this blog is worse than hitler

Fri 3 Oct 2008

sometimes you don’t need words to explain

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Mon 29 Sep 2008

a random walk down football lane

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Recently I was thinking a bit more about how humans perceive trends from random events. When a sports team does really well in a particular year, how much of that can you attribute to actual skill vs sheer random chance? As with most of life’s important questions, this one can be answered via perl script and graphs.

So what would happen if each game in a sports league was decided purely by luck? I used the NFL for this since their relatively small 16 game schedule means less data to sift through. The process is relatively simple:

I grab the schedule, save it, and parse it into a simple format so I can read it.
Compute each game of the season, and keep track of the season tally
At the end of the season, compare the simulated results against real ones

(more…)

Fri 26 Sep 2008

games

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Right now I have nothing to play. In one month however I will be utterly swamped with new games.

There is a new Castlevania game coming out for the DS… the first two for this platform have been incredibly fun 2D platformers and this looks like more of the same. Which in this case is pretty frigging aweseome. I actually went back and tried some of the older versions of this game on the Wii and PS3 download stores and I was quite underwhelmed. I also am underwhelmed by the descriptions and videos for the 3d Wii version. I’ll stick with my DS, thank you very much.

LittleBigPlanet is something I’ve been looking forward too since it was announced back during the early stone age. Now I just need to find people who have a PS3 so I can try out their multiplayer options without having to cooperate with angsty 14 year olds from Kansas.

But the biggest one I am waiting for is Fallout 3. Post apocalyptic single player RPG by the makers of the fantabulous Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Given how many hundreds of hours I poured into Oblivion, I have really high hopes for this one and based on the gameplay videos I’ve seen I actually think it’s going to meet those high expectations. I have the special edition on preorder because I think what I really need is a Fallout 3 themed lunchbox.

In the meantime, I got the original Civilization to work under dosbox and that turns out to still be quite fun to play. When in doubt, head back to the joys of 1991!

Wed 24 Sep 2008

reliability of wikipedia

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How reliable is Wikipedia? Short answer is… not very. At any point in time, someone could have vandalized the page to serve their own biased agenda — the fact that it may get revert moments later doesn’t change the underlying reality that for any given page load the data should be considered unreliable.

However, despite its unreliability I tend to rely on it quite a bit when I’m trying to understand or learn about a new topic. And I’m told by friends that they treat Wikipedia the same way. Why do we trust and rely on an information source that we know we can’t really rely on or trust?

What occurred to me the other day was that in my head I treat information procured from Wikipedia with the same reliability category that I place non-expert secondhand source information in. If a friend or associate would tell me that the King of Belgium has six fingers, I’ll pretty much believe that. That is to say, since it’s not super important information I’ll just assume that this is true — but if I encounter a Belgian who insists that Belgium doesn’t even have a King I will happily disregard the former knowledge without much hesistation.

I think this is why Wikipedia actually works for most people, despite its unreliability. It works in a way that we are familliar with because we are already quite used to holding information in our heads with various states of trust.

Mon 22 Sep 2008

incentive imbalance

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In a recent article about the ongoing financial crisis in the US, Michael Lewis makes an interesting observation:

[Merril Lynch CEO O'Neal] took a business that wasn’t well designed to take huge trading risks and wagered it all on a single bet. [...] But interestingly, if any of these [Wall Street CEOs] had behaved well and resisted the pressures and temptations of the moment, his firm would have, for several years, dramatically underperformed the competition. Probably he would have lost his job.

Of course, Lewis doesn’t seem to understand the implications of what this truly means, and how important it is to understanding the fundamental reason for the collapse.

Deregulation left the entire financial industry (and others) at the position where their self-interest did not coincide with that of society at large. If you apply the thought process of Adam Smith’s invisible hand, you can can see that in this case the natural process of the deregulated system led to an unstable equilibrium where people took on too much risk, and was fated to inevitable collapse. Everyone involved did the “right” thing for themselves, but ended up being bad for everyone.

The villains in this case are not the CEOs who directed their companies towards failure — given the parameters of the system they had no other choice. The villains are the millions of Americans who worship at the altar of deregulation, who have bought the pre-packaged lie that the free market is the solution to all problems. They are the ones who chose leaders who created the system that has come to its inevitable failed conclusion.

And the solution? To produce sensible regulation so that the invisible hand will promote a positive and stable equilibrium. With such regulation, CEOs and investors would have incentives to act in their self-interest without causing huge bubbles destined to pop. I do not expect this to happen, instead I expect to see token actions which save the asses of the specific firms currently in trouble but does little structural work to actually prevent something like this from happening again.

Sun 21 Sep 2008

$$ e-z make money fast $$

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I’m not much of a gambler myself, but I know lots of people who enjoy casino gambling from time to time. It seems to be the consensus opinion that these (non gambling-addict) people set a limit for how much they are willing to lose during their visit, to avoid getting in seriously over their heads.

