Journalists

 

A Day In The Life

I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well, I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph

Good or bad, we count on journalists to tell us the news.

“who disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. “  BTW Superman, whose Kryptonian name was Kal-El, was created by two Jews and is a thinly veiled retelling of the Moses story with a spaceship subbing for a basket in the bulrushes.

Journalists are supposed to be interested in the Truth, certainty, not merely in who wins, dominance.  Journalists are supposed to speak truth to power, not present both sides.

It is hardly surprising that 1/3 of the people support Trump.  The minimum number of players according to Game Theory is three.  ( yes, it may look like there are only two teams on the field, but have you forgotten about the refs?)  So 1/3 choosing Trump, and 1/3 choosing Biden, means that the battle for dominance is for the middle third.  

As a traffic engineer, I ask you to think about what happens when you encounter a “Lane Drop Ahead” sign.  The System Optimal solution would be to use the lane drop as long as possible and then seek a safe gap to merge into the continuing lane, a "rolling merge".  The User Optimal solution is to drive until the end of that lane being dropped and then force yourself into the continuing lane, regardless of others in that lane.

What happens is that neither the System Optimal or the worse case User Optimal solution is chosen by most cars.  Instead cars get into the moving lane as soon as possible and someone if necessary, usually a semi-tractor trailer truck,  blocks the lane which is being dropped.  This is called a Nash Equilibrium after John Nash, the subject of the movie A Beautiful Mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6eK0yiw9t0&t=11s .  Only in this case, semis are blocking the lane, not the Blonde.

The 1/3^rd who want their User Optimal try to convince the middle to let everyone choose their own User Optimal.  That can include lying if necessary, in order to win a majority of that middle 1/3^rd.  But if the middle 1/3^rd knows that those are lies, then expect a Nash Equilibrium instead. But we are counting on journalists to tell them that they are lies.  “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but they are not entitled to their own facts”.  Please journalists, fight for the Truth, Justice and the American Way. Be our Supermen.

Art

 

ARTPOP

A hybrid can withstand these things
My heart can beat with bricks and strings
My ARTPOP could mean anything

Is Art a hybrid, that is a combination?

What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth—and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but then he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment the audience falls in love. -  Lady Gaga

Far be it from me to disagree with Mother Monster, because I don’t, but Art is Truth.  And Lies are the absence of Truth.  Truth is a combination of Reality and Imagination.  Lady Gaga has Imagination.  She does not tell Lies.  I think what Lady Gaga meant to say is:

What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of reality—and then there's imagination. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this combination a truth, by sliding his imagination in amongst all the reality. The imagination is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment the audience falls in love.

Election Slogan

 

Save The Country

We could build the dream with love
And I got fury in my soul
Fury's gonna take me to the glory goal
In my mind I can't study war no more
Save the people! Save the children! Save the country!
Save the country! Save the country! Save the country!

Save the Country!

The Biden Campaign has seems to have decided on “Save Democracy” as its slogan.  That sounds like it is favoring the Democratic Party.  Should it be “Save the Republic”?

Republic, form of government in which a state is ruled by representatives of the citizen body. Modern republics are founded on the idea that sovereignty rests with the people, though who is included and excluded from the category of the people has varied across history. Because citizens do not govern the state themselves but through representatives, republics may be distinguished from direct democracy, though modern representative democracies are by and large republics.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/republic-government

The Biden election is being opposed by "republicans In Name Only", rINOs, who are afraid that the people will not choose as those rINOs have chosen. They do not want representatives of the people but representatives of only themselves.  When Benjamin Franklin was asked what form of government the Constitutional Convention had given, he is supposed to have said “A republic, if you can keep it”.  This appears to be an election that will decide whether we can keep it.

Dominance or Certainty

 

Winner Takes It All

The winner takes it all (takes it all)
The loser has to fall (has to fall)
It's simple and it's plain (it's so plain)
Why should I complain? (Why complain?)

So Wall Street which is it? Dominance? or Certainty?

The Wall Street stock market is all about winners and losers, by dominance. But the stock market also hates uncertainty. You can’t have certainty in a contest with only two parties which will be decided by dominance.

The stock market is not certain,which is why there are Index funds and why a random walk of the stock market does better than day trading. Collectively you can achieve certainty. Individually you might achieve dominance but that is at the expense of allowing uncertainty. A contest where there are only two outcomes and two players can be 100% dominant, but that outcome is purely by luck, a random occurrence if the game is fair and the parties are equal. In this case the certainty that the dominant winner is the certain winner is the value of that outcome, 100%, multiplied the reciprocal of the probability of that outcome, which is 50%. Thus even though the dominance of the winner has been established, the certainty is only 50%.

The difference between certainty and dominance can best be seen in the jury system. A 7-5 jury vote indicates 100% dominance, but it is only 80.66% certain.  A 12-0 finding of Guilty, or Not Guilty,  remains 100% dominant, but the certainty has increased to 99.98 %.

Thus for a single stock transaction, you can be dominant or certain, but being dominant does not mean being certain. However being certain does mean being dominant.

Zero

 

Transcendental Meditation

Transcendental meditation
Transcendental meditation
Can emancipate the man
And get you feeling grand
It's good

Is zero transcendental?

In mathematics, a transcendental number is a real or complex number that is not algebraic – that is, not the root of a non-zero polynomial of finite degree with rational coefficients. The best-known transcendental numbers are π and e.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_number

While π and e might be the best known transcendental numbers, it is noted that hyperbolic trigonometric functions, which are expressed as functions of powers of e,  which is itself a transcendental number, are transcendental functions.  These hyperbolic trigonometric functions are also periodic in i*π,  i.e. repeat on the imaginary axis with a frequency of multiples of π[1], another transcendental number.   

