Miscellaneous stuff about P.B. Stark

applications | ultras | espresso | bread | forage | wheels | Erdös | Newton | schooling | the king and I | Vicarism | In Memoriam | pithosophy | neologisms | haiku | stuff I wish I'd said

Thoughts on applied Statistics:

Some ultramarathons I've run:

Lately, I've been running barefoot and in minimalist non-shoes, primarily homemade huaraches. In cold and mud, I run in homemade moccasins or split-toe surfing booties. I believe humans are well suited to distance running in minimal footwear or barefoot.

I'm serious about espresso:

I roast coffee on the stove using a heavy 6q pot and a whisk; I cool the beans in wire collanders. I grind using a Knock Hausgrind hand mill or a Rosco Mini Hand Grinder. In 2011, I abandoned my Olympia Cremina 67 (another review) for a Bacchi stovetop espresso machine. It is not a mokka pot, although it looks like one. It's a steam-powered piston espresso machine, truly a marvel of engineering. In 2016, I replaced it with a Rossa HC Hand Espresso machine, a hand-cranked screw-driven piston machine, with a naked portafilter. It consistently pulls (pushes?) amazing shots; it's silent; and it's small and light enough for travel.

I bake:

I don't eat wheat, rye or oats now, but I used to bake bread from scratch, including grinding the grain by hand.

Now I do some grainless baking. These are a pumpkin seed and coconut brittle with cardamom; grainless peanut butter and mace cookies with foraged bay nuts, orange zest, and sel gris; and pecan brittle with orange habanero, cinnamon, and orange zest:

I forage, mostly for greens. See forage.berkeley.edu

These pictures include blewitt mushrooms, cat's ear, chickweed, cow parsnip stems, dock, field mustard leaves and flowers, plantago, fennel, sheep sorrel, purple sage, miner's lettuce, western lettuce, bitter lettuce, sow thistle, prickly sow thistle, several varieties of dandelion, mallow, bracken fern fiddleheads, bay nuts, bay leaves, young pine needles, mugwort, pineapple weed, wild onions, wormwood, yarrow, wild blackberries, raspberries, huckleberries, gooseberries, and wild plums. See also the Berkeley Open Source Food Project.

Favorite wheels:

Mostly I walk or run for transportation. My daily driver is a Brompton Superlight 6S with a rear triple substituted for the stock double (making it 9-speed), and a bunch of weight-saving modifications. (It's amazing to be able to put a functional bike into the overhead bin on a plane, carry a bike into a cafe, onto a train, etc.)

My Erdös Number is 3:

(Erdös → Felzenbaum → Hochberg → Stark)

(Erdös → Bollob´s → Arratia → Stark)

(Erdös → Diaconis → Freedman → Stark)

(Erdös → Diaconis → Evans → Stark)

(Erdös → Tovey → Donoho → Stark)

(Erdös → Kleitman → Rivest → Stark)

(Erdös → Linial → Rivest → Stark)

(Erdös → Odlyzko → Rivest → Stark)

(Erdös → Spencer → Rivest → Stark)

In December 2006, there were about 33,605 people with Erdös number 3. I believe that my Erdös number of the second kind is also 3; in December 2006, there were about 10,118 people with an Erdös number of the second kind equal to 3.

I'm an academic descendent of Sir Isaac Newton ;-)

(Devised by Duncan Agnew.)

Schooling

My education is idiosyncratic. I dropped out of high school to go to MIT, where I intended to major in Physics and Philosophy. After a year, I transferred to Princeton University, where I majored in Philosophy. I spent a semester in Oxford as a junior. From Princeton I went to law school at the University of Texas at Austin (UT). I dropped out after six weeks, and worked in management for an industrial marketing company. After a year, I switched to part-time consulting and took undergraduate courses at UT in Biology, Chemistry, Geology, and Physics, then started graduate work in Geophysics. I transferred from UT to UC San Diego (Scripps Institution of Oceanography), where—while self-employed as a car mechanic—I finished my Ph.D. and started postdoctoral work in Geophysics. I came to UC Berkeley as a postdoc in Statistics, which was my first formal exposure to Probability and Statistics. I was hired as Assistant Professor of Statistics in 1988 after a year as a postdoc.

