Today’s Word of the Day: Apophenia

Jan 12

lindsayrgwattRandom, Science Psychology, Word of the Day View Comments

Today I read the most recent entry in Strange Maps, talking about humans tend to see things where they don’t really exist (read their blog entry for some great photos).  There’s a technical word for this – apophenia.

The best part of reading this article is that it anchored me to start seeing patterns where none existed.  I didn’t have to wait too long until it finally happened.  I was listening to a recent Resident Advisor podcast and it contained the following album art:

I immediately thought that it looked exactly like part of the path from Bow Lake up to the Wapta Icefield:

Now, Resident Advisor is based in Sydney and the podcast is from a British group, so I’m pretty sure that nobody involved with it has ever been to Wapta.  Must be that apophenia kicking in…

Fun With Stats

Jan 11

lindsayrgwattFinance Palm, statistics, stocks Comments Off

I know it’s almost impossible to have fun with stats (I’ve sat through many a boring stats course over the years), but a recent event reminded me of how misleading some statistics and analyses are – most notably anything involving  time series and percentages.  There’s a small library of books on how to lie with statistics, but the recent announcement of the Palm Pre provides a great example.

For background, Palm’s a company that was synonymous with mobile computing, until Microsoft got into the game with Windows Mobile and then two companies called RIM (Blackberry) and Apple came along.  For the past few years, Palm has drifted and has been consistently losing market share.  However, on January they announced the Pre and this propelled their stock price into the stratosphere:

Note that I’ve compared them with Sprint (whose share price went up as they’re the exclusive carrier for the Pre in the short term) so that you can see the percentage change (all the data comes from Google Finance).  This graph is a dataset with a few hundred datapoints and a naive analysis would suggest that Palm was a go-nowhere stock until it announced the Pre.

However, the truth is a little more nuanced than that.  In fact, Palm was up over 100% in the first part of December and has been on a tear since January 5:

As an aside, it’s interesting to note the run-up in the stock before December 22nd, when Elevation Partners invested $100M in the company.  People who work at public companies go to jail for trading based on this sort of knowledge, yet somehow the market was able to guess that this was going to happen.  On Friday the 19th, analysts couldn’t figure out why the stock price was going up, and then on Monday the 22nd they got the investment.   Hmmm….

So, now you’re thinking, Palm must have been great to their shareholders – I mean, they’re up over 200% since early December – that’s awesome, right?  Except that 2008 was such a bad year for them that they were down almost 80% for the year by the time December started, and now they’re almost back to scratch:

One of my favourite lessons regarding percentages is fully embodied in the graph above: if you’re down 80%, that means that you need a 400% increase to get back to where you started.  This is one reason why the current financial crisis is going to be really painful for people who bought at the peak.  You need a lot of “20% rallies” (about 7) to get you back to where you started if you are down 60-80%.

Speaking, of which, let’s look at how Palm has done over the years.  They IPO’d back on March 2nd, 2000.  They pretty much were the peak of the Internet bubble (another aside: through the magic of finance and arbitrage the publicly floated part of Palm was briefly worth more than its entire parent – which still owned 95% of the company):

They’re down a whopping 98.9% since then, so if you bought and held, you’re almost certainly never going to get back to where you started (unless they announce a heckuva lot more products like the Pre).

If we go back a little further, we can see one of my favourite facts about percentages in Sprint’s share price.  For background, Sprint was a darling of the New Economy and gained almost 100% between 1999.  It then declined and is down almost 99% over the past 10 years:

Two things I love here:

• If you’re up 100% and then you by twice what you gained (i.e., a $1 stock goes to $2 to $0.01), you’re not down, 200%, you’re down 99%
• People think there’s very little difference between a stock that’s down say 99% vs. 99.5%, but in fact the change is massive.  The stock has to drop by 50% from when it was already down 99% to get to 99.5%.  ($100 -> $1 -> $0.50).  This is trivial if you’re already down 99%; soul-crushing if you bought in when it was down 99%.

So there you go, some Sunday evening stats.  Hopefully it wasn’t too painful and maybe even insightful…

Ironic Sign of the Times

Jan 10

lindsayrgwattBusiness advertising, economy, magazines Comments Off

You may have read recently about the death of print – especially the newspaper.  It seems like every day there is a story about a newspaper going bankrupt, advertising shrinking and companies canceling print ads.  I therefore found a recent New Yorker cover quite ironic:

Ostensibly, it’s a comment on the fact that all we’re hearing about is the collapse of economic life as we know it, and that it’s reflected in the fact that everything in New York is for sale right now.  However, it could equally be a plea by the New Yorker’s editors to have someone – anyone – please buy some ads in the paper or they’re going under (the New Yorker is owned by Conde Nast, which is in turn owned by the private Advance Publications, so they can probably sustain a loss for a long time before going bankrupt).

