And it's not just because they think that Statistics professors are hot. Although that doesn't hurt. I mean, I knew it was true, it's just high time the rest of the world caught on.
For those who didn't see the Halloween episode, post credits finds Jeff ogling his stats prof while lecture is ending. She begins with "The Bernoulli distribution is the number of successes in a sequence of independent yes/no experiments."
Now anyone who has taken a probability course (and hopefully my students come next Wednesday's midterm) knows that is in fact the definition of a binomial distribution, not a Bernoulli. So as is my usual practice, I headed over to Wikipedia to make sure that no one had fooled with definition again.
To my delight, I found "...the binomial distribution is the discrete probability distribution of the number of successes in a sequence of n independent yes/no experiments". Now that is too close a wording to be an accident. The writers ripped a line right out of Wikipedia. Chutzpah of that level is to be admired, and that's reason enough for me to love the show.
But it goes further than that. If they lifted the line from Wikipedia, why the Bernoulli/binomial switch? Only after watching the show to the end did I realize that the character was going to exhibit a holier-than-thou attitude towards the students the whole way through, even going so far as to introduce herself later as "Michelle Slater, Ph.D.". Who does that?
So here's my theory: they intentionally had her make a mistake at the beginning to establish that while she thinks she's all that, in fact she's a bit of a dim bulb. Naturally I went trolling through the tape afterward to search for further errors.
And indeed, I was not disappointed! As my students should also know by this point of the semester, the square of the standard deviation is the variance. However, what was written across the top of the board was "Sqaire S.D. to get vairiance" Okay, so vairiance could just be another error, but "Sqaire". That had to be intentional. But there's more. On the board, a calculation appears that is equivalent to saying 2 + 3 + 3 = 12. You don't have to be Good Will Hunting to get that right.
The piece de resistance? The most well known theorem in probability, abbreviated CLT, is the Central Limit Theorem. What's written on the board? Central Limiting.
Here's hoping that these are intentional jokes, or some writers need to get their college tuition refunded, post haste.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
FlashForward
Time travel is tricky.
The first time travel story that I remember seeing on television was "The City on the Edge of Forever" from the original Star Trek series. That story went with the "future is not written in stone and can be changed" paradigm. I have seen dozens if not hundreds of time travel stories since, and they have become a beloved staple of science fiction.
And yet despite all the history, all the different renditions, time travel remains incredibly difficult to do right. I would say the last season of Lost is a shining example of how to do it correctly. Questions of fate intermixed with how knowledge of the future plays out beautifully. But one of the reasons it worked so well was that the writers were clearly aware that you need to pick a philosophy of how time travel works and obey the logic that follows.
FlashForward, ABC's latest science fiction offering, is a mess that drops time travel to new lows. The premise is that for two minutes the entire population of the planet blacked out, and saw two minutes of the future six months from now. But the show's writers made a fateful decision: the flash forwards people saw depended on the blackout event happening. That is, this was a glimpse of the future that depended on the blackout event. In fact, the main character bases his entire investigation of the blackout on clues seen during his flash forward.
And immediately everything breaks down. If you knew, knew, that you would have a glimpse of the future at a certain time and date, would you go about business as usual that day? Would you spend those two minutes calling your credit card company? Would you go to bed early that night? Of course not!
Stockbrokers would have a summary of the economy's performance in front of them. Scientists would be looking at six months worth of the top breakthroughs. Someone whose husband died of cancer detected too late would be pouring over medical tests.
The problem is: everyone would know that they had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to communicate with their past selves. They would not choose this unique event in human history to read the sports section while in the restroom. But the show expects us to believe that a field director of the FBI would do exactly that. And that another character would decide that these pivotal two minutes would be a good time to get drunk.
All this could have been fixed if the show designers had realized for one second that the flash forwards cannot depend on the blackout event. Then they could have realized their vision of flash forwards that represent random slices of the future. But knowing the time and date of the flash forward makes the entire concept of the show ridiculous from the get go.
