A whole bunch of shorts!
A whole bunch of shorts!
Same Bat Time, New Bat Channel (err. format)
Thank you everyone for the feedback on format, likes, and dislikes. The beginning of 2021 will see the evolution of Am I or Are The Others Crazy. Let’s keep it moving!
Curious Minds… How does Drano Work?
If you’ve got pipes, then this one is for you. Drano, removes clogs, clears pipes but on my most recent application I got to thinking; does this do what I think it does?
Having used Drano for years, my thought has always been that the mix of goos coming out of the Drano bottle were some sort of dissolver… dissolving things. Hair and toothpaste and boogers and all other nasty sorts of gunk. Some enzymatic (using enzymes) or acidic (using acids) method of dissolving.
Ho ho, not so fast. First, a quick breakdown of what is clogging your pipe.
Pipe clogs are for the most part caused by the build up of hair. Hair clings together and has the ability to get caught on small imperfections on the inside of the pipe. Ultimately leading to the water backup and slow drain.
Drano, through a combination of sodium nitrate, sodium chloride and the ever important sodium hydroxide, mix and create a caustic heat which loosens and moves the clog down the drain.
Turns out keeping the heat in your relationship has the additive effect of keeping your pipes unclogged!
Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics
Pretty common these days is the inundation of statistics and their application, rightly or wrongly, to just about everything. Sadly, statistics can be and is heavily used to tell stories that aren’t exactly true.
For example
Let’s say that I am 20 years old, starting my first job. For the first 5 years I make 40k each year. I then get a new job and make 80k the next 5 years. I then start my own company and for the next 5 years pay myself 20k as I build my business. The business hits it big and in the last 5 years I make 2 million dollars each year.
My mean salary over the last 20 years is technically 535000 dollars. But this means nothing in context. I didn’t make 535000 dollars when I was 20, and if the business continues on its course I will make well over 535000 dollars next year. In this type of situation, the mean salary has nothing to do with telling the story of how I and my salary evolved over time.
Let’s see this in action. Jen Psaki, President Biden’s Press Secretary’s statement:
Well, none of us are mathematicians, myself included, so I asked our team to do a little math on this. So, the Trump administration was given 36 million doses when they were in office for 38 days. They administered a total of about 17 million shots. That’s about less than 500,000 shots a day. What we’re proposing is to double that to about 1 million shots per day.
But, let’s wrap this in some context. 36 million doses didn’t “show up” on the doorsteps of the white house on day zero (assuming the White House doesn’t have Amazon Prime). Also, the states had to ramp up their logistics to distribute the vaccine and vaccination centers had to ramp up their rollouts, appointments, etc. So, while the stated “mean” isn’t a lie, the statement is intellectually dishonest.
Let’s look at the actual ramp up.
The last 3 days, distribution was well over 1 M doses a day, the last 12 days, 6 of those days were above 1 million doses per day. The 7 day rolling average was just shy of a million doses a day. So to vaccinate 100 million people in the first 100 days of his presidency, President Biden would need to do… nothing different.
It’s all in the Visuals
Why are mathematics amazing? This week its because of this…
Nuff said.
PSA!
If you are a big user of WhatsApp because of its encryption and privacy, slow your roll if you are jumping ship after their latest terms of service update. An extremely confusing terms of service update that went live earlier this month cost WhatsApp millions of subscribers as news that the company was going to be able to read user’s messages and share them with Facebook went viral after the terms of service update.
Sadly, the new TOS was just poorly written and that was not the intention of the update. For the full story, head over to The Guardian but in the meantime, you can be sure, the roll out has been paused as damage control is in full effect.
What are we doing with AI & ML?
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning. Two exciting data science derivatives that are empowering companies to do a lot more with a low less. This week I’m highlighting:
As someone who has to write job descriptions, there is definitely more work than people think in crafting what’s get posted to the job boards. This company is offering a technology that can generate job descriptions based on the job title. Now sadly a job title does not mean to one company what it does to another but an excellent boilerplate to start with.
Scroll down their page to try the service for free.
Most Photographed Spot in Colorado (Supposedly)
Work in progress. Maroon Bells is beautiful but this shot was taken 7 years ago. Need to get back (maybe this winter) and get some new shots.
Quote of the Week
You can develop any habit or thought or behavior that you consider desirable or necessary.
-Brian Tracy
And with that, our time is up. Feel free to check out the earlier issues. Excited to see how this format change resonates. I don’t plan on going away from some of the long form articles, but will find a good medium, better medium to house them. Thanks All!
As always, if you think someone would enjoy reading, please feel free to share the love.
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@JWilcoxData
IG: JasonWilcoxPhotography