The entire issue was 76 pages long (79 potential pages of advertising including front & back covers) and had only 6 (!) paid full-page ads and 8 single column paid ads (it’s a 3 column layout).  To masquerade this, they added 2 full-page house ads and 4 single column house ads.  Subtracting out the 4 pages of ads associated with the front cover/first page, that’s only 4 full-page ads in 75 pages – or about 5% ads.  I don’t think I’ve ever read a magazine with less advertising in my life.

Eats in the Hood

Jan 09

lindsayrgwattFood, NYC lunch, restaurant Comments Off

I’m still struggling with the jet lag today, so I went for a walk at lunch for some fresh air. I was pleasantly surprised to find a great new restaurant in the neighbourhood – The Simple Kitchen Organic Cafe. Despite it’s rather complex moniker, the place is likely to become a regular stop for me on my daily search for take out food.

There’s a hint of the unknown to the place: the windows were completely steamed up when I saw it and you could not see anything inside. However, opening the door led to an outpouring of nuanced smells as the soups/salads/curries inside collided with some of the flowers decorating the place:

The ultimate test of any restaurant is the food, and it did not disappoint. I ordered chicken kebabs with couscous and roast vegetables and it was one of the best lunches I’ve had in ages:

They get bonus points for preparing the food for take-out but then reheating it while you’re paying. They use a proper oven and it leaves the meat looking as though it was just cooked, and slightly charbroiled.

If you’re in the ‘hood let me know, and we’ll swing by.

Final Shots from Australia

Jan 08

lindsayrgwattRandom, Travel australia, photos Comments Off

Now that I’ve blogged about what I did in Oz, here are a couple of shots of other things.

This is the tree canopy in Hyde Park:

Here’s a shot of the Anzac bridge:

On the way back to the Manly ferry we saw this cruise ship in the harbour:

The sky just before a storm:

Here’s where we would catch the ferry in Manly:

A close-up of a leaf in the botanical gardens:

A couple of cockatoos in the botanical gardens just before a storm hit us:

This ridiculous penthouse was visible from Wendy’s parents’ flat:

The Sydney harbour bridge:

The forest canopy scene from above the Blue Mountains:

The sunset in the Blue Moutains:

Here are a bunch of photos of the scenery on the way to Mudgee:

Look closely and you can see the harbour bridge walkers:

Finally, a shot of the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains:

All Day in the Cafe

Jan 07

lindsayrgwattFood, Travel australia, coffee Comments Off

Another surprising pleasure in Australia was their cafe culture.  The country is dotted with cafes and it’s almost impossible to find a block without one.

The national coffee ‘dish’ is the flat white.  It’s like a latte but with less froth on the top (and good luck ordering one in NYC, except maybe at Ruby’s).  The difference between a latte and a flat white remains in dispute, but here’s a photo of one from the Cafe Steyne in Manly:

As we explored the city we kept coming across different neighbourhoods with great cafes.  The ones in Glebe reminded me the most of the cafes I grew up with (Possibly because I grew up near a neighbourhood called Glebe – but a lifetime away from Sydney):

In the slightly more posh neighbourhood of Paddington, we found the funky bookstore/cafe AllPress Espresso:

Nearby was the cafe Lilifields.  If you want to escape the city, it is the place to get a coffee.  It’s located in a garden behind the shop and the only thing you’ll hear is the sound of the water fountain:

If you leave Sydney you can still get great coffee.  We caffeinated ourselves on quite a few in Katoomba and  Mudgee:

And rest assured that it’s not just a land for coffee (and dingo) lovers.  There’s great tea too; the following comes from East Cost Coffee (don’t hold their name against them):

Australia: The Food

Jan 06

lindsayrgwattFood, Travel australia, dim sum, pie Comments Off

One of the surprising pleasures of our trip to Australia was how incredible the food was.  Here are a couple of things we noticed:

Quality of Ingredients

The Aussies have incredibly high quality food, particularly produce.  Check this out:

That’s fresh ginger and each piece at the grocery was the size of a coconut.  All the fresh produce looked great; the only place I’ve seen that’s comparable is Vancouver.

Beets & Pumpkin

It turns out that Australians pride themselves in their ability to put beets and pumpkin into everything:

That’s a beet, feta and tuna shooter amuse bouche at Whitewater in Manly.  Beets and pumpkins battle for ubiquity.

