From flamingos to six degrees of separation

Another photo (of flamingos, by JM Labat/Ardea.com) which I wanted to put on my blog for no reason other than I just like it

Which set me wondering, why am I drawn so to photos of birds?

The miracle of flight, the colours, the song, are obvious attractions of birds in real life. But why photographs particularly?

I started to think it must be something to do with symmetry – the pleasing curves, the fascination of feathers

And something about the way they organise themselves in flocks

Which jogged my memory about an article in the June issue of Significance which I had put aside to read later. I am so pleased that it was not just one of those things which slipped down the pile of forgetfulness because it is just so interesting & nicely, even lyrically, written by Andrea Cavagna & Irene Giardina

It is The Seventh Starling & reports results from a European Commission funded project call STARFLAG (surely even UKIP could not carp at that)

For 3 years researchers photographed flocks of starlings form the roof of The Museum of Roman Art. They then applied some clever maths & stats to analyse in 3D the behaviour of the flocks

This kind of collective behaviour is self-organised – there is no leader or special form of intelligence at work. It generally stems from simple rules such as stay close to your neighbours & match your speed to theirs

The STARFLAG project came up with a surprise. Instead of interacting with all neighbours within a fixed distance, starlings react with a fixed number of neighbours, regardless of how far away they are

They use a topological measure of distance (rather like the London Tube map) rather than a tapemeasure. unlike physics, whose laws (so far) all depend upon metric measurement

In the starlings case the number of neighbours is 7

The authors end with some speculation about how often the number 7 pops up in biology & social science

Which left me thinking about 6 degrees of separation. I have never played the game, but I wonder: does it refer to the connections between 6 people, or to the 6 connections which link 7 people?

This self-organising principle has implications for politics, & helps show how attempts to organise us all from the centre, to make us conform (even when it is Good For Us) are doomed to failure

Links

http://www.smc.infm.it

The Magical Number Seven

Related posts

Money & connection

Trying to connect you

A clear & present danger

Corners on stairs are obviously a danger to the older ones among us

There was my accident with my back

And now I read of a man who managed to fracture his thigh (albeit soon after a hip repair) just by turning a corner on the stairs

Must be something to do with the way you put your feet down, as my neighbour said

There must be some kind of trick we could learn to stop us doing this. Either from the Alexander Technique or something that every physio knows

They could do us a service by publicising this so we can all practise, get to the stage where we do it automatically, without thinking, to keep ourselves in good nick

Related posts: Cola analgesia

Putting ones foot down on psychosomatic disease

Medium wave

There clearly is something about early September which makes medium wave go funny – it has been happening again most evenings this week

Alack & alas, however, Radio Vlaanderen has not dropped in for a visit

Related posts: Tales of the ionosphere

Radio Vlaanderen

Cost of reading

I had been wondering why The Times was trying so hard to flog subscriptions

Well we found out on Monday. A 14% price rise

And they could not even be bothered to print the winning numbers for the Lottery

The catch is, you have to take The Sunday Times as well

They could not pay me enough to do that

Related post: The price of reading

Privacy & sharing

An article by David Rhind, chair of the old Statistics Commission, brought it home to me that I have been thinking only very superficially about the question of privacy & data losses

Rhind lists 10 conflicting priorities for (Government) statistical services, & ends with an 11th: protect confidentiality at all costs. The wording makes it plain that its 11th placing reflects not lack of importance but the need to go away with that one ringing in the ears

But there is so much to this issue of confidentiality that it could be - & may well be - an academic discipline all on its own.

One would start at a high level – the whole principle of privacy in law, sociology, philosophy, politics. And history – revisiting the late 18th century objections to the holding of the first English census would be instructive. Especially as, then as now, part of the justification for government intrusion was a threat to national security, in this case from the French

Another more recent piece of history to read could be the report of the independent external audit of arrangements for keeping individual details secure in the 1971 Census. Although the world of IT & data processing has moved on so far that much of this now seems irrelevant & quaint (if memory serves, concerns were expressed about someone possibly sneaking a peek through a window) the importance attached to the issue is salutary. Bernard Levins column in The Times of 15 April 1971 (available via the Times Archive) which helped ignite the debate is also entertaining

Angela Dale won the RSS West medal for her work on supporting the census needs of users outside government. This has been a long battle, particularly for the academic social sciences. The result is that 5 different microdata files are available for the 2001 Census. NONE has any names or addresses but by limiting the amount of detail which is available care is taken to ensure that identities cannot be deduced

