Blessed by the Potato

The just noticeable difference (JND) is the smallest difference in something that can be perceived. For instance, if you show me two pieces of string that are very nearly the same length, and then another similar pair, and another, there’s a certain length difference that I will just be able to perceive, and any that are closer together than that I won’t be able to tell apart. Similarly for other senses: two audio tones have to have a certain amount of difference in their volume or frequency in order for me to tell that they were different rather than the same tone repeated. The size of the JND is dependent on methods: you can notice a smaller difference in lengths if you look at two pieces of string side-by-side rather than one on one day, and one on the other. It can also help if there’s a point of reference, such as a grid in the background. But nevertheless, there will be some small difference below which you will be unable to tell two things apart.

So the JND can vary quite a bit depending on the experimental procedures, but given a particular method, the JND scales with the starting size of what you’re looking at: JND ∝ dl/L. If you have double the length of string, the difference in length between two comparison pieces also has to double before you’ll notice that there has been a change. If you’re in a dark room with one candle lit, lighting a 2nd is very noticeable addition to the brightness. If you’re in a bright room with a thousand candle power light on, lighting a candle may not noticeably increase the brightness — and if you can just notice adding (or subtracting) one candle against a background of say 200, then you should be able to just notice a change of 1/200^th of a candle against a background of one candle.

Let’s consider the case of hair. I cut mine every 50 days or so. It goes from about 0.3″ when freshly cut to about 1″ in that time, for a rate of growth of 0.014″ per day. After I cut my hair it takes about a week before I notice that it’s gotten longer. So the constant for the JND is:
0.014*7/0.3 = 0.33

If the starting length for hair was instead say, 12″, then the scaling indicates the JND would be 3.9″. That is, a girl with shoulder-length hair would have to cut off about 4″ in order to have a good expectation that — with a one day to the next observation — a boy would notice that indeed her hair had been cut. Getting a 2″ trim would fall well below the JND, and psychophysically, it would be highly unlikely for such a difference to be spontaneously noticed. Nay, nearly physiologically impossible for such a difference to be detected under such conditions.

Everyone’s JND constant will be different, and circumstances can vary (e.g., someone may consistently wear shirts with horizontal markings on them to serve as a guidepost, or an observer may have superhuman vision discrimination, or the hair may be pulled into a ponytail, making the judgment even more difficult).

But whatever the individual circumstances, don’t forget the pioneering psychophysics work of Weber when someone doesn’t notice your haircut — they may not have been able to!

Let’s start with the nazis: grammar and food.

For the grammar issue of the week, I bring you singular they: do you think it’s wrong to say something like “A consumer of 2012 expects their laptops to be lighter and more powerful than ever?” Or do you think the “they” referring to a single consumer is the wrong pronoun, and “him/her” should be used instead?

I’ve long been fine with the singular they: tradition was to use “him” in such cases, even where the gender was indeterminate. When that became politically incorrect, “they” seemed to be an appropriate alternative: it has some parallels in the disuse of thee/thou in favour of the singular ye/you (which then just became “you”). Many writers started to use it, and I hear it all the time in casual speech. It’s certainly a damned sight cleaner than putting in the awkward “his/her” or “his or her” compound everywhere.

One alternative I don’t care for is the idea that it’s somehow more correct to use “her” in place of “him” for a gender-uncertain third person pronoun. “A student has many books to buy at university, straining her budget.” The use of “him” in that kind of sentence has been traditional and common for so long that seeing “her” in its place makes me think that the writer must somehow know the gender — it’s not serving as an effective gender-unknown pronoun. I personally find that much more distracting than the singular they.

Like all things in life, there does need to be balance: we can’t have everyone making up their own dialect and rules, but “thou/thee” has long since slipped from common usage to anachronistic, and we’ve had to recognize that evolution. Similarly for now, writing “u” in place of you, or using numerals for homophones “to” and “for” is a disgusting mark of poor upbringing and laziness — a hopefully temporary artifact of T9 phones that will forever be forgotten with the rise of QWERTY smartphones. But I do have to accept that one day in the distant future — long after I’m dead — such usage may be commonplace. (And for all my acceptance of linguistic evolution, I will still spin in my grave if it happens.) The role of the grammar nazi is to try to keep that sort of thing from getting a foothold in the first place, not to deny the common usage long after it’s happened.