In science fiction it is more important that basic logic and rules of storytelling be obeyed, not less. It really is that simple.
[Here's hoping they didn't screw up the remake of "V".]
The first time travel story that I remember seeing on television was "The City on the Edge of Forever" from the original Star Trek series. That story went with the "future is not written in stone and can be changed" paradigm. I have seen dozens if not hundreds of time travel stories since, and they have become a beloved staple of science fiction.
And yet despite all the history, all the different renditions, time travel remains incredibly difficult to do right. I would say the last season of Lost is a shining example of how to do it correctly. Questions of fate intermixed with how knowledge of the future plays out beautifully. But one of the reasons it worked so well was that the writers were clearly aware that you need to pick a philosophy of how time travel works and obey the logic that follows.
FlashForward, ABC's latest science fiction offering, is a mess that drops time travel to new lows. The premise is that for two minutes the entire population of the planet blacked out, and saw two minutes of the future six months from now. But the show's writers made a fateful decision: the flash forwards people saw depended on the blackout event happening. That is, this was a glimpse of the future that depended on the blackout event. In fact, the main character bases his entire investigation of the blackout on clues seen during his flash forward.
And immediately everything breaks down. If you knew, knew, that you would have a glimpse of the future at a certain time and date, would you go about business as usual that day? Would you spend those two minutes calling your credit card company? Would you go to bed early that night? Of course not!
Stockbrokers would have a summary of the economy's performance in front of them. Scientists would be looking at six months worth of the top breakthroughs. Someone whose husband died of cancer detected too late would be pouring over medical tests.
The problem is: everyone would know that they had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to communicate with their past selves. They would not choose this unique event in human history to read the sports section while in the restroom. But the show expects us to believe that a field director of the FBI would do exactly that. And that another character would decide that these pivotal two minutes would be a good time to get drunk.
All this could have been fixed if the show designers had realized for one second that the flash forwards cannot depend on the blackout event. Then they could have realized their vision of flash forwards that represent random slices of the future. But knowing the time and date of the flash forward makes the entire concept of the show ridiculous from the get go.
In science fiction it is more important that basic logic and rules of storytelling be obeyed, not less. It really is that simple.
[Here's hoping they didn't screw up the remake of "V".]
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
And they say bad news travels fast....
I received the following email today from Columbia:
Whew! The suspense on whether or not I got a position that would have started a month ago was killing me.
Thank you for applying for the recently advertised position of Assistant Professor. The search for this position has been discontinued, without success in filling the position. We appreciate the time and effort you put into your application and we extend our best wishes on your job search.
Whew! The suspense on whether or not I got a position that would have started a month ago was killing me.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Toy Story double feature
This weekend I headed to the theater to catch out the latest retro 3D showing from Disney. In this case, a limited engagement of Toy Story and Toy Story 2, now newly remastered in 3D.
Not having small children, it has been many a year since I saw these two great films (they came out in 1995 and 1999), and they have held up beautifully. Partially this is because of the inspired choice of using toys: the naturally plastic look of computer animation is perfectly suited to capture a Green Army Man in action.
My greatest surprise, however, happened during the opening credits for Toy Story. To my amazement, the first writer listed for the screenplay was Joss Whedon. In 1995, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series) was still two years away, and that was the first thing that put Whedon on the map of SF lovers everywhere.
Dollhouse (Whedon's latest) Season 2 premiered two weeks ago, and so far has been great. The Dollhouse concept has always been ripe for questions of what is meant by mind and free will, but now they've jumped into these questions with gusto. Juxtaposing the dolls angst against Buzz's realization that he's just a toy is interesting, to say the least.
Anyway, for Whedon and non-Whedon fans alike, I would recommend seeing Toy Story and Toy Story 2 again in theaters. They have a ten minute intermission between the movies, but I recommend hitting the restroom during the Toy Story credits. As the first Pixar full length movie, this was before they starting putting cute things in the credits, and the intermission is really a ten minute show with some fun tongue-in-cheek trivia and a few 30 second vignettes with the characters. They've also got a nice 50's drive-in style countdown clock during the intermission, so it is easy to see if you have time to leave.