There are 3 different levels of access to these files. The most draconian: “The file can only be accessed within 1 of 4 ONS offices in England & Wales & there is a rigorous application procedure …. & careful vetting of outputs”

The census is of course compulsory, but statisticians generally operate on the basis that, even in voluntary surveys, no individual details will be disclosed. Social statisticians in particular are used to sharing data, & for many years UK Data Archive at Essex University has performed the useful function of collecting, storing & making available in electronic form to researchers a wide range of academic & government surveys with appropriate confidentiality safeguards. Those thinking about modes of administrative safeguards might usefully look in to this experience

The Essex experience also brings another aspect of data & information sharing, namely coding standards & the need to have these well documented. There may ultimately need to be agreed international standards, as there are already for example for cause of death & international trade. But at the very detailed level there is a need to allow flexibility or else risk being overwhelmed with too much detail

Not the least of the standards which need to be clearly understood, if not agreed, is the treatment of missing data. I have come to grief myself with my own private small scale applications when the software automatically assumes that the absence of any data in a field, or an X instead of a number, is given a value of 0. This could be disastrous in large scale administrative applications

There are also the problems of data validation & error control – because errors will arise. Even the widely used Six Sigma system for quality control in industry assumes an error rate of 3.4 per million. Applied to population databases covering 60 million or more people whose circumstances are liable to change, that is a lot of errors

Which is one reason why the idea of a National Identity database is so worrying

If this were to be the definitive identifier for everybody (a fond hope) then the effect of any mistake or error in a record would multiply alarmingly - & blight lives. As Sir Fred Hoyle said, in another context, If you try to makeeverything consistent, the penalty is that you might be wrong in everything

The government is also vastly underestimating what it will cost in money & manpower to administer such a monster

Now the whole purpose of statistics is to provide aggregated numerical data, while the whole purpose of administrative databases is precisely to provide personal information, usually to aid the delivery of some kind of personal service or benefit, though not always. As well as medical treatment or pensions, it may be to arrest you as a terrorist or to confirm that, when asked if you are fit to work with children, the powers that be can issue a ringing Nothing Known

But quis custodiet? Surely all those who have access to such databases be vetted & registered too?

Access & usage should also be monitored

Annual reports made to Parliament

August rain

This useful chart showing monthly rainfall since 1914 was published in The Times on Saturday

We had already been told that this August has not been particularly wet

It intrigues me that August 1976 (the year of the great drought), though low in rain, is not the lowest on record. That was beaten by 1995 & 1947, both as it happens memorable years for me for other reasons.

Actually I do not particularly remember the summer of 1947 – the sun shone every day at that age – but I do remember the terrible snows which came at the beginning of that year. I would like to think that summer really was sunny, gave us some much deserved cheering up

On a sombre note, I wonder what effect the rain of August 1917 had on WWI

Related post: SAD summer

Link: Met Office: Winter chills: 1947 and 1963

Numbering the houses

We are told that there is a boom in the old-fashioned practice of taking in lodgers to provide some extra cash in these crunch-ridden days. The government has a rent-a-room scheme & the BBC is producing a 21st century version of Rising Damp

There’s always a demand for rooms in cheap areas, says a spokesman for a lodgers website

The BBC will be very multiculturally correct, with Polish workers, Kosovan refugees, a Thai bride & an Iranian immigrant as tenants

But since we are talking about rooms in peoples homes, I expect there will be a lot of discreet discrimination going on, though not as blatant as in the old No Irish, No Coloureds, No Children days

Just recently there has been a renewal of demands to abandon the decennial census of population, on the grounds that it is too slow & cumbersome to keep up with rapid changes at local level such as those brought about by the recent wave of immigration

Those arguing this case have a point but not, I think, a winning hand. For in this country the census of population is combined with a census of housing. No other source can give so much basic detail on the stock & how people organise themselves to fit into it. This is especially true when it comes to individual towns & even smaller areas

At a time of possibly seismic changes in the supply & demand for housing, we surely need reliable information on the response to these changes

Link: The Numbering of Houses

Related posts: Desirable tenants

Children not wanted here

Presidential parenthood

How many American presidents have been the father of sons?

I ask because I can only think of 2, in recent memory: Kennedy & Bush Snr

I am sure that the current instance is not the first example of unmarried teenage pregnancy in the daughter of a senior politician. I was pondering the reaction, wondering to what extent this could be said to be a feminist issue

I doubt it would be seen as a reflection on a male candidate’s parenting skills – it is the mother’s job to raise her daughter properly, to know how to behave herself – whatever that means.

