Order in randomness

Random Walk asks a curious question: What does randomness look like?

Through a collection of beautiful visualizations, it reveals the strange interplay between chaos and order within seemingly random phenomena, like rice grains falling, or the digits in the number Pi.

The latter in particular I find really interesting. Plotted as a random walk, where the value of each decimal determines the direction of a fixed-length step, Pi traces a path evocative of a fractal.


Definitely worth checking out.

Nate Silver Botches Oscars, Blames "Huge Jackass" Mickey Rourke

As it turns out, stats golden boy Nate Silver's forecasts for last night's Oscars were correct only on 4 out of 6 counts. He missed on Best Supporting Actress (Penelope Cruz won over Taraji P. Henson) and on Best Actor (Sean Penn won over Mickey Rourke). He blogs about the outcome on FiveThirtyEight.com, and delivers a few gems in the category of sour grapes:

On Mickey Rourke losing Best Actor: "It probably doesn't help to be a huge jackass (like Mickey Rourke)... But is this information helpful for model-building? Probably not. (Unless perhaps we had some way to quantify someone's jackassedness: Days spent at the Betty Ford Center?)"

Liveblogging 13 minutes after missing Best Supporting Actress: "Remember when the Oscars used to be interesting and the Super Bowl used to be boring?"

Incidentally, the categories where he failed where two that I had guessed correctly, but my thought process in coming up with those guesses had absolutely nothing to do with statistics.

This in contrast to presidential elections, which are an inherently statistical process, and where anyone's guess on who might win inevitably involves some form of probabilistic reasoning...

Along these lines, it would be interesting to know more about Nate Silver's methodology and how it compares to his electoral model, but I haven't been able to find this information. Would welcome any leads...

Nate Silver Takes on the Oscars

You may remember Nate Silver from the 2008 U.S. presidential elections, where he gained nationwide recognition, beyond baseball fans and stats geeks, by using statistics to correctly predict the electoral outcome in 49 out of the 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia. The published his predictions on his website, FiveThirtyEight.com.

As his latest project, he's taken on the Oscars, airing this Sunday. And here are his results...

- Best Pic: Slumdog Millionaire (99.0%)
- Director: Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire (99.7%)
- Leading Actress: Kate Winslet (67.6%)
- Leading Actor: Mickey Rourke (71.1%)
- Supporting Actress: Taraji P. Henson (51.0%)
- Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger (85.8%)

Some surprising picks... I am still betting on Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona for Best Supporting Actress, and on Sean Penn in Milk for Best Actor. We'll see who wins, me or statistics...

I will say, I'm happy not to see Benjamin "Forrest Gump The Sequel" Button in the lead for Best Film.

And, speaking of Best Films, I am still mourning over the massive and completely unfair diss of my favorite movie of the year.



Check out the article on NYMag for more on Nate Silver's Oscar picks.