Keep your nose out of it

In all the discussion about how to encourage children to read you rarely hear that some families might actually object to their children having their nose in a book. When I was a child this was a not uncommon attitude

The people who objected were not illiterates but reading, novels especially, meant you had gone somewhere into another world where nobody knew what you were up to, even though you were in plain sight. To have your nose always in a book was not too far from witchcraft or secret rituals, & so was especially undesirable in a girl

I thought that something of the sort persisted in the country when twice I was identified as ‘The lady who always reads on the bus.’ But I found that this was mainly because an awful lot of people simply cannot do it – it makes them travel sick. Once I was consulted for tips on how to do it, but since it was something I just could naturally do, I was unable to help

I understand a bit better now though. Especially on winter evenings when the combination of aging eyesight, poor lighting & a new generation of buses whose suspension conveys the impression that the wheels are square, makes reading uncomfortable, and yes, occasionally nausea inducing

It is possible though that the notion persists, that tv, dvds and computers are preferable because you can see, share, the same thing they are seeing

She loves you better than me; You
With your nose in a book

UA Fanthorpe: Sounds & Silences

The omniscient vet

Here’s something cheering for cold dark days.

Sit around the fire reciting in unison in true rumpty-thump style, with appropriate actions.

As a bonus, it can even be used as a fun lesson in the correct use of the apostrophe - as I know only too well after having copied it out, originally by hand some years ago, & now by typing it.

The Vet

To be a successful & competent vet,
Needs knowledge exceedingly wide,
For each of the patients he’s likely to get
Possesses a different inside.

He must know why the cat is refusing her milk,
Why the dog is not eating his bone,
Why the coat of the horse is not shining like silk,
Why the parrot does nothing but groan;

Why the ducks & the chickens are failing to lay
Why so faint the canary bird sings,
And if he is called to the Zoo he must say
An incredible number of things

If the lion’s caught a cold,
If the zebra’s getting old,
If the centipede has trouble with his feet,
If the hippo’s feeling ill,
If the bison’s got a chill,
If the Arctic fox is suffering from heat,

If some virulent disease
Has attacked the chimpanzees,
If the tortoise hasn’t stirred for several years,
If the bear’s too full of buns,
If the cobra eats her sons,
If the panther has a wife who chews his ears;

If giraffes have had a tiff
And their necks are feeling stiff,
If hyenas will not laugh at keepers’ jokes,
If the monkey’s pinched his tail,
If the rhino’s looking pale,
If the elephant eats paper bags & chokes,

If the camel hurts his hump,
If the kangaroo won’t jump,
If the crocodile turns cannibal & bites,
They run away & get
That omniscient, the vet
And expect him to put everything to rights.

Profoundly I pity the vet, who must learn
Such a very great deal for his pay;
My son, I advise you most strongly to earn
Your living an easier way.

Don’t attempt to attend the zoological crowd;
A far more advisable plan,
Is to call yourself ‘Doctor’, & so be allowed
To specialise only in Man.

Guy Boas

Link
Guy Boas" The Vet " Poem animation

Back to basics

The bankers & financial whiz kids are discredited, along with their “CDO research papers [which] apply abstract probability theory to the price co-movements of thousands of mortgages” (Paul Wilmott)

They ignore the real world where human behaviour modifies pure probability based on the casting of dice or tossing of coins

We are all Keynsians again now

Keynes, in his public life, was a very practical economist. But his early interest was in probability theory, & he published his Treatise on Probability in 1921

It may be worth revisiting. I have a copy on the bookshelf at home. I bought it second hand off a stall near Westminster Hospital a long time ago*. Perhaps I should get round finally to reading it


* The same stall where, on a different occasion, I bought a copy of Recent Economic Changes. Come to think of it, the stall was just south of the entrance to Smith Square, in those days home to the headquarters of both Labour & Conservatives, which may explain the kind of titles on offer