I had pumpkin served as part of a pasta sauce, with Thai duck and even packed into a spinach, feta and pumpkin pie.  This isn’t however your traditional North American pumpkin:

You can see that there’s a lot more meat, they’re smaller and the skin is green.  There are also many different types of pumpkin, although, frankly, they all taste like pumpkin to me…

Asian Food

Since Australia considers Asia to be it’s sphere of influence, it’s only appropriate that it has great pan-Asian cuisine.

At Mamak we found true Malaysian food, with an emphasis on satay and rotis – including the first authentic Murtabak (a roti filled with onions and meat; served with curry) I’ve had since I left Singapore:

The other fun thing about Mamak is that as you wait you can watch them make rotis.  It’s like watching the equivalent of Asian pizza-making:

Mamak also gets bonus points for having Ayam Berempah (a dish where a breast of bone-in chicken is diced and cooked in whole spices like cardamon, cinammon, cloves, star anise, onions, chili and coriander) and teh tarik (sweet Malaysian tea).

We also had great Char Siu Bao (pork-filled dumplings) at the Chinese fast food chain Wu Da Niang Dim Sum (How often can you go to a Chinese-owned Chinese food fast food chain?):

I was also super-excited as I found buns with pork floss for sale in Chinatown:

Much like the Murtabak, I haven’t had floss since I left Singapore.

The Humble Meat Pie

Australians love their meat pies (probably that British influence).  One of the classic places in Sydney to get a meat pie is Harry’s Cafe de Wheels (it’s been making pies next to the Woolloomooloo pier since 1945):

I had their curry meat pie; hunks of beef mixed with curry sauce; quite spicy:

In Manly, the place for meat pies (and amazing cheese sticks) is Hamlets Coffee and Pies (apparently it used to be called “Shakespeares”; they’ve left a photo of the Bard on the wall, but changed the name) on the Corso:

They’re home to a wide selection of unique pies:

These include the above-mentioned pumpkin, feat and spinach plus delectable chicken satays and a mince/bacon/cheese combo.  There’s nothing healthy about these pies, but they taste great (especially after a day of hiking).

Wine Pairings

Australia is famous for its wine and the have developed a food culture paired around the wine.  If you go to wine country (we went to Mudgee) any restaurant can give you great recommendations on what wine to have with the meal.

We had lunch at The Wineglass and here’s the cheese plate that came with the wine:

The Longest Day of my Life

Jan 05

lindsayrgwattTravel australia, Travel Comments Off

This morning started at 6am with a quick run along the beach in Sydney.  In Manly, the surfers were already out, catching the morning breaks before grabbing the ferry to work.  I reached the North Head at seven and had it all to myself as I watched the surf break below the cliffs.

About 18 hours later – and still Monday – I had the unique vantage point of 37,000 feet to watch the sun simultaneously rise over the Santa Monica Mountains (snow-covered and beautiful) and light up the oil rigs offshore of LA.  In case you’re wondering, yes, there was a ridiculous amount of traffic snaking along the LA freeways at that hour.

Now it’s 9:30pm – and still Monday –  and I’m back in New York, happily satiated after a Patsy’s Pizza and enjoying the comfort of our apartment.  By my calculations, it has been almost a 32 hour day and it’s still going strong…

Various Aussie Thoughts

Jan 04

lindsayrgwattRandom, Travel australia View Comments

So Wen and I are about to head home from Australia, but before we leave, here are a few thing I’ve noticed/been ruminating over for the past few days.

1

Australians love the sea.  In fact, Sydney isn’t so much a city as it is a collection of neighbourhoods located around the water.  However, the greatest indicator of how much Aussies love the sea is their money.  It’s waterproof:

However, this love of water also causes our Australian friends to do some silly things off the water.  For instance, this basketball course is grassed in:

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2

I have no idea why, but almost all the houses here seem to have names (This place is very British).  Here are a sampling from around Manly:

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3

For some reason, there is also stained glass everywhere.  It’s in all the houses and most of the older buildings.  I’ve no idea why; perhaps it’s that British thing again:

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4

The taxis here all look like police cars:

And the police cars, well – they look like toy cars:

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5

The Aussies are incredibly serious about taking care of their ecology.  Some examples:

• When you go through the airport you pass through “quarantine” where your bags are checked to make sure there’s no meat, cheese, veggies, etc.
• We drove up to Mudgee and there were signs warning you not to bring grape vine cuttings as they do not want to contaminate the viticulture up there
• Lake Burragorang is a man-made lake in the Blue Mountains that provides 80% of Sydney’s water – and no one is allowed within the catchment area of the lake.  If you’re caught trespassing, you’ll be prosecuted

6

There are two challenges to driving on the left hand side of the road in Australia.  The first is that you drift left as you drive, as in North America that’s the center; alas here it’s the curb.

