Piano played by Liszt, Schumann and Brahms at the Las Vegas Liberace Museum

When we were in Las Vegas we went to the Liberace Museum. Besides all of the costumes and Liberacinalia there is also a collection of pianos that he had owned. Some of them were famous before Liberace ever owned them. This one was reportedly played by Liszt, Schumann and Brahms which combined with its Serbian connection below makes it a very historically interesting piece.


From the description plate:

Bosendorfer Style Grand Piano c. 1830 Serial No. 222
Viennese piano maker Anton Pokorny made this "Bosendorfer Style" grand piano in 1830. From 1842 to 1858, it resided with exiled Serbian Prince Michael Orbenovic III in Vienna, Austria. This piano was reportedly played by such composers as Liszt, Schumann and Brahms. In 1860, Prince Obrenovic assumed the throne in Serbia (Yugosolavia) and brought this piano to the royal palace where it remained for many years. Just prior to his assassination in 1868, he gave the piano to his fiancee, whose family later gave it to their relatives, the Dragisic family.

The Serbs and Serbia seem to have a lot of trouble with assassinations and turbulent rulers. To hear some of the pieces that might have been played by famous composers on the piano I recommend the Piano Society where you can find free recordings by talented amateurs and professionals of works by Liszt, Schumann or Brahms.

This week's presidential electoral vote simulation

I made an error in last week's simulation using the Intrade Prediction Market data by using the bid value for the probabilities instead of the last value. The last value seems to be an average of the bid value and ask value and better represents the actual payout at the expiration of the option.

Here is last week's chart showing 1000 simulations using the correct value data from Sept 2nd

The difference is only 70% of simulations showing the democrats winning as apposed to 75% on the incorrect chart from Thursday. I suppose I developed the formula for the concept but erred in its application. The above chart uses a more correct value for the probability built from the last value rather than bid or ask.

Here is this week's chart using showing 1000 simulations the value data from Sept 10th.

The probability of a given state being won by the Democrats is still the Democratic win value divided by the Democratic win value plus the Republican win value. Each state is still winner take all, and the rand() function takes care of the simulation part. This week shows the results of the Palin bounce (I don;t think it should be called the Republican convention or McCain bounce), but still shows the Democrats with more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win in 60% of the simulations. The median result is 278 electoral votes for the Democrats. We can monitor the situation over the next few weeks to see if the intrade data shows the republican bounce going away or not. Even with the poles where they are the simulations from the Intrade data still seem to predict a Democratic victory.

Intrade also allows trading in how many electoral votes will go to the Democrats or Republicans and gives many trading options at different bands of electoral votes, such as Democrats win more than 270 electoral votes. If we assume that the value for these trades represents the community's aggregate probability estimate we can compare the data to each other for consistency (democrats plus republicans should equal 538) and to the simulation above. I will build these charts for later.

Another SmartCar in Wilmington

This Smart Car is a convertable. This is the second one I have seen on the streets north of Wilmington.

It is so tiny.

The Great Melon Caper

This year I foolishly tried to grow honeydew melons in a flower bed that had yet to be repurposed from hostas to anything else. In the lull between planting I snuck in some pumpkins and some honeydew melons. The pumpkins did great until they flowered and then suddenly died. I had a four inch pumpkin that some animal finally broke off of the plant. The Melons also finally grew and I had three tiny ones, then the two smaller ones rotted and there was only one melon of respectable size that looked like it would eventually be worth eating.



Last Friday I thought to myself that since the melon was getting a spot on one side I thought I would pick it anyway and see whether it was edible since I feared losing it to insects or a plant disease. The next day it was gone!



I was stunned and then I noticed a leaf from melon vines a little further out into the lawn.

And some melon vines themselves, seeming to point to the creek.

At the creek I saw the evidence and the destruction of my one promised melon.


The buck-toothed gnawing look like the work of our friendly neighborhood groundhog (woodchuck). I try to have a live and let live approach to the animal residents of the creek. I even have birdseed out for the birds and I like to take pictures of each of the residents.

If I will have to battle with woodchucks each year in my garden this laissez-faire approach may need to toughen. I may also officially give up on pumpkins and melons for a few years.

Pity me my missing melon. It is a good thing I am not depending on this garden for my food, I suppose it is all more of an experiment to me.

The perfect Oreo is all filling

The perfect Oreo would be all filling and no cookies, but how would you hold it. The next best option would be a lot of filling with just cookies to hold it. Nabisco is moving in the right direction with the Double Stuf version. In some experimentation today I have been attempting to build increase the ratio of filling to cookie by cookie removal and filling half reattachment. If we count a regular Oreo as two cookies and one filling, filling ratio 1/2, then a Double Stuf is two cookies and two filling , ratio one. We can build from that. The following chart plots the experiment so far.