Links

The theory of probability: A key element in Keynes' revolution
Frank H. Knight

Gene selection

Discussion of the news of the birth of a baby from an embryo which was screened for a breast cancer gene has concentrated on the question of whether it is ethical to use genetic selection for a disease which is not absolutely certain to develop, would not develop until after several years of normal life and is in any case becoming ever more treatable

I am puzzled by another ethical question however

In this country pre-implantation sex selection is allowed only in the negative sense. For example where only boys would be affected by a particular condition, it is acceptable to choose only a female embryo for IVF

In this particular case it seems to have been OK to select a girl & then to screen out the faulty gene. Either boys cannot carry the faulty version, or it has no adverse effect on them, so it must have been the desire to have a girl which drove the need for the procedure

Or is there something I am missing

Family, First

Obama’s elder daughter is unusually tall for her age – she seems to come well up to her father’s shoulder in the photos we have seen

I can see now how my mother blenched when at much the same age I calculated that, at my current rate of growth, I would be as tall as my father by the time I was 15. He was 6’ 4”; my mother was a foot shorter. It must be easier to be a tall girl if you do not tower over your mother & almost everyone else in the family

There have been an unusual number of those snatched family photos. Not just the fixed happy-families-grin/m pose for the election address, but showing a relaxed, happy, confident & close family doing ordinary family things



The younger girl seems the typical little sister – looking cheekily at the camera & laughing at, or with, the photographers

I have seen only one photo of Michelle’s mother, Marian Robinson, who, reports suggest, will be living in the White House with them. I felt I recognised her instantly. Bien dans sa peau, in that useful French phrase. A calm & confident woman, one you would like to have as your mother, on your side all the way but sure of her standards & beliefs, someone you would not want to disappoint but who will give you confidence. Far too much to read into one photo! But interesting to ponder over the important influence that the women who brought up Obama and his wife have on all our lives now

There was a very interesting programme on Radio 4, Obama: Professor President, which gave me heart. We all know the possibly impossible burden our hopes are putting on the man. I was particularly relieved to hear that Obama is definitely a fox – he doesn’t think that there is only One Big Way To Truth. But at the same time he thinks & studies and analyses hard, has walked the walk in Chicago and in Africa.

he does not just shrug his shoulders & say with a charming grin Ah well, whatever works

Then & now

My statistical look at what I might die of could be criticised from at least two points of view

First it took no account of my personal or family medical history, nor of the fact that I am a smoker

I doubt I could find any reliable population data to apply to a woman of my age, & given that heart, stroke or cancer are the most likely killers for all of us there would not seem to be too much to be gained from the effort of estimation

Family history suggests a long life, especially on the female side. But we all well know that smoking shortens life, so I do not count on getting the average

The second criticism applies to all statistical forecasting: it assumes that the future will exhibit the same patterns as the past

I used data for all deaths in 2005 taken from the national registration service. The older group which I looked at – women over 85 – would all have been born before 1920

They benefited from the already rapidly declining mortality of early life – even at the end of the 19th century ¼ of children born did not survive to the age of 5 (though most of those deaths took place at or very soon after birth). Still they would have experienced a wide range of childhood infections. And yet most would have had to wait until they were at least 40 before they had any antibiotics

They would have lived through, or been born just after World War I and many would have served themselves in the forces during WWII. They survived the Depression of the 1930s

Most would have left school at 14, though for a lucky few higher education was becoming more accepted

Many of the oldest among them would have lost fiancés or potential husbands during WWI.

They would have experienced later menarche & earlier menopause.

Few would have had very large families.

It is highly unlikely that any, even amongst the youngest of their generation, ever used the Pill for contraception – especially not before their first child was born.