The second is unique to Australia.  Here, the gauge of the lanes changes all the time.  You’ll be on a road and the lane will be 12 feet wide.  Then you’ll turn a corner and suddenly the lane’s only 8 feet wide!  It’s a blast, particularly when you’re surrounded by trucks (and drifting left…).

7

Australia’s got a drinking problem.  A huge one.  The national sport here seems to be getting pissed (and behaving badly).  I’ve noticed lots of people drinking before 11am – on the Manly Corso, at the airport; the list goest on.

In order to understand this, you’ve got to realize that drinking is totally institutionalized:

• At some bars, if you buy six pints (called schooners down here) you get a free t-shirt.  Yay!
• At some liquour stores, if you buy enough, you save on gas.  I can’t imagine a more perverse incentive to drink…

The government is trying to crack down.  For one, you get this lovely sign in all the bars:

Also, in every car, the back of the registration sticker (the part facing the driver) says “Drink Driving is a Crime”.

If you’re down on Manly beach on a weekend, you can see literally the entire beach getting drunk.  Later that night it’s off to the Steyne hotel on the Corso where you can watch 18 year old girls stumble around with bottles of wine in their hands before entering the bar (it’s technically legal to drink in public here).

And as I’m writing this, an ad just appeared on the tv letting me know that every single police car has a breathalyzer so that “if you’re worried about getting tested for drink driving – you should be.” 

8

This whole city is a zoo.  Everywhere you go, it’s exotic animals.  Around Wendy’s parent’s house, you’re likely to see cockatoos, rosellas and eastern water dragons:

This leads to the following road signs:

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9

This is the only place in the world that has not abandoned the cruck.  In fact, it’s worshipped here and called the Holden Ute.  You can buy ‘em new; if you’ve noticed that there aren’t too many on the road in North America, it’s because the El Camino was discontinued in 1987:

Best Photos of 2008

Jan 03

lindsayrgwattNYC, Random Art, best, photos View Comments

If you know me, you know that I love taking photos.  Since I’ve wasted a lot of people’s time by making them pause to take photos, I thought I’d share some of my best shots from 2008.  Here they are in roughly chronological order.  Note that Wordpress seems to be doing some sort of horizontal compression, so you my have to click through to each photo for the full effect.

This one is the only ‘best’ photo to come from my iPhone.  I’m hoping that in 2009 there will be more great iPhone pics:

The following image was taken at Fort Tryon, at the cafe in the park. It’s a beautiful place for brunch and they get great light:

One of my favourite New York activities is walking around the town.  If you make it down to Red Hook, there’s a scrapyard just between the BQE and the Gowanus Canal.  The five year old boy in me could spend hours there just watching:

This is Tom Savage ripping it up at Whistler.  It’s hard to tell, but he’s wearing a beautiful negligee as it was his stag:

While walking around the Robert Fulton houses near our apartment, I happened to catch someone feeding the rats of the sky:

If you visit New York (as you can tell, it’s kind of my muse), you should head over to Long Island City and take a look back at the city:

Last year I went to Dublin to see my bro graduate from medical school and was mesmerized by the city at sunset:

One of the artistic highlights of last year was seeing the Olafur Eliasson exhibit at the MOMA’s PS1.  He had erected a giant rotating mirror in one room; this kind of captures the effect:

Right around the corner from there you find the graffiti haven of 5 Ptz:

On the Fourth of July I snapped this pic while watching the fireworks.  It was raining, so take a close look at the tops of each of the buildings – everyone is holding an umbrella:

I’m trying to get better at macro photography.  Here’s a shot of a lily:

I tried to take an HDR shot of some flowers I had, but it didn’t turn out.  However, one of the shots was following:

While visiting the New Museum I leaned over the railing and noticed this little scene below on one of the adjacent tenement rooftops:

One day Wen & I set out to walk the entire length of Broadway (we started at the Bronx and made it to 85th).  In Washington Heights we went past the High Bridge water tower, and it just happened to be open to a few photographers that morning.  We tagged along and I got this photo of the Heights and the GWB:

And finally, one last photo.  The Guggenheim reopened this year and here’s a shot of their entrance way: