Social | The Harold Lounge

Website Wednesday: Models and Data

Website Wednesday is a (mostly) weekly feature in which we highlight one (or a couple) of sites from the Billions floating around the Intertoobz that just might help you with your Herculean task of educating inquiring minds. Any and all suggestions for future editions are welcome.

Here in week 7 of our semester, I’m a little less far behind than usual for some reason, but a little further behind than I was last week owing to a cold and so I didn’t have enough time to put up the post I’d planned (maybe next week!). Instead, in keeping with Kamran’s theme, I offer you three gifts:

~a truly great (and short) read called, “The Deception that Lurks in Our Data-Driven World,” that includes stories about bathroom scales, the German “Normalbaum” disaster that ensued from human efforts to make an unruly ecosystem easier to quantify and an overabundance of faith in their understanding of they system they were quantifying, and the sentence “Raw data is an oxymoron;”

~an even shorter, quicker read on one example of what happens when a model (even a good one) is mistaken for reality; and

~this fun, heretical presentation on “Big Data” (you can skim through the slides and summarizing text by clicking HERE if you don’t have time for the video):

Enjoy!

And when you’re done, go read Kamran’s piece…

Website Wednesday

The (poorly named) World Series starts tonight! If you love baseball, you already know that. But if you don’t love baseball (yet), perhaps it’s because you don’t have a full understanding of the game.

Well, I can’t fix that with a Web site, but, just in case, you might find one or more of the following interesting enough to encourage you to watch a few innings and maybe learn something (or at least have something to look for) as you watch the drama unfold.

First up, a site that is all about contemporary examples of “the code”--the so-called unwritten rules of baseball. If you don’t know what they are, you can get a quick primer on some of them here.

But that’s not all, there’s the pleasures of transgressing and defying authority, as well as occasional dissemblance in order to satisfy the demands of the audience, a kind of game within the game, as here where, according to the participants, there was more showmanship than argumentativeness. Trickery! Just in time for Halloween.

And, there’s always the human drama, as here, in the story of Thurman Munson. I remember when he died. I remember being kind of sad about it even though I wasn’t a Yankees fan and didn’t really know much about Munson or baseball. This summer, reading this, I came to think that I was right to be sad about his death way back then.

Enjoy the Series, if you watch sports. Give it a shot if you don’t.

Annual Football Picking Contest

Yes, yes, it’s late (sorry everyone), but it’s ready for you! Last year, Ephrem Rabin rode the chalk all the way to the last week before an untimely vacation stole his championship. The year before, a rookie from a distant land stole our hearts while nearly stealing the title (despite her confusion about what is and isn’t “football”).

What will this year’s story be? Sign up for the Harold Lounge Braggin’ Rights Challenge to find out. Fancy prizes for winners this year! A snazzy certificate for your office if you win! A whiteboard eraser if you come in second! Old Halloween candy if you come in third!

New this year is a confidence rating system–you make your picks (straight up-no line) and then rank them from 1 to 14, earning the points associated. Highly confident in some pick? Well if you hit it you get 14. But if you lose it, well…you get the idea.

~~Anyway, if you have an account already, you can go straight to the CBS Sports site, sign in and search for “HL13″(password: HL13) or try this link.~~

UPDATE: New hosting site. Go HERE. You’ll have to make an account, but it should be quick, and then you can make your picks. If it asks you for a password (I don’t think it will, but still…if it does, then type in HL13.

And, regardless of what the name of the website implies, this is NOT a pool. Entry is free for all participants and so in now way, shape, or form can be construed as gambling. It is a game, with your only prize being glory and ever-lasting fame.

The first game is tonight, but if you don’t get signed up today, don’t worry–you can still make picks for Sunday right up until 11:55am. Don’t wait, though.

(And if you try it and have trouble, please let me know in the comments. It’s been a few years since I’ve done this and I don’t remember exactly how the set-up works.)

Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading is a regular feature with three links to fascinating, provocative, or particularly well-written, (usually) long-form pieces that I have found and collected over the last three years. You should expect that each of the links will require some time to explore. There will not be a test, but there may be a theme.

Charlie Trotter’s Kitchen: Charlie Trotter is back in the news, which brought to mind this excellent, three-part series from last year on his restaurant, his influence, and his approach to ‘teaching.’ There are some amazing stories in here from (now) top chefs in Chicago about how they got started (sometimes just by showing up and working for free) and how they got fired or left and how they feel about him and their time with him. You have to give the Tribune an email address to be allowed to see the “Digital Plus” articles, but it’s totally worth it. I never ate there, but I used to live a couple blocks away and it was always fun to walk by and see the day’s menu. There never failed to be something on there (usually multiple things) that I’d never heard of. Amazing that it changed every day. Just in case, here are links to the separate parts: Part One . Part Two. Part Three.

Marissa Mayer: Probably a Packers a fan. Almost a teacher. The bio is interesting. So interesting that it’s spawning interesting analysis, too.

