Witchcraft"In Gwinnett County, Georgia , a parent has
complained to the school board that Harry Potter books should be removed from
school libraries because they "glorify
witchcraft."
A hearing officer has been engaged to hear and question five advocates for and against the young wizard, and then make a recommendation to the board. Perhaps they could decide the whole question with trial by ordeal -- throw the books in the river. If they sink, they are innocent. If they float, they are guilty and could be burned at the stake (after they dry out, of course). It appears once again that Islamic fundamentalists aren't alone on the anti-modern bench. Posted at 07:43 AM Mon - April 3, 2006Re-reading "1984" - Chapter 1Winston Smith goes home from his job
at the Ministry of Truth. The Police Patrols peer into windows, but what Winston
fears are the Thought Police. The Party can see almost everything Winston does.
The Party slogans are:
WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS TRUTH Yeah, this is fiction. Posted at 09:28 PM Mon - January 9, 2006The Lady Tasting Tea: A Roger Bertholf ReviewFrom my great friend, Roger Bertholf . My hat is off to anyone who can
make statistics sound like a path to better
beer.
---------------------- “The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century” by David Salsburg To write a book about statistical theory, and make it (1) accessible to the mathematically-challenged (like me), (2) educational to anyone who doesn’t already know what you are talking about, and (3) entertaining, is a daunting task. I would not have appreciated the magnitude of that challenge until several years ago, when I was asked to teach statistics to medical technologists and pathology residents. But since then, I have written a book chapter and published a paper on clinical laboratory applications of statistics, so I have some familiarity with the difficulty in overcoming the negative attitudes toward this branch of mathematical science. Salsburg has produced a remarkably enjoyable stroll through the development of statistical theory over the past two centuries, lacing his account with lucid explanations of subtle mathematical distinctions, while personalizing the trip with biographical details of the statisticians who contributed to the revolution in scientific methods brought about by their efforts. “The Lady Tasting Tea” is as much an account of the human side of science as it is a layman’s guide to the fundamental transformation of research methods resulting from the application of statistical modeling. Pre-nineteenth Century science was deterministic, based on the equations of Newton, Galileo, Pascal, and a host of others who believed that measurements had absolute values; the universe was, to them, definable by a finite set of equations with exact solutions. Then along came Karl Pearson, who toppled that notion with an entirely different, and mathematically compelling, theory that all physical measurements could be described by probability distributions, and those distributions were defined by only four parameters: the mean, the standard deviation, the symmetry, and the skew. Thus was born the probabilistic approach to scientific experimentation, which dominates to this day. But, like any heretical scientific theory, Pearson’s approach was neither immediately, nor universally, embraced. One of the threads that weaves its way throughout Salsburg’s account is the lifelong, often rancorous, dispute between Pearson and F.A. Fisher, whose approach to probabilistic theory differed in several important respects from Pearson’s. Salsburg also tells the charming story of William Gosset, an Oxford-graduated chemist and mathematician who was hired by the Guinness Brewery. Although hired for his chemical expertise, he solved a statistical problem of estimating the amount of yeast in a jar by taking a small sample and counting the yeast spores under a microscope. Yeast concentration is critical in the fermentation process, and his solution vastly improved the production consistency of Guinness’s famous stout. The solution was original, and Gosset was encouraged (by Karl Pearson) to publish it in the recently founded journal, Biometrika, of which Pearson was editor. Problem was, the Guinness family had been previously burned by an employee who published what they regarded as company secrets, so there was a company-wide policy prohibiting employees from publishing anything related to their work. Pearson was insistent, though, and Gosset compromised by clandestinely publishing under the pseudonym “Student.” The “Student’s t” distribution so widely used (and, I must add, misused) was the subject of one of Gosset’s many papers published in Biometrika under that famous pseudonym. A humorous footnote, added on several occasions, refers to “Stigler’s Law of Misonomy,” that nothing in mathematics is named after the person who discovered it. Perhaps the most famous example is the “Gaussian Distribution,” more commonly known as the “Normal Distribution.” The probability function on which the Gaussian distribution is based was described by many mathematicians—de Moivre is generally considered the first—before it was applied to atomic energy levels by the German mathematician, Carl Friedrich Gauss. He got lucky; the name stuck. Salsburg spins a captivating tale of brilliant discoveries, extraordinary insights, enormous egos, governmental oppression of scientific thought, sexual discrimination, mathematical prodigies, and how all of science can be transformed by a single revolutionary idea. In his last chapter, Salsburg examines the philosophy of statistical theory, and asks the provocative question: “Will something else eventually come along to replace statistics as the foundation of scientific investigations?” He acknowledges that statistics have permeated every level of scientific, governmental, and personal behavior. Today, statistics influence economic policy, medical care, meteorological predictions, and, in a very real sense, personal decisions. But Salsburg suggests—and I happen to agree with this—that humans have a notoriously poor concept of probability. I suspect this is the reason that a patient feels entitled to compensation for suffering an adverse event that has a predictable occurrence of 1%, but will, week after week, enthusiastically plunk down $20 for lottery tickets that have a one in several million chance of winning, with an apparent expectation of success. Posted at 08:34 PM |
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