I was at college with a girl who, as part of the preparations for leaving home, was marched off to Harley Street by her mother to be kitted out because “I am NOT going to have you getting pregnant.” I never met her, but she sounded terrifying to me

I also remember in the 1960s that the daughter of a senior politician became an Unmarried Mother, but what made it newsworthy was her declared intention to keep the baby (rather than give it up for adoption), not her father’s failure to keep his daughter on the straight & narrow

The other sense in which it would be different is if a political son had impregnated a girl, unless the circumstances were truly horrifying

A change is as good as?

This cartoon, by NB of The Times, makes a point too often overlooked in epidemiological research – or at least in the way it is reported in the general media

Changing your classification does not necessarily bring you the benefits, health or otherwise, observed in the new group




Related post: The price of long life & happiness

How to value a painting

Patrick Hosking provided some intriguing information about the value of Titians in the current (almost non-existent) market.

The most that any Titian has ever fetched at auction is £7.48m – in 1991

Only 5 paintings have ever fetched more than £50m, all by 20th century artists

The last Titian on the open market, in 2005, failed to reach its £5m reserve

No painting has ever been sold for as much as £150m

So it seems strange that we are being invited to contribute towards the £100m being asked for 2 Titians, said to be worth £300m the pair

Actually I always have trouble with the notion of saving paintings for the nation. ‘We’ acquired them when ‘we’ (in this case the Duke of Bridgewater, he of the canals & the new home of the Hallé) were the oligarchs of the day, so it seems only right that we bow to those of our own day

Sarah Palin

Janet Daley welcomed the ‘masterstroke’ of Sarah Palin’s nomination on Woman’s Hour this morning, but added that it was a complete surprise, nobody saw it coming

This surprised me, because I knew I had heard her name suggested as a possible, & although I take an interest I am no avid junkie. The mystery was solved moments later when a woman from Republicans Abroad said that Woman’s Hour itself had been more farsighted, she had been on the programme months ago when Palin’s name was discussed

Apart from Condoleezza Rice, I would not be able to remember any other names mentioned, but I have a special interest in Palin because of all the hours I spent researching a Victorian Chief Constable of that name. I even made a point of checking in the paper to see if it was her maiden or her married name, out of a vague curiosity about whether there could be any connection. Not impossible – although the Chief Constable died without issue, he had at least one brother with a large family & they were used to travelling the world. Palin was born in Bombay, his wife in Philadelphia, & at least one brother in law returned to the States as an adult

Actually Captain Palin is indirectly responsible for my becoming a blogger. I was wrestling at the time with the niceties of Google searches. Put in Palin & you get a gazillion returns for Michael. Put NOT Michael & add “Chief Constable” & you still get umptynump references to a Monty Python sketch. Put “Henry Palin” “Chief Constable” “Manchester” & you get references to Harold Shipman’s murderous activities – the solicitor representing some of the families is of that name, & at one point they tried to sue the present day Chief Constable for damages.

So I was wrestling with the problem – if you do a Google search & nothing turns up, how do you know if there is nothing there or you just haven’t put in the right search terms?

It struck me that if I provided some content I would be better placed to study how Google works (especially for small sites). Little did I know that I would become hooked

Still, at least it proves you are never too old to acquire new interests

Library ladders

If I want to reach a book from the top shelf in the library, I just stretch up my arm & take it

My friend does not do that. She may ask someone else to get it for her

There’s no point shouting at her, telling her to get it herself, stop being lazy, make the effort. She is only 5’ 1” tall

Thank heavens someone long ago invented the library steps, or more recently the brilliant, Dalek look-alike kick step

So far, so obvious

But why, when the reason is not obvious, are we so ready to assume that people are just being lazy, ignorant, slave to their own impulses, whatever, when the reason, if only we could understand it, is an equally obvious, & ultimately physical, limitation on their freedom of action, which needs a different kind of action to overcome

BMI over 25? You eat too much. Pull yourself together

Still smoking? Where is your will power?

Walk past people in the street? Who does she think she is, ignoring me like that

And on, and on

Actually, I need help with the books on the top shelf nowadays. I can no longer read what it says on the spine, so I need to get up close & personal. Thank heavens someone already invented library steps, so I can just help myself without anybody thinking it odd, or without my having to own up to my age-related decline

How can genes move without people?

