A View from the Crease

I've written about using the latent, distributed computing power of the Internet to solve problems.  Today brought a news of a new success story.  A project called GIMPS -- the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search reported that it found the 47th known Mersenne prime number. A Mersenne prime number is one which can be expressed as 2ⁿ - 1 where n is also a prime number.  Examples include 7 which can be expressed as 2³ - 1 and 31 which is 2⁵ - 1.

The 47th Mersenne prime number was found by Odd Magnar Strindmo from Norway on April 12th, but not verified until June 12th.  According to the GIMPS project, Odd has been with the project since 1996 and tested over 1400 candidates.  This might not seem like many candidates in 13 years, but the 47th known Mersenne prime is a 12,837,064 digit number and expressed as 2^42,643,801 - 1.

It is interesting to note that the 47th known Mersenne prime is not the largest known Mersenne prime (which was also found by the GIMPS project).  That distinction goes to 2^43,112,609 - 1 which was found last fall.  All in all, the GIMPS project has found 13 Mersenne primes in its 13 year history.

Lately, I've been talking to quite a few people about math and math curricula.  I contend that one of the reasons we study math, when we don't intend to have a career in mathematics, is to be "numerate."  When used as an adjective, numerate is used to describe someone who has the capacity for quantitative thought and expression.  John Allen Paulos has written several books on mathematics in everyday life and likened "innumeracy" to illiteracy.  My favorite Paulos book is A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper which looks at typical newspaper stories and why a knowledge of math either contradicts what everyone thinks or supports what many would consider a controversial conclusion.

This was a week where it helps to be "numerate."  Earlier this week, President Obama nominated Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the resignation of David Souter.  Almost immediately, the campaign against her began.

Wendy Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, claimed that Sotomayor "has an extremely high rate of her decisions being reversed, indicating that she is far more of a liberal activist than even the current liberal activist Supreme Court."

"Her high reversal rate alone should be enough for us to pause and take a good look at her record. Frankly, it is the Senates duty to do so," said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America.

What these two women were talking about is that The Supreme Court has reversed three of the five decisions in which Judge Sotomayor was in the majority for a 60% reversal rate.  Many speculate that there will likely be a fourth as Ricci v. DeStefano is pending before The Supreme Court.  Are these numbers enough to doom Judge Sotomayor's nomination?  Are these folks lying?  What should a numerate person ask?

First of all, neither person is lying; these numbers are a matter of public record.  Perhaps, they are not telling "the whole truth and nothing but the truth."  If there is a failure, however, it is whether the media outlets should have published quotes like this without giving them meaning or context.

A numerate person should ask what the reversal rate is for the average Circuit Court of Appeals judge, and where Judge Sotomayor stands on that scale.  What was the reversal rate of current Supreme Court justices?  How does Judge Sotomayor compare to those numbers?

According to SCOTUSblog's SCOTUSwiki, the reversal rate for Circuit Court for the last five Supreme Court sessions (up until April 2009) is 73%.  It would be nice to see a distribution, but it's clear that Judge Sotomayor is below the mean (and being "below average" in this case is a good thing).  The most recent appointee, Justice Sam Alito was reversed on two of two occasions in which his majority decisions were reviewed.  Sam Alito's reversal rate was 100%. Should that number have given the Senate "pause?"  [Homework: Is that number significant?]

There was a good quote in The Wall Street Journal by Circuit Court Judge Guido Calabresi who said, "such reversals are typical. It's standard for what we do because most of the cases that go up [to the Supreme Court] are difficult." (source MediaMatters for quotes and numbers)

What might matter more is how many of Judge Sotomayor's majority decisions were allowed to stand by The Supreme Court.  Again, two sets of numbers might apply.  She was in the majority of the court for 380 decisions, of which she wrote 150 of them.  So one could say that the reversal rate was 3 out of 380 (<1%) or 3 out of 150 (or 2%).  Either way, those seem to be good numbers.  No surprise, The White House used the former to state its case.