The King and I

I am not King Harald V of Norway. But I could play him on tv.

Moral system

I am the founder of Vicarism.

In Memoriam

Two of my dearest friends died in late 2008:

John Matthew Emery III, M.D., 8/23/1957–12/7/2008: obituary, eulogy, second eulogy.

David A. Freedman, Ph. D., 3/5/1938–10/17/2008: obituary, eulogy.

Pithosophy

• Stark's Theorem: You can't prove theorems about the real world. (The proof, by exhaustion, is left as an exercise.)
• No matter how busy I am, I can always find time to procrastinate.
• The hardest thing to do is something you don't want to do.
• Nothing feels quite as good as feeling good.
• Pain hurts more than anything else.
• Sometimes, convincing others is less satisfying than punishing those who disagree with you.
• There's no need to seek out irritating wastes of time: They will find you.
• A wise man knows his irritations.
• An anal retentive obsessive compulsive's work is never done.
• The problem with patience is that it's so time-consuming.
• I limit my multi-tasking: I only multi-task while I'm doing other things.
• I try not to be judgmental. On a scale of 1–10, I'd give myself a 4.
• The glass might be half empty. It might be half full. Regardless, somebody will have to wash it.
• Measure thrice.
• Don't take shortcuts if you don't have time to spare.
• I have simple needs, for complex reasons.
• In replication lies truth.
• Nothing exceeds like excess.
• There's no present like time.
• My illusions aren't what they used to be.
• If the answer to a question will make you feel bad—no matter what the answer is—consider not asking.
• If you piss into the wind, you'll probably get wet. The stronger the stream or the breeze, the wetter you're likely to get.
• Just because you're a jerk doesn't mean you have to act like one.
• Meditation is all fun and games, until somebody loses an I.
• There's a fine line between being morally eccentric and having a scruple loose.
• Unsolicited advice is rarely heeded. Ditto for solicited advice.
• I compensate for lack of willpower with robust appetite.
• I'm a pretty good Buddhist: usually in the present, tense.
• Pro tip: You will never fall down if you touch the ground only with your feet.
• Popularity and veracity are uncorrelated.
• Everybody is dealt a different optimization problem: different objective function, different constraints.
• No one deserves his lot.
• All models are wrong, and most are useless. (apologies to George Box)
• The problem with most Bayesian data analysis is that it starts by pulling a prior out of somebody's posterior.
• If I had a nickel for every time I've heard somebody misuse "statistically significant," I'd have a statistically significant number of nickels.

Favorite neologisms

Assumptimation

To estimate by making unrealistic assumptions. Usage: They assumptimated the cost of climate change over the next 300 years.

Irrationalization

To go to absurd lengths or make absurd arguments to rationalize an action, opinion, or conclusion.

Nematoadie

Someone who is a slave to his or her parasite masters (be they the microbiome, nematodes, or other); i.e., most of us.

Pithosophy

Experience, distilled.

Quantifauxcation

To assign a meaningless number, then pretend that since it's quantitative, it's meaningful. Examples: student evaluations of teaching effectiveness; earthquake probabilities.

Somatisfaction

Somatic satisfaction

Unnececeremony

Don't stand on it.

Obscenery

You try to look away, but end up soaking it in.

Haiku on working as an Expert Witness

The job is simple:
Help the judge and the jury
understand the truth.

If the other side
were scrupulous and careful,
I would be useless.

Opposing counsel:
They feed me and my children.
Why don't I love them?

