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Romney needs to wipe that smarmy, self-satisfied grin off his face when he's not talking. Also he needs to stop blinking so much. At one point I counted 64 blinks per minute. Who needs to blink that much?!

That depends on the application. In the above example, the probability of transition can be calculated by the frequency in which one letter follows another in some word dictionary. For biological sequences, there are similar databases of biological sequences with annotations (where HMM are commonly used to predict function/annotation based on sequence). I'm sure there are many other applications I don't know much about.

That's a useful way to think of it. A practical application of matrix inverses are, because there's no definition of matrix division, multiplying by a matrix's inverse accomplishes the same thing. This is useful when you need to solve a system of linear equations. Here's a problem that can be solved using inverse matrix multiplication: A group is traveling by train and bus. Bus tickets cost $3 for children and $3.20 for adults. Train tickets cost $3.50 for children and $3.60 for adults. The group spent $118.40 on bus fare and $135.20 on train fare. How many adults and children were in the group? You could imagine a really large and complex set of equations (which describes problems in engineering, physics, biology, computer graphics, etc) with a set variables you need to solve. Linear algebra provides a framework to do this by defining operations on matrices of numbers. One of those being matrix inversion, which is especially useful when a single solution exists to this set of equations (for example, only 1 combination of adults and children could have spent that combination on bus and train fare).

You can think of matrix inversion as analogous to the inversion of any real number. Just like: [math] 4 * 4^{-1} = 4 * \frac{1}{4} = 1 [/math] For some matrices, A, there exists a so-called inverse such that: [math] AA^{-1} = I [/math], I being the identity matrix - a square matrix with 1's along the diagonal and 0's everywhere else. Elementary matrices allow you to perform operations on matrix A, for example, to solve for the inverse matrix.

Windows opening on airplanes? Maybe if designed by DC engineers.

Couldn't you just as easily state the reverse? Since you haven't controlled for weight or height.

shameless bump

For example, I know that r^2 of linear regression is, in certain cases, related to the correlation coefficient (goodness of fit) but is there are precise mathematical definition? Perhaps with a geometric interpretation? Any and all references would be helpful.

I think elevator scheduling uses similar, online learning approaches.

The statistics on this study are particularly bad, which is getting some coverage in the blogosphere. With 9 treatment groups and 1 control group being the most obvious 'no-no' since over half of the mice in the control group developed tumors anyway. the problem of multiple comparisons: http://xkcd.com/882/ analysis of this study: http://michaelgrayer.posterous.com/in-which-i-blow-a-gasket-and-get-very-uppity

should be O(n log(n))

It depends on the lab, but everyone starts from nothing and that should be recognized by your post-doc. Just make sure you're looking out for yourself. If your not sure of something, of the calculation of a dilution, etc, just ask. I'm sure the post-doc would rather be bothered with questions than a communal reagent gets made incorrectly.

pure placebo effect: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110324104147.htm There is no evidence for chi lines, and other such things.

You don't need to construe HMM in a bayesian framework, though it is statistical. The example I like to think of is text prediction, especially for example, when sending a text message from a cell phone (autocomplete). The problem is: can you predict the complete word the author intends from a partial, incomplete word. So you have a partial string, something like: "goodb". the model treats each letter as a node and the transition/edge between the nodes represents the probability that that letter followed from the previous one. This can be calculated from the frequency of letter distribution corpus/dictionary of commonly used words. For example the probability that the character 'u' follows 'q' in standard american english is quite high. two weird consonants 'jz' probably less so. So the user types in "goodb" what is the most probable word? the transition path with the highest probability would [i assume] be "-y-e" followed by an "end" state. Did this help or is this too basic for you?

For men, yeah, though I wouldn't say it's very common. but a semi-famous example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Beckerman_(musician)

Nuclear weapons are an existential risk, however, so the effect always outweighs the probability, no matter how small particularly in light of zapatos' post.

Isn't it safer for Israel to assume the worst if Iran is hampering the efforts of UN nuclear inspectors?

Both of them ducked the vaccine question. Obama pretending that the question was about affordability of vaccines (which is obviously not the problem when it comes to vaccine denialism of liberal suburbanites) and Romney answered a question about vaccine development - an important issue but not what was asked.

Romney wins the word count contest.

+1 underrated show, if you ask me.

The Boy scouts of america and the Hitler Youth were two organizations that 1) made up of young people 2) officially shunned homosexuals... but that doesn't make any comparison between the two in any way appropriate or useful. Unless of your goal isn't to make an apt comparison but to the poison the well by guilty association.

A ridiculous analogy perpetrated, though not originated, by Alan Sorkin. For example, when have tea party members ever committed war crimes: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/02/news_flash_the_taliban_violate_human_rights.html

you haven't really asked a question...

RFID chips are proof of god? Sorry not good enoguh.

yourDad - substitute 'chemicals' for 'logic circuit' and the same argument could be made for a computer. After all, there's a whole field of biological computing that works on the principle that DNA encodes information and executes in code-like behavior: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_computing