When speaking of statistics, many people quote Benjamin Disraeli's, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."  I prefer another attributed to Aaron Levenstein, "Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."

All is looking well for the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 at 2:01 Eastern Time today.  My classmate, Col. Mike Good (USAF) is one the mission specialists on this mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).  The mission like previous missions to the Hubble will replace some of the guidance and communication systems.  In addition the crew of STS-125 will replace two failed instruments and remove the corrective optics and replace it with another scientific instrument.  The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) will probe the origins of the universe.  The new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) will replace the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 ("WiffPic2").  WFP3 will work with Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in the visible and UV wavelenghts.  These elements were not designed as field replaceable units (FRUs) so as one of the mission specialists said, "It's like doing brain surgery on the Hubble."

Good luck Col. Good and Godspeed to STS-125.  I'll see you at the reunion, Mike.

Last Wednesday the Nittany Hockey League (aka Geriatric Hockey) paid tribute to NHL Commissioner Ron "The Commish" Weis on the occasion of his 70th birthday.  A few of weeks ago, Ron was lamenting that he wasn't going to be on the ice for his 70th birthday, so a couple of the guys rented the ice for a "Weezers vs. Geezers" game and held a party for him afterward. Ron has done great things for the Centre County ice hockey community, growing the league from 3 teams to nine.  The current league has about 180 participants.  In addition, we have the over 35 "Weezers vs. Geezers" game on Tuesday nights.

Thanks to Jay Horgas for coming up with the idea and Joe Battista for getting some press coverage and a congratulations letter from AD Tim Curley.

Wishing you many more years, "Commish!"

Over the weekend I attended a memorial service for Dr. Bill Peterson, the former Director of the Earth System Science Center Computing Facility.  Bill hired me out of graduate school in 1991 and got me involved in IT and computational science.  Bill died back in October and his memorial service was held at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.  Bill earned his Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from RSMAS.

When I saw the invitation to Bill's memorial service it made me laugh.  There right on the top was a starfish.  I think of starfish every time I remember Bill.

A starfish is a remarkable creature, with its organs distributed throughout.  If you cut a starfish, each part can grow into a new starfish.  Lately business gurus have used a starfish to describe agile organizations, with business knowledge distributed throughout.  But business gurus and agile organizations don't make me think of Bill...

There's a story of an older gentleman who is walking along the beach the morning after a particularly rough storm.  There are countless starfish scattered on the sand drying out in the heat of the Sun.  As the older gentleman walks down the beach he sees a young boy, picking up starfish and throwing them back into the water where they'll be carried back to the sea.

As he comes up to the boy, he says, "Hey kid, there must be hundreds even thousands of starfish drying up on this beach and beaches like this all down the coast.  Don't you know you can't save them all."

The boy flings another into the sea and says, "No, sir, I can't, but I just made a big difference to that one."

I picture that older gentleman as Bill and I see him getting that look on his face where he furls his brow and grabs his beard and says, "You know, kid, you're right."  Then he starts to throw some back in himself.

You see Bill knew he couldn't save the world, but I think he must have come to realize that he could save one career, one life at a time.  There was a time when I was "drying out on the beach" and Bill picked me up and threw me back in.  I don't know when he started doing this, but I know many of the Penn State guys he hired over the years were the beneficiaries of Bill's mentoring.

Long ago I decided I couldn't pay him back.  How can you?  How can anyone?

I decided instead that I should pay it forward.  That's how we should remember Dr. Bill Peterson -- as a friend, a boss, a second dad, a leader, a visionary, but most of all as a mentor.

Remember Bill and pay it forward. 

This week has certainly allowed our leaders in Washington to grandstand over the AIG bonus fiasco.  They gave quite a grilling to the new CEO of AIG, when in fact the bonus contracts were written before he came on board.  In fact Mr. Liddy is currently working for $1/year to fix AIG and could probably be considered a civil servant.  Should he be the focus of the outrage?  Rather isn't this more indicative (perhaps damning) of the whole Wall Street culture of questionable compensation?  Isn't this more indicative of the type of greed which evolved over the last 30 years which got us into this mess?