On to food/grammar nazi-hybrids: if you make a dish in a non-traditional way, does it cease to be that dish? I don’t think so: language evolves, as do tastes, yet again today I heard the old saying that “chili isn’t chili if it has beans.” Well, traditional Texican chili maybe, but I think it’s more common with than without these days, and it’s not like a totally different food either way. Or like a few years ago, when a friend of Italian descent tried to tell me that there’s no such thing as “vegetarian lasagna”, because lasagna by definition has meat in it. Well, fine, think that all you want, but my vegetarian lasagna (or as I call it, “lasagna”) is pretty damned tasty, and there isn’t any confusion over what it is I’m slopping on my guests’ dinner plates (or they’re able to surmount the seeming oxymoron). [Plus as an aside, my understanding is that the word refers to the noodle, not the dish.]

I made cinnamon rolls today — kick-ass ones, I might add — and someone asked if I put raisins in them. No, as a matter of fact, I did not, nor would I ever. Raisins are gross, and I think putting raisins in your cinnamon rolls represents a serious lapse in judgement… but they do not cease to be cinnamon rolls by the addition of the raisins and their dark influence.

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Blueberry has been getting big so quickly. I’m finding that she’s already getting heavy and tough to carry around: though to be fair I had a lot of years of training with an 8-lbs cat, so when she was ~8 lbs I was well inside my comfort zone; now she’s pushing me into the feats of strength zone.

It’s amazing how fickle she is: perfectly content to screaming banshee in a second flat. And just as often, back again. I know that movement helps to settle her, so I hold her and walk, or do a little baby rain dance. I got tired today after just a few minutes of the baby rain dance, and it made me wonder if I had missed striking the right balance in terms of when to have kids: too young, and well, you’re too young: not ready, not able to handle them. Too old, and you can’t keep up.

Then she started crying again, and I lost that train of thought. I plodded on, doing laps of the house.

Singing turned to pleading. Pleading to soft moaning. “Pleeaaasseee. Hushushushushshhhhh.” Then I thought perhaps this is how the zombie apocalypse would feel: zombies shuffling across the face of the earth without end, moaning while being gummed by a smaller, unhappy zombie.

The Ottawa Citizen had a great couple of articles on a joint NASA/NRC/CSA project to study snow storms and weather radar. While the first article about the project is not bad, what made it notable was the follow-up freedom of information release showing the ridiculous layers of bureaucracy and message massaging that had to happen before a non-answer was released. An op-ed the next day lamented the extreme information secrecy of the government.

I think scientific communication is important — indeed, it’s something I’m hoping to make a career out of here. So it’s kind of sad to see such an epic failure of communication in this case. What makes it especially sad is the number of people involved: I counted at least 4 different people in the FoI series of emails who were dedicating time and effort to not communicate, and there were more who appeared in just one or two short snippets. I bet you could not communicate with just one person in the department, or even an unhelpful sign on the door and a voicemail message. These guys, in theory, are supposed to help translate the science for the lay people and do the communications so the scientists can do science, though with the present government the entire goal may simply to act as a firewall between the scientists and everyone else. But wouldn’t everyone have been better off if one of the scientists just did the talking for himself?

So I see this kind of thing and can’t help but think “what are they getting paid for?” Couldn’t that money be better used for the main mission: science?

Another idiodic piece about hybrids in the press. It never fails that they say such inflammatorily stupid things that I get all angry at them. It shouldn’t be all that surprising: you don’t become an automotive journalist because you’re smart or know science or can do basic math, you do it because you like G-forces and want to make engine noises all day. You crave the open road and have an expense account for gas. The typical automotive journalist is about as far from a hybrid buyer as one could possibly get.

But for people who are stuck in stop-and-go and pay for their own gas, a fuel-efficient hybrid is a great choice.

Asking “why carry around the battery on the highway” is like asking “why carry around gears 1-5+R if I’m only going to use 6th on the highway?” except even dumber. If you bother to look up the ratings, you’ll see that not only is the Prius efficient in the city, it is also head-and-shoulders above any gasser on the highway — even diesels. Holy crap, it even beats out the tiny Smart Fortwo by almost 20%. There might just be something to this hybrid thing. I could go into the why of it*, but the point is it’s an extremely easy fact to check, yet I’ve seen these assclowns get it wrong so. many. times.

And if you’re a travelling salesman? Then a hybrid should be the only thing on your shopping list. With a lot of miles to put on, you’ll find the payback to be phenomenal. Ditto taxi drivers, who have found it’s cheaper to get a brand new Prius than a surplus former police cruiser Crown Vic.

“So hybrids, apart from their benefit for city drivers, have failed to sweep the world. Will anything change this pattern?”