Favorite quotations and things I wish I'd said (first)

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. —Sir Francis Bacon

By far the best proof is experience. —Sir Francis Bacon

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune. —Sir Francis Bacon

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. —Gloria Steinem

The more you assume, the less you know. —Robert L. Parker

Caeteris are never paribus. —Andrea Saltelli

It's hard to tell the difference between science-based policy and policy-based science. —Andrea Saltelli

A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it. —Albert Einstein

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. —Niels Bohr

Timing Toast.
There's an art of knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
Twenty seconds less.
—Piet Hein

The large print giveth and the small print taketh away. —Tom Waits

We pass over all regularity conditions in respectful silence. —David A. Freedman

Naturally, there is a desire to substitute intellectual capital for labor. —David A. Freedman

Keep after the rascals. —David A. Freedman

You can express the most outrageous heresy and—if you get the tone right—people will just nod and smile. —David A. Freedman

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. —Richard P. Feynman

If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted. —Karl Popper

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve. —Karl Popper

[] no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white. —Karl Popper

It seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness. —Karl Popper

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification – the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit. —Karl Popper

No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude. —Karl Popper

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it! —Upton Sinclair

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. —Albert Einstein

When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends. —Mark Twain

There is no problem so bad that you can't make it worse. —Astronaut saying

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. —George Bernard Shaw

There is no sincerer love than the love of food. —George Bernard Shaw

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. —George Bernard Shaw

Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig. —Robert A. Heinlein

An armed society is a polite society. —Robert A. Heinlein

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. —Psalm 90:12

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. —Anatole France

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal. —Anatole France

An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid. —Ernest Rutherford

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken. —Oliver Cromwell

When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir? —John Maynard Keynes

Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise. —J.W. Tukey [I would add, "if you know how bad the approximation might be."]

The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data. —J.W. Tukey

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true. —Robert Wilensky

If you want to make small changes, change how you do things. If you want to make big changes, change how you see things. —Gabe Brown

After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. —Jack Kornfield

Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man. —Leon Trotsky

Revolutions are always verbose. —Leon Trotsky

In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is. —Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

The difference between theory and practice is smaller in theory than it is in practice. —unknown

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. (The Napoleon-Clarke Law) —Vernon Schryver and/or Paul Ciszek.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. (Grey's Law) —Andy Finkel

The core of [the scientific method] is remembering your own level of ignorance. —Jaron Lanier

It is inappropriate to be concerned about mice when there are tigers abroad. —George Box

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. —Mary Wollstonecraft

Reality: what a concept! —Robin Williams

A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles. —Joseph Addison

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and some in prosperity. —Joseph Addison

Life is short, but the days and nights are long. —Cheryl Wheeler

Now I don't know but I've been told
it's hard to run with the weight of gold.
Other hand I've heard it said
It's just as hard with the weight of lead.
—Robert Hunter, New Speedway Boogie

If everybody's grateful, how come nobody's satisfied? —Ryan Adams

I'm not a passenger: I am the ride. —Chris Smither

I would not mind being lonesome, if I had someone to call. —Chris Smither

And when I do my job, I am thinking about these things. Because when I do my job, that is what I think about. —Laurie Anderson

You don't like the sound of the truth
Coming from my mouth.
You say that I lack the proof.
Baby, that might be so. —Patty Griffin

Just because you shot Jesse James, don't make you Jesse James. —spoken by Mike Ehrmantraut, in Breaking Bad Season 5, Episode 3, by Peter Gould

Try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose. —spoken by Arthur Howitzer, Jr., in The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, by Wes Anderson

If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day. —Leonard Cohen

Such is life, and it just gets such-er and such-er. —Hungarian saying

Today is an average day: worse than yesterday but better than tomorrow. —Russian saying

Life is good. But a good life is better. —Russian saying

Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri dicere non audeat. —Cicero

If the shortcut saved time, it would be the regular route. —unknown

No ask, no get. —unknown

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. —unknown

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. —unknown

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. —G.K. Chesterton

If something isn't worth doing, it isn't worth doing well. —unknown

It's only when you look at an ant through a magnifying glass on a sunny day that you realize how often they burst into flames. —Harry Hill

"Research" is when you don't know what you're doing. —unknown (By this definition, I do a lot of research.)

Nuance doesn't scale. —John Vermes

Life isn't one damned thing after another. It's the same damned thing over and over. —unknown

Starting is a shortcut. —Dan Charnas

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Last modified 10 May 2023. www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/other.htm