Toy Story: 5 out of 5
Toy Story 2: 5 out of 5
Not having small children, it has been many a year since I saw these two great films (they came out in 1995 and 1999), and they have held up beautifully. Partially this is because of the inspired choice of using toys: the naturally plastic look of computer animation is perfectly suited to capture a Green Army Man in action.
My greatest surprise, however, happened during the opening credits for Toy Story. To my amazement, the first writer listed for the screenplay was Joss Whedon. In 1995, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series) was still two years away, and that was the first thing that put Whedon on the map of SF lovers everywhere.
Dollhouse (Whedon's latest) Season 2 premiered two weeks ago, and so far has been great. The Dollhouse concept has always been ripe for questions of what is meant by mind and free will, but now they've jumped into these questions with gusto. Juxtaposing the dolls angst against Buzz's realization that he's just a toy is interesting, to say the least.
Anyway, for Whedon and non-Whedon fans alike, I would recommend seeing Toy Story and Toy Story 2 again in theaters. They have a ten minute intermission between the movies, but I recommend hitting the restroom during the Toy Story credits. As the first Pixar full length movie, this was before they starting putting cute things in the credits, and the intermission is really a ten minute show with some fun tongue-in-cheek trivia and a few 30 second vignettes with the characters. They've also got a nice 50's drive-in style countdown clock during the intermission, so it is easy to see if you have time to leave.
Toy Story: 5 out of 5
Toy Story 2: 5 out of 5
Friday, September 25, 2009
Heroes goes to college
Heroes is the show that makes me feel like Charlie Brown. The series has such great character actors, high production values, and such a fun premise, that I keep tuning in again and again. Just to have the football yanked away by being repeatedly bludgeoned with plots and character actions that do not make a lick of sense.
They reached a new low for me in the Volume 5 premiere on Monday.
Claire has finally flown the nest to go to an unnamed college and meets a driven classmate who convinces her to take a placement test to see who gets into linear algebra.
Come on, linear algebra? First, this is a sophomore level course, we're not talking about the seminar in "thing-I-got-my-Nobel-Prize-in" course that only admits a few students. Every campus in the nation offers linear algebra, and it is no professor's "specialty".
Second, who goes to a placement test because their roommate told them about it? Colleges have these people called "advisors" that kind of work with freshman to set up their initial course offerings. Nobody decides on the spur of the moment I think I'll try to get in an advanced math class, one that is usually taken after the Calculus sequence.
Third, and this is what really killed me, Claire and her annoying friend arrive at the placement exam to find that it consists of solving a four equation, four unknown system of equations. Moreover, they are given 45 minutes.
This blows me away, because it reflects the sloppy nature of Heroes for the last few years. Here's the main issue: this is a linear algebra problem. You don't give a linear algebra problem at a linear algebra placement exam, you give whatever type of problem you'd like the incoming students to know. If they are passing out of the Calc sequence, you give Calculus problems.
Next, are you kidding me? This problem might look tough to someone who slept through high school algebra, but making the system 4 equations/4 unknowns doesn't make the problem conceptually harder, and forty five minutes is way to long for this travesty.
I can almost picture the email to some UCLA professor or whomever the show asked to consult: "Could you please send us a linear algebra problem that isn't very easy?" They couldn't possibly have asked their consultant for a problem that would appear on a linear algebra placement exam, because if they had they wouldn't have gotten such a joke of a problem.
If Heroes was on in a different time, such sloppiness might have gone unnoticed. But in a time where shows like Mad Men takes enough care to get the train schedules for its protagonist correctly, this shows an utter lack of respect for the viewer. Heck, even Star Wars: The Clone Wars shows more respect for continuity and its universe than Heroes. If a half-hour animated show can do it, why can't Heroes? It appears to be the one super power they have no interest in.