Many more than in my generation would have known what it was like to lose a child to death, if not in childhood then in war

But many would have seen their child be the first in the family to go to university, or even just to sit any kind of public examination

They would have eaten a diet rich in animal fat – olive oil came from the chemists & was used mostly to ameliorate earache

They would have been the first group of women for whom it was socially acceptable to smoke - though never on the street

Those who contracted breast or cervical cancer at an early age almost certainly died young

A few might have had HRT

The ones whose deaths I was looking at with a statistical eye, looking for clues, were the survivors of all that

Perhaps not so relevant a guide to what will happen to my generation after all

Link
Death Foretold By Nicholas A. Christakis

The right sort

One thing the Madoff thing has made clear to me, though I should have noticed before: It is not a good idea to grasp an investment opportunity which, even if only by implication, is being offered to you because you are the right sort of person. Of the right sort of status & position in life

Virginian Wade was a heroine of mine – proof that a girl was perfectly capable of studying mathematics at university. So when I read that her status & achievement had been recognised by an ‘invitation’ to become a Name at Lloyds I was suitably impressed – the reports stressed what an honour this was

Equitable Life was similar in that its problems were met with a kind of This sort of thing just does not happen to people like us – judges, senior BBC reporters, educated people

But then, who can we trust with our money?

Salt, the winter warmer

Todays off the wall question

Does salt work on people the way it does on icy roads? Like an anti-frost or de-icer


A nice cup or bowl of steaming soup, full of healthy vegetables & heart warming dumplings is an obvious comfort

But there is something about salty liquids which seems more warming even than hot chocolate with a ski run of cream on the top, or any milky drink

At a pinch, instant soup* may be better than Ovaltine, & Bovril better than tea at a football match on a day when icicles hang off your nose

Perhaps we just need higher blood pressure in cold weather


*Does Liam Byrne, the minister who gave such detailed instructions to his private office staff about what time to serve his soup, like it instant from a packet, or does a chef stand by to whip up a perfect little cappuccino at his command?

Death foretold

Amidst all the doom & gloom there have been a few seasonal new year, new beginning type pieces in the media

I have never really felt that about New Year, not even when living in hot countries. Here, in the dark & cold, how could it be a new start. Hibernation would be a better bet

Spring is when I feel a new beginning. I would say the New Year should be in April, were it not already spoken for by the taxman

Winter gloom is appropriate for the consideration of the other inevitability of life – death

I get extremely irritated when people say “people who do X are more likely to die”, as if not dying were an option

The probability that I will die is 1

The probability that I will die of any particular disease is either 0 or 1, it is just impossible to say which

But in a spirit of morbid enquiry I decided to look at what a frequentist would say were my chances, given the available data

The average woman of 60 in this country has not quite a quarter of a century still to go

Her life is overwhelmingly likely – on 2 out of 3 occasions – to end in one of the 2 biggies – diseases of the circulatory system, or cancer, with a more or less 50/50 split between those two. Respiratory disease is next on the list, with about half the chance – 1 in 7

But what if I am ‘better’ than average and live long enough to open all those 85th birthday cards?

Strangely, death gets more miscellaneous

Diseases of the circulatory system come out even more on top – 2 out of 5 chances of going like this

Cancer drops right down to 1 in 8. I was under the impression that cancer rates continue to increase with age, so either something else kills you first, or, more disturbingly, it is less likely to get diagnosed, treated & recorded

Respiratory disease gets a bit more common – perhaps pneumonia is the old woman’s friend as well as the mans

Diseases of the mind are just as likely as pneumonia though

Most strikingly a cause known as ‘Symptoms, signs & abnormal clinical & laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified’ accounts for 1 in 8 deaths. What the rest of us might call death from old age, I guess

Perhaps these are the only ones who, in the opinion of those who claim to be able to judge such things, do NOT die before their time

Links
Expectation of life

Causes of death


Related posts
What is life?

Will the sun come back again?

