Will Knott

Donncha is settup up another photowalk in Cork, this time on Sunday September 26 2009 (I’m including the year as this blog is now 6 years old. There is a lot of archive, and years need to be considered now).

I missed the last photowalk due to a family emergency, but I really want to get to this one. I also need time to find out what is on my camera’s memory card and upload more.

And given the fact that Cork is “De Capital”, I couldn’t resist this shot. Oddly, its more Waterford. Oh well.

A random coin toss with an evenly weighted coin is one of the basics of statistics. Toss a coin and is a 50-50 chance of coming up heads. Or tails. Or harps or whatever you are supposed to call on the Euro.

Yes, I have had a “heads of tails” toss be questioned with “which side is heads” while the coin is in the air more than once, and no one able to answer. Danged problem with a maps on one side and a whole differing bunch of symbols on offer on the other.

Anyway, 50-50, right?

Actually, no. It is a 49-51 percent chance.

Why? Logic, and physics. It turns out that the problem is a statistical bias as a result of dynamical bias.

Lets start with a coin heads (H), and toss it. As it moves through the air, the upward facing side changes.

H-T-H-T-H-T-H-T.. and so on.

However, if you start with heads facing up you have two scenarios.

1. You have more heads than tails.
2. You have an equal number of heads and tails.

At no point will you have

• more tails than heads

as the starting conditions demand it can’t be so.

It simply can’t happen. Laws of physics.

Of course, this is a 1% chance. A casino has less than a 1% house bias for many of its games.

The funny things is, if the coin is spun (think about the cliche of the bored gangster spinning a coin with his thumb and catching it in mid-air… or Two-Face actually), and left drop too the floor, the percentages changes.

The odds of the heavier side hitting the ground can be up to 80%!

It depends a lot of the coin naturally, but its a big jump.

The heavier side tends to be the more detailed side, which means that spinning a lot of Euro coins should result in a lot of maps facing up from the ground.

Don’t take my word for it, read the “Dynamical Bias in the Coin Toss“, a 2007 paper by Persi Diaconis, Susan Holmes and Richard Montgomery. Personally I love the low tech method of sticking a ribbon to a coin, tossing it and counting the number of twists in the ribbon, but they used high speed photography too. The paper ends with the following useful tips.

1. If the coin is tossed and caught, it has about a 51% chance of landing on the same face it was launched. (If it starts out as heads, there’s a 51% chance it will end as heads).
2. If the coin is spun, rather than tossed, it can have a much-larger-than-50% chance of ending with the heavier side down. Spun coins can exhibit “huge bias” (some spun coins will fall tails-up 80% of the time).
3. If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor, this probably adds randomness.
4. If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor where it spins, as will sometimes happen, the above spinning bias probably comes into play.
5. A coin will land on its edge around 1 in 6000 throws. It happens
6. The same initial coin-flipping conditions produce the same coin flip result. That is, there’s a certain amount of determinism to the coin flip.
7. A more robust coin toss (more revolutions) decreases the bias.

I will admit that it sounds worthy of an Ig Noble Award, but for one thing. It shows that and why a long held logical assumption is in fact wrong. Meaning that it is actually pure science.

Flipping marvelous (sorry),

Will

Every so often you have to empty out the spam folder.

And how tings (and things) have changed. Along with the usual interesting array of chemicals (some of which have numbers in their names showing that they must be even more powerful) is a new one.

Tamiflu.

Yes, it appears that in the event of a major swine flu outbreak, your local friendly spammer has all the chemicals required. They probably have the masks too.

Most criminals do.

Jason Roe is doing it again.

I mentioned one of his BTW (Blogger, Tweet-up, Whatever) events before, and I think this s his fourth.

The idea is that us lot shouldn’t only communicate behind screens, since Ireland isn’t that big a place. So meet up and actually hold someones hand. Or at least give a real wave rather than a “*wave*”

The new BTW is going to be in the Kudos bar is the Clarion Hotel in the ISFC, Dublin on September 3rd at 7pm. That’s room for 150 people.

Register on his site, then come over and say “hello” in person.

Will

I will admit that the idea hit me while watching the video below. Disney has its Disney Princesses line. Well what about those little girls and boys not interested in being kind and nice (and trust me, its a lot of people). Those girls will eventually grow out (mostly at least) of their princess stage. Boys grow out of their Power Ranger phase (says the guy still in his Transformers phase from childhood). Can we have the Disney Bad Girls.

Think about it. Some girls want more spice with their sugar.

I’m not talking about the Tinkerbell and the Disney Fairies franchise, (darker, but not black) I’m talking about the bad girls. Dr Agnes Nairn pointed out in a 2005 study for Bath University that most girls will torture their dolls as they get older. Maybe things should get dark.

Some RSS readers will not display the video. If you can’t see it, either click on the last link, of click through to the post.

Essentially a sub set of the Disney Villains grouping (rarely used as a group). Name-checking Queen Grimhilde (the Queen in Snow White), Anastasia Tremaine (the kinder of the Ugly Sisters from Cinderella in the video), Maleficent (the wicked fairy godmother in Sleeping Beauty), Ursula (the Sea Witch in The Little Mermaid), Cruella de Vil (from The Hundred and One Dalmatians) and Madame Medusa (from The Rescuers).

The main problem with the female villains in the Disney movies is that they are almost all fully grown women. Compare this to the young princesses or the fairies. Is it hard for little girls to cast themselves as fully grown? Probably not. Admittedly in the case of stepmothers (the Queen or Lady Tremaine) it makes sense, Cruella is a well known character, and Maleficent is a major character in the Disney parades. But small changes can be made, just as happened with the princesses.

A shape changing Ursula could look like the queen she is in a black gown (with 6 frills or pleats on the way down the black dress to hide the fact that she is actually an octopus). Come to think of it, octopi can change shape themselves, as does the character. The major change for the character would be to have her walking out of water. Madame Medusa could easily be changed (she isn’t that well known) but a more flattering dress and stockings is all that’s needed. As for the Ugly Sister, she is already the same age as Cinderella if not a bit younger.

I’m sure that most of the princess stock could be adapted to the colour scheme of the “bad girls”, and Grimhilde or Maleficent would be good halloween costumes. Imagine a Ursula duvet cover or bedspread available with matching tentacle beanbags. And given the span of time-lines available (medieval witch queens and other magic users (yes, young Miss Tremaine gets a wand at some point) jumping to the 1930s and 1960s) there are more options available.

Unlike the princesses (who never really seem to acknowledge each other) have the bad girls working together. Maybe in a modern setting. Yes its a little bit Fables, but being bad can be just as much fun in the now, as well as in the past.

Just an idea.
Will Knott

What happens when you mix footage of news anchors with the voice track of old B-movies? (with a bit of “stunt mouth” action thrown in to avoid lip syncing problems)?

Well you get this.

Bryan Boyce created this mash-up back in 1999, and it works.

Sort of.

Worryingly the “I’m an alien” line does not seem faked.

take care out there,

Will