Steve Jobs: As assessment, almost a year after his death. Subtitled: “An Inspiration or Cautionary Tale?”

Tabula Rasa Sunday

Let me see here…

Weather took a dip this past week.

Sightings of the Stanley Cup have been reported. (Trying to stay away from baseball talk these days.)

Did summer school end?

CPS dealing with financial difficulties.

Did CCC balance that new budget.

Politicians still out to blame the pension for the state’s fiscal woes. (Even though they raided it like the playground bully that takes all the kids lunch money by force and intimidation.)

The contract remains elusive, yet readable in PDF format. The irony…

Taking advantage of our cultural institutions?

On a trip somewhere?

What else? You tell me. Have your say.

Stay warm peeps!

Tabula Rasa Sunday

Summer is officially/chronologically/orbitally here!

What are your summer plans?

A bit of week-in-review thoughts to give this post a kick start:

Hawks get a win last night, but what’s with all the fans sayin’ “We” won!, and “We played really hard!”. (I’ve been guilty of using that pronoun in the past on The Lounge, so if I can mend my ways, so can the Hawk fans.)

What was with the reporters sporting Hawk colors and logos while providing live coverage. Ain’t that the equivalent of reporting from a political convention with the words “Republican” or “Democrat” stamped across their garments?

So Paula Deen admits to using an inappropriate word and gets a tub full of butter thrown her way. Food Network will not pick up her contract next month. I guess she needs to appear on MTV.com and then it woulda’ been alright. Funny how obscene language appears to be tolerated under some circumstances but not others. Oh, wait… MTV.com hits the mute button so I don’t have to hear the language. Guess that makes it ok.

Tabula Rasa Sunday

How y’all doin? Got anything to say?

Sorry that I didn’t put up a Tabula Rasa post last week.
Looks like PhiloDave’s post covered the topic for the week.

For this week, I do want to know what’s on your mind, but in all fairness, I’ll share my eclectic thoughts too:

-Hawks making a run for the Stanley Cup again. Every time I see the logo, it makes me think of PhiloDave’s concerns (with a nod to 12keystrokes). So while I am enjoying the competitive side of the games, I am also enjoying the philosophical side of it.

-Heat and Spurs. Rooting for the Spurs. Don’t like it when teams try to buy championships and that’s what I see the Heat trying to do. See Florida Marlins of 1997 to 1998. Could the same happen to the Heat next year?

-Been limiting my posts, but I’ll give y’all a response to 12keystrokes at some point. Don wants to know too and I won’t let him down.

-Concerned about the leaked privacy issues? Part of me is since we live in a “democratic” and “free” country. Part of me isn’t since this is the price to pay for living in a “democratic” and “free” country. Will continue to ponder it.

Have a good day and a HAPPY FATHERS DAY to all you Fathers, Grandfathers, Godfathers, family relatives that fulfill fatherly responsibilities, and Mentors that give ‘Fathers’ a good name.

Peace.

Tabula Rasa Sunday

Tabula rasa, meaning blank slate in Latin, is the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception. That’s according to wikipedia.
No, don’t get on my case about wiki being an illegitimate source. It’s summer. Yeah, that’s my excuse. And I’m stikin’ with it.

Point is… what knowledge do you want to share from your experiences (in any matters) or preceptions (of said matters) related to our academic lives (HWC, CCC, CPS, SURS, CCTU, etc, etc.)? Or if you’re taking a break from academics (ha!, as if that were possible), then life in general.

Have your democratic say and keep enjoying that summer break! This post will run every Sunday during the summer, so don’t fret of you cant’s think of nothin’ right now. Perhaps the effect of those spirits from last nigh hasn’t worn off just yet? Yeah, you know what I’m talkin’ ’bout…

Trash Talk Tuesday: Bonus?

A straight cut-and-paste from the 411 email on Graduation 2013 and, yes, Reinvention:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chancellor Cheryl Hyman announced today that nearly 4,000 students are expected to earn an associate’s degree from City Colleges this year — the largest number in more than two decades, and an 80 percent increase since Reinvention began. “We could not be prouder of these students and their results. From our early learning programs to our City Colleges, we are working to ensure that every student in this city receives a high-quality education that helps them succeed in life,” said Mayor Emanuel. CCC is forecasting the federal IPEDS graduation rate will increase to 12 percent for 2013, up 5 percent since Reinvention and the highest in more than a decade. “We are delivering on our central goal to increase the number of students earning credentials of economic value,” said Chancellor Hyman. “Our students’ achievements demonstrate that the student-centered reforms we’ve implemented in recent years are paying off as we had hoped: more of our students are now prepared for further education or a career.” In recent years, CCC has invested in key student services including: tutoring, academic advisors, transfer specialists, career and transfer centers, veteran centers, and Wellness Centers, among other services. On Friday May 3rd at the UIC Pavilion, Chancellor Cheryl Hyman and special guest Illinois Lieutenant Governor Sheila Simon will congratulate the Class of 2013 during the annual graduation ceremony.

So what does all of this mean?

(more…)