By the name of

An intriguing little snippet from The Times article about the naming of children in 2008

“While Muhammad remains one of the most popular names for newborn boys in Britain - research by The Times last year showed that it was second only to Jack - it was not one of the more than 300 male names that appeared in Times birth announcements last year”

Well it is clearly not the case that British Muslims do not read The Times. Could it be that there is no Muslim tradition of announcing the birth of a baby in this way? Does it mean that few Muslims are members of the particular social group which uses The Times pages as a tribal notice board?

Or could it be that there are proportionately exactly the expected number of births of Muslim boys announced, but no Muhammad (or its spelling variants) for the same sort of reason that The Times contains few Darrens or Kylies – considered a thing not done, the sort of name given to a child only by social inferiors

There is of course no tradition of naming a baby boy Jesus in this country, but that applies to all classes

Move along there please

The World, the Universe & Everything

Is ambiguous

See a wine glass or 2 Edwardian hatted ladies in profile silhouette. You can’t see both at once

Measure a particle’s position or its momentum

Resolve a logical confusion

You can’t

You have to find a new way of looking at the problem

Or find a new place to stand

Your problem will just disappear, because you cannot see it from here

It is still there

But hey! We have lots of interesting new things to see, new questions to ask, new problems to solve

Things to do. Things worth doing

Sometimes it really is better to forget the old problem because there is no such thing as closure

Move on

Related post
Irish jokes & schizophrenia

Candyfloss economics

Gillian Tett, assistant editor of the Financial Times, gave a very nice explanation/analogy of how the credit crunch came about on Womans Hour today

It’s like candy floss. You start with a certain amount of sugar – our real assets - & spin it round & round until you have a great ball of candy floss. We think it really has grown bigger, but we have only the same amount of sugar we started with. The rest is hot air

It is easy, especially when you are young & innnocent, to consume too much & be sick before you know it

And it doesn’t take very much to shrink the floss right back down again into a squidgy mess

Related post

Fighting the last war

Breach of the peace

Whatever happened to Behaviour Likely To Cause A Breach Of The Peace?

This catch-all used to be a staple of the court reports in the local paper when I was young. It even covered use of the F word in public – though delicacy demanded the word not be repeated – in some cases even police witnesses were allowed, nay instructed, to write down the words & pass them in a note to the Bench

Arbitrary? Perhaps. But surely better than this kind of nonsense - Don't Punch A & E Staff (Unless You Are in Wales)

Link

Breach Of The Peace news

Related post

The F Word

10 years old

One of the things which Maura Dooley said on Womans Hour & with which I heartily agree was that she regretted that children do not seem to be introduced to much grown up poetry at primary school these days. It gets in to you, becomes part of your fabric, even if you do not always understand it. The ones I remember best are those – such as A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever - which clearly meant something to the teacher. Perhaps it had something to do with War being such a recent memory

Not that reaction was always uncritical. I remember being deeply unimpressed with Daffodils – just doggerel was my lofty response

I was thinking again about my 10 year old self recently after I stumbled across a Could You Pass The Eleven Plus test on the BBC website


After a little hesitation I decided to risk humiliation, but found I was Top of The Class. Which was reassuring (all that talk about Alzheimers recently)

And to boast even more, I was rather impressed by my 10 year old self – I always loved this kind of thing & only took against the idea of IQ tests later in life – Bell curves, the only thing they test is whatever they measure yabba, yabba, yabba … Plus Eysenck’s assertion, that the question about why the dwarf who lived on the 14th floor of a New York apartment block always selected the button for the 12th floor when he came home, & walked the other 2 floors, is an example of the perfect ‘closed’ IQ question

I think I am probably inclined to underestimate what 10 year olds are capable of these days, & from what we hear schools do not generally stretch them either, focussing instead on purely ‘expected’ levels of attainment

Then I heard the Radio 4 programme about the remaining Grammar Schools & how only middle class parents can afford the coaching for the 11 plus these days. Sadly, the programme focussed more on the emotional aspects of putting children under pressure – some still failed despite the coaching

At least the parents can console themselves that their children will be at lower risk of early alcohol problems, according to a recent research report from Scotland - Smart kids are more likely to be heavy drinkers

Tobacco competition

How will corner shops display the prices of cigarettes when (or rather Big If) the proposed ban on open display of the packets comes in to force? Does competition law have anything to say on this?