They reached a new low for me in the Volume 5 premiere on Monday.
Claire has finally flown the nest to go to an unnamed college and meets a driven classmate who convinces her to take a placement test to see who gets into linear algebra.
Come on, linear algebra? First, this is a sophomore level course, we're not talking about the seminar in "thing-I-got-my-Nobel-Prize-in" course that only admits a few students. Every campus in the nation offers linear algebra, and it is no professor's "specialty".
Second, who goes to a placement test because their roommate told them about it? Colleges have these people called "advisors" that kind of work with freshman to set up their initial course offerings. Nobody decides on the spur of the moment I think I'll try to get in an advanced math class, one that is usually taken after the Calculus sequence.
Third, and this is what really killed me, Claire and her annoying friend arrive at the placement exam to find that it consists of solving a four equation, four unknown system of equations. Moreover, they are given 45 minutes.
This blows me away, because it reflects the sloppy nature of Heroes for the last few years. Here's the main issue: this is a linear algebra problem. You don't give a linear algebra problem at a linear algebra placement exam, you give whatever type of problem you'd like the incoming students to know. If they are passing out of the Calc sequence, you give Calculus problems.
Next, are you kidding me? This problem might look tough to someone who slept through high school algebra, but making the system 4 equations/4 unknowns doesn't make the problem conceptually harder, and forty five minutes is way to long for this travesty.
I can almost picture the email to some UCLA professor or whomever the show asked to consult: "Could you please send us a linear algebra problem that isn't very easy?" They couldn't possibly have asked their consultant for a problem that would appear on a linear algebra placement exam, because if they had they wouldn't have gotten such a joke of a problem.
If Heroes was on in a different time, such sloppiness might have gone unnoticed. But in a time where shows like Mad Men takes enough care to get the train schedules for its protagonist correctly, this shows an utter lack of respect for the viewer. Heck, even Star Wars: The Clone Wars shows more respect for continuity and its universe than Heroes. If a half-hour animated show can do it, why can't Heroes? It appears to be the one super power they have no interest in.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Crossovers
This week I went to the movie "9", and finished the Shadow series by Orson Scott Card. Both struck me as having forms that were introduced in computer games.
"9" opens with what has become an adventure game classic: you awake in a dark room, not knowing who you are, with only a few random objects nearby to guide you. The mystery unfolds only when you exit the room and venture out into the world. Of course, the look of "9" also matches the lush detail of games such as Myst.
Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, and Shadow of the Giant owe more to turn based strategy games like Romance of the Three Kingdoms (which the author does acknowledge.) These games arose from simpler board games such as Risk, and were an attempt to use what computers are good at to make games more fun. Each country has but one or two statistics in Risk or Settlers of Catan, while in a modern computer game usually several resources and production numbers exist for each region. But the goals are the same: world domination!
I think this is a good thing. Direct translations of computer games to movies(I'm looking at you Super Mario Bros.) have rarely fared well. Uwe Boll alone has turned more than a half dozen computer games into horrible movies. But when the spirit of a computer game is incorporated into a movie or book, the result can be great fun. I do not think that "9" or the Shadow series are particular great works of art, but they are fun, and their use of computer game tropes sets them apart and gives them a unique flavor that I hope leads to more such experiments.
"9" opens with what has become an adventure game classic: you awake in a dark room, not knowing who you are, with only a few random objects nearby to guide you. The mystery unfolds only when you exit the room and venture out into the world. Of course, the look of "9" also matches the lush detail of games such as Myst.
Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, and Shadow of the Giant owe more to turn based strategy games like Romance of the Three Kingdoms (which the author does acknowledge.) These games arose from simpler board games such as Risk, and were an attempt to use what computers are good at to make games more fun. Each country has but one or two statistics in Risk or Settlers of Catan, while in a modern computer game usually several resources and production numbers exist for each region. But the goals are the same: world domination!