To reduce it to its most simple:

Suppose boy from Cave #1 shares his genes with those of girl from Cave #2. Each stays living in their own family home, there is no custom for setting up home on your own

In due course, the new boy from Cave #2 shares his genes with a girl from Cave #3

The procedure is repeated, until eventually genes from Caves 1 & 2 have reached Cave 10 …..

Now multiply this up, wrap it in clever mathematics, matrices or something well beyond my payscale, & there you have it

Drawkcab

Two palindromes I love - short & very sweet & ever so slightly mysterious:

Never odd or even

Do geese see God?

Relative density

Much to my astonishment, for each of the last 4 weeks I have produced only 1 (by no means bulging) supermarket plastic carrier bagful of non-recyclable rubbish. It used to be 3 or 4

This has been achieved mostly by a reduction in volume, rather than in mass. I ruthlessly squash all plastic – food trays, yoghourt pots etc. It involves sheets of newspaper on the floor & much stamping with my garden shoes on. Rather therapeutic, on bad days.

I remind myself of my mother – you could tell it was best to make yourself scarce when she was chopping wood (for kindling for the fire) or flattening cardboard boxes. We used to get rather a lot of those, back then, because they were used for transporting all sorts of thing, including the weekly order delivered by the grocer’s boy on his bicycle. We made good use of as many as we could – for example, storing apples for the winter - but eventually some just had to go

The other ways in which I have reduced domestic waste are by being more careful about food – anything in the fridge or the vegetable basket has to be eaten. Which has led to some rather interesting soups, stews, fried rice or frittatas. Not sure if I am going to keep that up.

And being a bit more careful about using tissues, kitchen towel & cotton wool pads.


And cleaning all aluminium foil, squdging it into a ball so that it can go with the recycling

Oh, and leaving more of my waste behind. It was an old habit, bringing my waste home with me, which dated back to the time when public litter bins were less common on the street, & much less frequently emptied. Now I leave any newspaper supplements or inserts which I will not read, cigarette packets, surplus packaging etc etc behind



So plastic, household paper, a small amount of vegetable peelings, egg shells etc - that is it



With agreement from my neighbour I take the double wrapped bag & put it in her wheelie bin, which saves me a chore & saves the bin men a few seconds. We shall have to stop that if they start charging for waste

Golden lottery

I was really intrigued by this photo of Michael Phelps, which was used in an Omega ad. I wonder how much of his success is made possible by the physical properties he drew in the nature/nurture lottery, bearing in mind that the picture may have been electronically altered for artistic effect.

This is not to suggest that years of effort & training do not count - we can all improve on what we start with; but nature is bound to set limits on what can be achieved.

The first noticeable features are the curves at the edges of chest & thigh. I display real ignorance when I ask if you can have muscles up there – it seems to be all bone in me! In comparison with those thighs however, the legs below the knee look almost as undeveloped as the tadpole legs of a baby

Then there are those broad feet & unusually gappy toes. Does it help or hinder his forward propulsion to have water rushing through those gaps?

And those long arms*. Doing the best I can with an ordinary straight edge ruler I reckon that, with long, long fingers fully extended, they will reach to his knees, something usually associated (in cartoons) only with very low IQ

Together with the information that his training diet comes to 12,000 calories a day, he is living proof that variance, not averages, are the statistics which count

Without variation there can be no evolution, no progress

*Post script: Phelps is 6ft 4in tall with an armspan of 6ft 7in

Louis Smith, who won a bronze medal for Britain in the gymnastics, also has unusually long arms, with his span being 2" greater than his height. In his case the extra length seems to lie entirely between elbow & wrist, his upper arms look a normal length

The poor young man has also developed back problems from all his training on the pommel horse - he cannot stand for more than 30 minutes at a time

Related post: Ancient feet

Black communities

Another programme about knife crime & youth murders on the radio last night

Discussion of what is undeniably true – the current wave involves a disproportionate number of young ‘black’ boys

So, much discussion about the black community

This really does not make much sense. There is a black community only in the way that there is a white one, if ‘We’ all, English, Polish, Jewish, Irish, Catholic, Scottish, Liverpudlian, Cornishman, old, young, Oxbridge graduate, NEET – we all share values, customs, experience & as a community are responsible sometimes only for our own, not for ‘them’