Do ministers really think that the well being of society will increase if they damage, or even destroy, the viability of what is often the one legitimate commercial activity in some of the most depressed areas? Ministers were airily dismissing the estimated £500 cost of a shop refit (sounds far too low to me), & then there is the possible hit to profit margins

In these areas in particular it will become very hard to find legitimate supplies of tobacco, thus giving the criminal suppliers even freer rein

Have ministers really thought this through, or are they really so deluded as to kid themselves of widespread support from their fixed consutation exercise?

Aloof

Another poem from Christina Rossetti, much loved duringmy angst-ridden part of my teens

THE irresponsive silence of the land,

The irresponsive sounding of the sea,

Speak both one message of one sense to me:--

Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand

Thou too aloof, bound with the flawless band

Of inner solitude; we bind not thee;

But who from thy self-chain shall set thee free?

What heart shall touch thy heart?

What hand thy hand?

And I am sometimes proud and sometimes meek,

And sometimes I remember days of old

When fellowship seem'd not so far to seek,

And all the world and I seem'd much less cold,

And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold,

And hope felt strong, and life itself not weak

Eartha Kitt

Sad to hear of the death of Eartha Kitt. She managed to combine sexiness & real humour with An Englishman Needs Time & Old Fashioned Millionaire

Elevator poem

Maura Dooley read her poem about getting into an elevator with Leonard Cohen on Womans Hour today


Wonderful, especially for long time fans. It even made me a teeny bit nostalgic for Toronto

As she explained she wrote it several years ago, when Cohen had rather slipped out of the public consciousness, about an incident which really happened to her. Lucky woman. But great for the rest of us to have the poem

She can be heard reading it here

Related post

Leonard Cohen

The going rate

“The unemployment rate is just above one million” is the kind of sentence which irritates me, even when it comes in a helpful article such as that recently written by Tom Whipple in The Times

The word ‘rate’ is also frequently applied to the number of births

So what word do we use for the number of unemployed people expressed as a percentage of all in employment, or the number of births as a percentage of the population

Related post

The verb TO BE

Questions, questions

On balance I was disappointed with Natalie Angier’s book The Canon. Twirligig is the right word for it – although it contains many fine phrases I found the analogies, similes & metaphors overwhelmed the message. It was also disconcerting to find how many of the homely or up to date cultural references I failed to get, just because they were American. Still at least I know now, thanks to Google, that Spray-on Pam is a Product of Arthur Meyerhoff & nothing to do with scarlet swimsuits



Angier does give a very good explanation of what physicists mean by force, but I was disappointed to see early on the status given to the position of those such as Sir Richard Peto on data mining or exploratory data analysis. There is every difference between using statistical ‘significance’ to look for answers, & looking for questions or generating new hypotheses. I would go so far as to say that not analysing expensively acquired data thoroughly is a dereliction of duty - but that assertion does rather depend on how you defined the population to be studied & then selected your sample

And if I get really cross I might say that medical researchers will one day come to realise their dereliction in not always looking to see if there is a difference between the results for males & females

Even a 'significant' correlation with signs of the zodiac is not necessarily spurious. If I said that Leos are bad at exams, Peto might scoff, but even Ed Balls believes that late summer babies tend to do worse in exams because our academic year means they are always the baby of the class

On a related issue, I heard Professor Jim Al-Khalili say, on World Service Forum, that perhaps the continuing problems with physics might stem from the fact that we cannot observe the system from outside, citing Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. I had never thought to link Heisenberg to Gödel & Archimedes in this way

Related posts

The Universe as a bundle of thrums

Humpty Dumpty on statistical sampling

Baby of the class

Force or power: science or love

The universe as a flea