The "solution" they say is to tax bonuses at TARP supported companies a rate of 90%.  They aren't specifically targeting AIG, "just any TARP-supported company." What bothers me about the legislative "solution" is that it sets a dangerous precedent.  I'm no Constitutional lawyer (Can you say bill of attainder?), but this tax probably won't "claw back" the AIG bonuses.  It may instead create a situation where we punish outrages with targeted taxes.  Maybe we start taxing people at 90% who voted against us.  Maybe we start taxing people at 90% who work for tobacco companies or the entertainment industry.

Let's resolve to take a stand rather than a grandstand and fix the problems which allowed this situation to occur.  $165 million in "retention" bonuses is outrageous, but the real problem is about 10,000 times bigger.

Congratulations to Coach Scott Balboni and the Penn State Icers who finished a great season last night.  Unfortunately, their season ended with a 3-0 loss to Illinois in the semifinals of the ACHA Division I Championship.  Thirteen seniors played their last game last night including State College's own Andrew Magulick whom I had the pleasure to coach both as a PeeWee (9-11 years old) and when he was in High School.  I wish the seniors the best in whatever they choose to do.

I saw more games this year than I have in the last two.  Penn State swept Illinois in the last regular season series they played, but that didn't translate into success last night.  While I didn't listen to the game, after I saw the score, Battista's First Law of Hockey came to mind: "In hockey the best team always wins, unless the goalie stands on his head!"  Apologies to the hockey jargon impaired; no I can't explain it.  I'm not sure I understand what JoeBa's talking about myself.

Here's hoping future Icers teams are on the good side of goalie "head stands."

Not only is today a Friday the 13th, but it represents a historic occasion in UNIX/POSIX time  that will be celebrated by geeks like me around the world.  UNIX/POSIX time is the number of seconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC, otherwise known as the time since the epoch. At 23:31:30 UTC today (6:31:30 PM EST), the time since the UNIX epoch will be 1234567890.  This serves to remind us that time is ever marching forward, and that someday soon we will have to deal with the POSIX time Y2.038k problem.

Tossing our troubles aside for now... Happy 1234567890!  It only happens once an epoch.

P.S.  Check out http://coolepochcountdown.com/ for a Web form with the countdown.

Folks who know I'm from Western NY (where is this Upstate NY place anyway?) have asked me if the Continental Connection/Colgan Air Dash-8 crash happened anywhere near my family.  Thanks for your concern.  It happened a few miles from where my sister lives. My thoughts go out to the families of those involved.  I continue to admire the first responders and I appreciate their bravery in the face of such a horrific fire.

Today marks the 27th anniversary of the divestiture of AT&T into a long distance company and 7 Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs).  This was probably the single most important decision in our industry.  It not only allowed for competition in the long distance realm (Sprint and MCI), but it allowed AT&T to compete in the computing industry (and indirectly in the OS market with System V UNIX).  While the new at&t is almost the same as the old AT&T now, a great deal of innovation happened as a result of the government initiated divestiture.

This is one of those decisions where even hindsight isn't 20/20.  Consumers saw their overall telephone bills increase in the years immediately following the divestiture because local rates were often subsidized by long distance rates in the AT&T monopoly era.  Another result was that the competition required the long distance carriers to build out, improve, and innovate on their long haul networks.  Eventually, those long distance networks would become the fiber optic networks of the commercial Internet.  All in all, I don't think we have the kind of competition, particularly in broadband, that this divestiture envisioned, but I can easily trade that off for the kind of telecommunications infrastructure that we do have in this country today.

I remember talking to a couple of people several years ago about this.  Both -- one was a libertarian and the other was a former AT&T employee -- thought this was a case of the government overreaching.  Without the divestiture, I told them in my cynical manner, if we had an Internet at all today, it would be strung together with copper wires and 300 baud modems.

Tell that to your friends who say the government never does anything good...