The results are below. On the left is four Chocolate Double Stuff Oreo cookies stuck together, on the right is a regular Chocolate Double Stuff Oreo for comparison.



Eating this cookie was unwieldy, I imagine ratios above this will result in a cookie that smooshes out all the filling when one attempts to bite it. I wasn't hungry anymore so I stopped the experiment to avoid filling and cookie waste. The experimentation will continue at a later date.

Simspons quiz - Do you know your Milhouse?

Mental Floss has a quiz on the character Milhouse from the Simpsons, an unappreciated character to whom I am sometimes compared, to my detriment. If you know your Simpsons or your Milhouse go ahead and take it. It has some funny Simpsons lines in it , plus pictures. I got 92% (11 out of 12) by some miracle, the average is 60%. Perhaps my encyclopedic but useless knowledge of the Simpsons helped.

(via Neatorama)

Simulating the presidential election - state by state is best

There are a number of sites out there that attempt to predict the presidential election. I prefer the sites that add some simulation to the process so that we can see not just a prediction but the relative accuracy and sensitivity of the results to the input data.

The Presidential Vote Equation derived by Ray C. Fair uses the econometric approach which predicts just the Democratic and Republican popular vote share. Fair's simple regression showed that the important variables are incumbency for the person and party, typically a negative effect, and economic good times are good bad times are bad. This year if the economy stays bad the Democrats are favored, but it could be a dead heat if the economic bad news is not as bad as expected.

I think the best or most interesting predictors are the ones that examine the polls from many states to calculate state by state electoral votes because that is the way the president is chosen, not by popular vote. The best I have seen thus far is FiveThirtyEight.com (named for the 538 electoral votes). They work through the polls in every state and group like regions together to estimate polls for states when there is a long time between polls (Delaware, for instance, is in the "Acela" Mid-Atlantic group). They predict 307 electoral votes for the Democrats today (up from 303), comfortably more than the 270 needed to win. They also perform simulations based on the error in the polls to generate various scenarios. They have a democratic win in ~70% of the scenarios.

I took a crack at this approach using the Intrade prediction market data. Users of the site can purchase stock in a particular outcome, for instance, Delaware's electoral votes go to the Democrats. Users buy and sell their shares at values based on their confidence in the outcome. It has been shown that this is a predictor of the group's estimation of the probability of this occurrence. I took the probability of the democrats getting the electoral votes and divided by the sum of the either party getting the votes to generate a Democratic probability. Then I used the rand() function in Excel, if it beat the probability, votes went to the Democrats otherwise to the Republicans. Adding up all of the states yields the total electoral votes for the Democrats who need 270 to win.

(click picture or here for larger)

Thus my simulations show that, using the Intrade Sept 2nd data and assuming winner take all in each state (even Maine and Nebraska), the Democrats garner 270 electoral votes or more in 75% of the simulations. The most likely being 277, the median is 289. After the Republican convention is over we can see how this changes. Great care should be taken with these estimates since some of the states have only a few trades and thus the error in the estimated probability is high. I could try to factor that in to the simulation, but I feel the point is proven in principle and we can leave the heavy lifting to the folks that do it for a living, instead of for fun.

All the states from first to last

Did you notice that Democratic VP nominee, Senator Joe Biden, is from the first state, Delaware, and that Republican VP nominee, Governor Sarah Palin, is from second to last state, Alaska, the Last Frontier? Obama lived in Hawaii, the last state. This is the most inclusive election ever, from the first state to the last.

I picked it - Biden-Obama!

I was away this week when Obama picked Biden for his vice presidential running mate so I couldn't gloat about my prediction, but I will gloat now.

Way back in January of 2007 when everyone was taking those presidential candidate quizzes and there were many more Democratic and Republican candidates I took the 2008 Presidential candidate quiz. My results - Biden/Obama! At the time I just thought the quiz read my IP address and picked the Delaware guy and the popular guy. Now I know that I was extraordinarily prescient and that the quiz just rotated the order.

I also occasionally rag on Biden and his son, but I can think of worse picks for the VP. Biden is also a no-show at Blue rocks games. If nothing else Biden will be exciting to watch since he is such a straight talker, the Republicans even have a Biden gaffe clock. Since Biden is from Delaware I guess this state is sewn up for the election and we still won't have any presidential campaigning. Maybe we will see them on their way to Pennsylvania.

Perhaps now with my early guess of the Obama/Biden ticket I should become a political pundit. I certainly have opinions that I can share with you whether you want to hear them or not. Maybe instead I should just get back to pictures of my backyard and the science fiction I just read.

The Las Vegas Strip from the top of the Mandalay Bay

There is a very cool club on top of the Mandalay Bay with a view of the strip. Of course I only brought my crappy Treo camera.

Enjoy anyway.