Perhaps if instead of panning them at nearly every opportunity, if auto journalists actually came out and started writing some articles more along the lines of “well, the ride’s ok, I guess, and by paying a few thousand more up-front, you’ll save thousands in fuel expenses over the life of the car. If you do a lot of city commuting, or a tonne of driving in general like a travelling salesman, you should take a look.” Then maybe people might buy.

And on the heels of that ill-informed article, this diesel-scented turd.

“Diesel fuel should be taxed at a lower rate than gasoline for one simple reason: the fuel carries more energy than a comparable amount of gasoline, thus it is more efficient.”

Actually, that’s a good argument for diesel to be taxed more on a per-litre basis, since it’s using more barrels of oil per litre to make. But, the fact is, diesel is taxed less than gasoline: the federal excise tax is 10 cents/L on gasoline, and 4 cents/L on diesel. In Ontario, the provincial excise tax on gasoline is 14.7 vs 14.3 cents/L on diesel fuel.

“The fuel-efficient turbodiesel delivers the highway fuel economy of a Toyota Camry sedan.”

…without accounting for the higher energy density of diesel, and allowing for a very large fudge factor (using the V6 Camry vs the more popular V4, and even then, he’s off by over 6%; off by over 21% when comparing to the 4-cylinder).

Now, I’m not totally against diesel: it is more efficient than gas in many driving conditions (though not more efficient than a hybrid, and with about the same cost premium). A select few models will end up being cheaper over their lifetime than a conventional gas car. But it is a dirtier fuel, and one of the benefits of hybrids is reduced emissions as well as efficiency: diesel presents a trade-off (better efficiency but higher emissions). I simply don’t get the auto-journalists’ thinking of “diesel good, saves money and fun; hybrid bad, costs more up front” when it could have just as easily been the opposite. I suppose it’s their pre-existing bias towards diesel (more torque, grunt grunt grunt). It seems so arbitrary since those positions could easily be reversed (“The diesel Touareg is $5000 more than the gas version, a premium that would take over twenty years to break-even on.” “There is hardly any difference in fuel economy in city cycle driving, and with diesel fuel a bit more expensive than regular unleaded, there’s no point if you do anything but cruise the open road.” “The new emissions systems for them are completely untested, and with so few VW diesels on the road, good luck finding a mechanic if you run into a problem down the road.” “The AdBlu emissions control additive will need to be replaced frequently, and VW is very secretive about the pricing. Unverified rumours we are too lazy to fact check indicate that this could cost you an additional $5000 down the road.” “Diesel: fine for early adopters, but not ready for primetime.”)

* – Because the engine is more efficient. Atkinson cycle, yadda yadda yadda. And that is because the battery and motors are there for peak demand. Even on the highway they are used (e.g., to pass, or go uphill). It’s a far cry from dead weight — and even if it is, well, the numbers speak for themselves.

There is a company out there with the majority of its operations in China. It has had an incredible, unbelievable run in its stock price, up 400% from the bottom in 2009. This run has been supported by impressive sales numbers, growing the top-line (revenue) by better than 50% per year for several years running, and the bottom line (net income) by better than 70%.

They are in a business that is apparently not very capital intensive: their PP&E is less than a third of one year’s earnings, yet their margins remain very strong. This company generates an impressive amount of free cash, with minimal capex requirements (the single largest use of cash, by far, is for “investments”, which commentary indicates are largely fungible bonds). They carry an incredible amount of cash: 10X inventories, and almost 3 year’s worth of capex, in cash, at any given time. Including investments, they have resources to cover their current inventory and full-year’s capex 19 times over. They could stop all shipments, not make a single sale ever again, and still continue paying the expenses associated with the R&D and general operations of the company for a full 10 years by using the liquid resources they have built up.

That, my friends, is a staggering amount of non-productive assets to keep on the balance sheet. Why is it not going into R&D, or capex, or aquisitions, or better yet, to dividends and buy-backs? If you knew all the intimate details about a business that was doubling every other year — because you are running it — why would you ever choose to hold cash — so much cash — instead of buying more of that business? So my spidey senses start tingling: are the assets listed in the financial statements really there?

Is this the next great Chinese stock fraud?

Now of course, you probably all know exactly which company I’m talking about. We all know the company is real. The books are very likely real. I’m not seriously suggesting otherwise. But I have to wonder if perhaps when you are looking at this company if one of the risk factors you write down on your analysis shouldn’t be “potentially the biggest stock fraud since Nortel, WorldCom, or Enron. Biggest ever.”

Disclosure: no position. And yes, I am a little jelly.