I think this is a good thing. Direct translations of computer games to movies(I'm looking at you Super Mario Bros.) have rarely fared well. Uwe Boll alone has turned more than a half dozen computer games into horrible movies. But when the spirit of a computer game is incorporated into a movie or book, the result can be great fun. I do not think that "9" or the Shadow series are particular great works of art, but they are fun, and their use of computer game tropes sets them apart and gives them a unique flavor that I hope leads to more such experiments.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
District 9
Last day of summer (academic time, nothing to do with the Autumn Equinox) I went to see District 9. Wow! This is what science fiction is for: take some idea, any idea, and throw the twist of new science into the mix. Stir, boil, and see what happens. In this case, the central events take place in the midst of a refugee camp. The twist: the refugees are aliens with advanced technology but no clear leadership.
Naturally, it is the presence of the alien technology that drives the plot, and in our modern world, military tech is what the humans always strive for. There is some seriously great weaponry effects on hand here, the kind you can't see in something like G.I. Joe because District 9 is an R and G.I. Joe isn't.
But even more fun was reading the reviews afterwards. This is not a straight forward allegory simply because nothing like this exists on Earth. For me, that is what the best science fiction is about: when an utterly new situation arises because of the introduction of elements that are possible, but have never occurred. But for a generation of movie critics raised on Star Trek, science fiction is supposed to be a pure allegory for our current political and social situation, without the messiness that arises when things just do not translate.
Much as I loathe much of the Sci-Fi (not SyFy) channel's approach to science fiction, their ad campaign, "What if?", captures the essence of what the best in science fiction is all about, and District 9 is full of what if.
Now to the mechanics of the movie: District 9 is presented as a faux documentary, and that makes the special effects even more important. They've imported several important ideas. First, effects shouldn't look too good. You can barely see the mothership in some shots because of the haze over Johannesborg. That's a good thing, as it makes the effects seem much more real.
Also, sometimes the camera catches the action, sometimes it doesn't. This keeps the viewer off balance, and is a visual clue that perhaps that this is not all that the viewer is missing.
The story contains a wonderful expository style. The "documentarians" assume the viewer knows the basics of the story already, and so skips over details that someone in the world of the film would already know. This means that the information that is presented comes at a breakneck pace, and not always in the form you expect. For instance, the only clue to the viewer that the aliens landed in 1982? A quick video code shown on inserted footage to the documentary.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Naturally, it is the presence of the alien technology that drives the plot, and in our modern world, military tech is what the humans always strive for. There is some seriously great weaponry effects on hand here, the kind you can't see in something like G.I. Joe because District 9 is an R and G.I. Joe isn't.
But even more fun was reading the reviews afterwards. This is not a straight forward allegory simply because nothing like this exists on Earth. For me, that is what the best science fiction is about: when an utterly new situation arises because of the introduction of elements that are possible, but have never occurred. But for a generation of movie critics raised on Star Trek, science fiction is supposed to be a pure allegory for our current political and social situation, without the messiness that arises when things just do not translate.
Much as I loathe much of the Sci-Fi (not SyFy) channel's approach to science fiction, their ad campaign, "What if?", captures the essence of what the best in science fiction is all about, and District 9 is full of what if.
Now to the mechanics of the movie: District 9 is presented as a faux documentary, and that makes the special effects even more important. They've imported several important ideas. First, effects shouldn't look too good. You can barely see the mothership in some shots because of the haze over Johannesborg. That's a good thing, as it makes the effects seem much more real.
Also, sometimes the camera catches the action, sometimes it doesn't. This keeps the viewer off balance, and is a visual clue that perhaps that this is not all that the viewer is missing.
The story contains a wonderful expository style. The "documentarians" assume the viewer knows the basics of the story already, and so skips over details that someone in the world of the film would already know. This means that the information that is presented comes at a breakneck pace, and not always in the form you expect. For instance, the only clue to the viewer that the aliens landed in 1982? A quick video code shown on inserted footage to the documentary.
Rating: 5 out of 5
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