Euler’s formula, e^ix=cos(x)* sin(x)*i, is also the coordinate transformation of a complex number from polar coordinates to rectangular, Cartesian, coordinates with a real and an imaginary axis, where the polar radius is 1.   It includes the rotation of the imaginary axis by an angle of x.  Sin(π)=0 means that the coefficient of the imaginary axis is zero.  Does that mean that there is NO imaginary axis?  That depends on whether that zero is absolute or relative. 

Absolute zero is the absence of the absolute, i.e. a temperature of absolute zero means that there is an absence of temperature.  By contrast, zero on the Centigrade scale does not mean that there is no temperature, just that the temperature is relative to a zero point on the scale, which in the case of the Centigrade scale is the freezing point of water.  IOW, negative numbers are allowed on a relative scale.

Transcendental functions are not expressible as a finite combination of the algebraic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, raising to a power, and extracting a root. Examples include the functions sin(x), cos(x), cosh(x), sinh(x), e^x, ln(x), etc., and any functions containing them. Special transcendental functions are the reflection of sin(x), which is sin(‑x) and is equal to sin(x) and the reflection of cosh(x), which is cosh(-x) and is also identical to cosh(x). This is not true of cos(x), tan(x), sinh(x), tanh(x), e^x, ln(x) and other transcendental functions.  They are not self-reflective, reflections of themselves.

Because cos(x) is transcendental but not self-reflective this means that Euler’s formula is also transcendental but not self-reflective. In that equation x can take on any value between -∞ and ∞.  Because Euler’s Formula is a combination of a self-reflective sin(x) and a non-self-reflective cos(x), but trigonometric functions are repeating, there are many solutions with a zero coefficient of the imaginary axis, i.e. a rotation of the imaginary axis of zero: even multiples of π, including zero, which have values of cos =1 as the coefficient of the real axis; and odd multiples of π which have values of cos=  -1 as the coefficient of the real axis. Since in this case zero is not merely the absence of an absolute, and is in fact multiple numbers, it must be a relative zero, not an absolute zero. An absolute zero is the absence of a transcendental .  A relative zero is not.

So is zero transcendental?  That depends on if that zero is absolute or relative.

---

[1] Cosh, sinh, and related functions, repeat with a period of 2*π*i.  Tanh and related functions repeat with a period of π*i. 

Absolutely IV

 

With A Little Help From My Friends

Would you believe in a love at first sight?
I'm certain it happens all the time, yeah
What do you see when you turn out the light?
I can't tell you, but it sure feels like mine.

How certain are you that it happens all the time?

A random equation has two parameters: 1) its location, mean/median/mode, and 2) its scale, variance, uncertainty. The adage is that nothing is certain except death and taxes. Given that you can cheat on taxes, but you can’t cheat death, I would suggest that only death is certain, and thus life is uncertain, i.e. has a variance.

An exponential distribution also has a variance but is defined only for positive numbers. This restriction is identical to saying that its location is zero. It still has a scale parameter, a variance, that is given as λ. It is suggested that the exponential distribution is a distribution of the absolute. It can be coordinate transformed by translation to any location, µ, as long as µ>0 and then its Probability Density Function, PDF, becomes

λ*e^-λ*(x-µ)

and its Cumulative Distribution Function, CDF, becomes

1-e^-λ*(x-µ)

The median of an exponential distribution is generally given as ln 2/λ, but this is when the location is zero. With the translation of the location, the median is ln 2/λ+µ. The mean is 1/λ+µ.

A normal logistics distribution has both a location and a scale parameter. Its CDF is

½*tanh((x-µ)/(2s))+½.

For the median of the two distributions to be equal requires that s = (ln 2)/λ and that µ>0.

When the location of a logistics distribution is zero, then its upper half, above its median, looks like an exponential distribution with a location of zero. This is hardly surprising. The exponential distribution is also the equation of radioactive decay. Its scale parameter, λ, is then known as a half-life.

There is no need as Grushka (Grushka, 1972) and Reyes (Reyes, Venegas, & Gómez, 2018) wo each have proposed to combine an exponential with a normal (e.g. Gaussian or logistics) distribution.  An exponential distribution is only the upper half of a normal logistic distribution with a location of zero. That does not mean that a logistics distribution is an absolute. An exponential distribution, an absolute, is half of a random normal logistics distribution, life.  Of this I'm certain.

References

Grushka, E. (1972). Characteristics of Exponentially Modifed Gaussian Peaks in Chromatograhy. Analytical Chemistry Vol 44, pp. 1733-1738.

Reyes, J., Venegas, O., & Gómez, H. W. (2018). Exponentially-modified logistic distribution with application to mining and nutrition data. Appl. Math 12.6, 1109-1116.

 

Impossible

 

Impossible / It’s Possible

But the world is full of zanies and fools
Who don’t believe in sensible rules
And won’t believe what sensible people say,
And because these daft and dewy- eyed dopes
Keep building up impossible hopes,
Impossible things are happening every day!

Did you mean Improbable?

When I was growing up, many of my neighbors and relatives worked for the then headquarters of the Naval Construction Battalion of Engineers, "SeaBees", at Quonset Point Naval Air Station.  The motto of the SeaBees is “Can Do” and the phrase "With willing hearts and skillful hands, the difficult we do at once, the impossible takes a bit longer" is often associated with them.

I always wanted to be a Seabee, but I had to settle for being just an engineer.  As an engineer I may be willing, but I know engineers can’t ever do the impossible, just the improbable.  But often what is called impossible is merely improbable.  So ask an engineer.  He may be just the zany fool you need!.