In a random game such a limit actually encourages people to consistently exit the game at a loss — even in a game where the odds are 50%. Due to simple probabilities, even in a the most fair game possible you can quickly build up swings of wins and losses that will compound your balance far from its starting point. By having a fixed exit point on the losing side, one can guarantee that given enough time you will eventually hit that point.

Example: let’s say you went to Vegas and set a limit of $150 maximum loss. In a simulated 50% game repeated 10000 times, you would have finished with about $400 positive balance. But thanks to your loss limit, you would have been out before the random positive swings took you there.

My hypothesis then was to leverage this effect in reverse: what if you didn’t set an loss limit, but instead set yourself up for a success limit? I wrote a simple perl script to test this out. The results were disappointing, though not really surprising.

The short answer to my hypothesis is that it’s correct, except that you will often need an incredible amount of iterations until you get to your target. And during that time it is unfortunately unlikely that you will have to have a lot of money in the bank just to get out of the nearly inevitable random holes.

With “reasonable” options (like 2000 iterations, $100 target, and $500 maximum loss) I can simulate a day of virtual gambling. By running a whole bunch of these days consecutively, I found (unsurprisingly) that in the long term net result ends up being close to zero. In the end, for random games your results simply match the odds of the game you are playing. In a casino where the odds are never going to be 50%, that means you lose.

This whole exercise reminds me of a kid, when I independently invented what is known as the Martingale Betting System. I thought I was a frigging genius until I charted it in Excel and realized that at some point you’d need an infinite bankroll just to win $1.

Mon 12 May 2008

embarrassing weekend activities

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This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but I watched golf on television on the weekend. And… I actually kinda liked it.

My dad is a big golf fan (playing and watching) and I was up there for the weekend visting my folks… so when the golf was on I was watching too. And as much as I make fun of how boring golf is, and how ridiculous the annoucers are, etc… it was pretty good especially at the finish. Now, I’m not going to watch it every week, but I defnitely see the attraction.

Wed 7 May 2008

gta4 mini review

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Everywhere you read how awesome the game is, from the game review sites to the New York Times. And they are right, it’s a very good game.

However, it’s not the best game evar. In fact, while I admit I’m not fully complete yet I think it’s already safe to say that GTA:Vice City and GTA: San Andreas are actually more fun to play.

The biggest mistake Rockstar made was to make the driving more realistic. Driving just about any car is a pain, with horrible acceleration and loose handling, it’s far too difficult to make controlled turns quickly. And driving a bike (what was one of the best parts of the GTA experience) is now virtually impossible, because once you get up to speed you’re highly likely to hit a car or other obstacle that sends Niko hurtling through the air to his death. Realistic sure, but lame!

My other complaint is that with this series they came “back to earth”, so to speak. I’m probably in the minority but I played GTA:SA to completion and really enjoyed its far-out storyline, with planes and alien technology and multiple-city landscape. The simpler one-city environment of Liberty City (while still quite large) feels constrained to me.

Don’t get me wrong… the city is incredible and breathtakingly beautiful. And they’ve added lots of depth and richness to the environment and the story. I love their in-game internet and television station and radio talk shows. The plotline and missions are still pretty darn great — one cutscene in particular made me laugh until it hurt.

I am having a great time with the game, but I want more. Bring on GTA4:Vice City! (or London, or whatever it will be) and make driving fun again!

Wed 7 May 2008

repeat after me, three times please

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DON’T BUY MICROSOFT PRODUCTS
DON’T BUY MICROSOFT PRODUCTS

DON’T BUY MICROSOFT PRODUCTS

(and yes, this includes xbox… it may be “ok” for now but just imagine they control that market too)

Tue 8 Apr 2008

unboxing

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Unboxing the PS3 is an… interesting… experience. Scratch that, a better term would be frightening.

Where the Wii is all happy and friendly and small, the PS3 is giant and imposing and shiny and modern. I think a vechicle-based analogy would be Vespa vs Tank.

I recall a few years ago laughing that the US gov’t were blocking exports of PS2s to certain countries because of features they could be used for arms.. seemed ridiculous at the time. With the PS3 however, I’m kind of afraid if I hit the wrong button I’ll have started a game of Global Thermonuclear War.

The picture looks surprisingly nice on the RCA cables supplied… and when the HDMI cables arrive obviously it will be much better. Oh, and it will look even nicer when some games arrive. :-)

Mon 7 Apr 2008

trooolly troolly trool

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coworker: my team is playing today
me: oh yeah, what team is that?
coworker: kansas state university, final four tonight
me: oh wow, Kansas has a university now? how… progressive of them.

Sun 6 Apr 2008

bought a ps3 today

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As you could probably tell from the previous post, I’m pretty excited about the upcoming launch of GTA IV later this month. Today I ordered a PS3 and pre-ordered the game so I’ll be ready for when that ships.

Based on the advice of some guy on the internets suspiciously named “steve”, I also bought Oblivion which will hopefully tide me over until GTA IV arrives.

Wed 2 Apr 2008

OMG I want

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