In the same way, West Indians, Africans, middle-class professionals, footballers, Mancunians, Brummies, musicians, Muslims, Evangelicals, boys excluded from school, English-born, refugee, have no more necessarily in common than the colour of their skin - & even that is true only if you stretch black to mean not exactly white

Even back in the 1960s, when the word black was not considered polite and non-white faces were only just becoming a commonplace in our cities, there was an interesting debate (at least among my fellow students) about whether you could tell the difference, on sight, between an African & someone from the Caribbean. I think you could, with a high degree of accuracy, though obviously not 100%. We notice more tell-tale signs than we think


We know that the simple questions What is your name? & Which school did you go to?, are, or could be, loaded questions in Northern Ireland, revealing as they almost certainly did, whether you were Catholic or Protestant. I was fascinated by an (Open University?) programme, which reported research which demonstrated that Northern Irish people could also tell, with a high degree of accuracy, someone’s religion from a photograph

There may be nothing in this, but I am surprised never to hear anyone bring it up in relation to youth crime. The influx of black people of many different national origins is one of the things which has changed in the last decade or so. How much does the current unrest spring from rivalries between boys of different national origins? Somalis v Eritreans, Jamaicans v Eastern Caribbeans, West v East Africans. Mixed race v ‘pure black’.

Or whatever

Related post: Community is a wonderful thing

SAD summer

Paul Simons, weatherman, as always has put his finger on it

This August has not been especially wet – on course only to be the wettest since 2004!

Not particularly cold, either, though not mostly warm enough to go out without a jacket or sweater. Not even warm enough, most days, to sit comfortably in the garden

What it has been is gloomy & overcast. Rain is always threatening, so you cannot go out without umbrella, or shower proof jacket & having to decide whether to risk sandals or settle for something more solid to guarantee dry feet

No cheerful cheering sun

Overcast also means no starry nights

Even a small dose of stargazing last thing before going to bed lifts the soul

On nights when I have trouble sleeping – or even just on pleasant late evenings - I like to go out & sit on the wall by the stream. The sound of running water, the feel of cool air on the face, looking at the stars (& the flashing lights of the occasional passing plane) are better than any sedative

As it is, we are all just suffering from unseasonal SAD

English as she is spoke

Much talk – again – about the desirability of simplifying English spelling

Even as someone who took to reading, writing – yes and spelling - very easily, I can have some sympathy with this, though you do not have to think about it for very long to realise what a fond hope it is.

Phonetically, whose pronunciation do we go for – even if we think only about ENGLISH English & leave all other nations to do their own thing?

What do we do about useful homonyms/homophones such as rite, write, right, wright?

Better to think of it all as just a delightful game

There is however scope for considering how we should treat those who do not find it so easy

One of the brightest, most energetic & far sighted people I know cannot spell – though secretaries & colleagues usually do not have too much trouble deciphering anything he has written. In his case however, they are only too willing to make the effort.

I was at school with a boy, a son of Chinese immigrants. Everybody knew he was an outstanding chemist, but he failed repeatedly to pass his English O level, a basic requirement for university entrance. It was not just the family background – his brothers & sisters did not share his problem. In the end some kind of compromise was found, though I do not know what it was

I heard someone on the radio talking about a man who is one of the best paediatric brain surgeons. It took him much struggle, & many more years than is normal, to acquire his medical qualifications because of dyslexia

Should we be prepared to excuse, or make allowances for those who have such handicaps only if they show such determination or show that they are outstanding in other ways?

There may be some scope for having a kind of hierarchy of penalties for misspellings in public examinations – going easy on those who spell supersede with a c, for example

There used to be a system like this of a sort when students in the West Indies took the standard English GCEs. A committee of distinguished folk would draw up a list of Caribbean usages which were acceptable & should not be penalised by the English markers

Cartoon by Austin

Who do they think they are?

When I was a child it was common to be ticked off for using the word she

She is the cat’s mother. Use her proper name

This mystifies me still

But perhaps some atavistic objection to the pronoun partly explains why, before the 1970s wave of feminism, most people were happy that, linguistically speaking, the male embraced the female

The pronoun which I should like to see banned is they

Not in a simple everyday sense: “Where are the children?” “They are in the garden”

It is the they who are not us which upsets me. They who do things which people like us would not dream of doing. They who are they just because they look like, share a skin colour or a nationality with, someone who has done something we deplore

The they who have only one identity

Who perforce share all the qualities or characteristics which we assign to their community

Related post; It really ought to be perdaughter