Thursday, December 31, 2020

Betting on the 2020 US presidential election *after* the election

A couple weeks after the 2020 US presidential election was held, Nate Silver tweeted several times about the irrationality of betting markets (for example PredictIt), since they still had a 10% chance of Trump wining various states.

Screenshot of tweet - text of tweet: Political betting markets still give Trump a >10% chance, both nationally and in several states where *results have been certified*. As I've said before, it's a bit alarming there are so many delusional people out there that the market equilibrium is this detached from reality. Tweet contains screenshot of betting market odds / map of US colored by odds of who wins each state.

Other versions of this tweet talked about "free money" and "money left on the table".  I decided to try it out for myself discovering along the way that Nate failed to take into account transaction costs and market limits/barriers that contribute substantially to maker distortion.  In other words, it's not solely as Nate says irrational people, but also other well know sources of market inefficiencies..
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Thursday, December 24, 2020

using LaTex in blogger

 Bit of a meta post here - how I use LaTex formatting for math / equations in blogger.  Starting with this Stack Exchange TEX question/answer, I copied the provided code to load the MathJax library and then followed these blogger/google instructions in the section "change your blog with HTML or css", in the html section - edited the blog template, added the code copied from above into the <head> section.  Seems to be working now:

$$a^2 + b^2 = c^2$$

$$y(x) = sin(\omega x)$$

$$c^2 = a^2 + b^2 - 2ab \cos(c)$$

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hello world physics - part 1 classical mechanics

I've been struggling to understand General Relativity - the theory that describes gravity - for a long time now.  One thing I realized might help is a very simple example - solving a very simple, recognizable problem using general relativity.  In an analogy with software engineering, I'm looking for how write "hello world" in new programming language.

For the equivalent of programming's "hello world" in physics, I'm going to choose the problem of tossing a ball up into the air.  I'm going to solve this problem using 4 different types of physics:  classical/Newtonian, quantum mechanics, general relativity, and quantum electrodynamics.  I hope this will give me (and you perhaps) a better understanding of the differences and similarities between these theories, and some practical understanding of how one uses / applies them.

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Monday, October 12, 2020

Looking at and thinking about lightning strikes

 I captured some lightning strikes on video, it was neat to look at the individual frames and observe the qualitative standard progression of how they work.

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My visceral reactions to GLOW: delving in to my childhood during the 1980's

I recently watched GLOW - the Netflix TV series about the 1980's female wrestling show of the same name (Gorgeous Ladies Of Wresting) and was extremely surprised that seeing the styles of the 80's and hearing the music had a deep / profound impact on me.  It hit me.  It connected.  I was 9-10 years old at the that time, but hated it!  It's not that I decried the music publicly but secretly loved - I have no memory of ever enjoying it.  I wrote this blog post to explore why I deeply enjoyed it now, and have loved watching GLOW.

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Saturday, September 26, 2020

Repairing (repointing) stone retaining walls

Some stones had fallen off some stone walls in our backyard, and I decided to repair them - basically cleaning up the area where the stones should go, mortaring them back in place.  Note these are nominally retaining walls but the work I did was not structural - there is not a bulge or tilt to these walls, the stones for the most part were on the top or edge of the wall.

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Thursday, August 27, 2020

Spiderwebs in the mist

I came out Sunday morning, it was slightly misty and humid, and all of these dense spiderwebs were visible on the ground.
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Monday, May 25, 2020

Garden in late May

I've been enjoying our garden lately - planted in late April, with plants bought from Cape Cod Wholesale Nursery (thank you!).
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Sunday, May 24, 2020

Brewing an all-grain guiness stout clone

Decided to brew a Guinness clone using an all-grain method!  This is our second attempt at an all-grain brew, and we bought a larger pot for the mash, and I rigged up some insulation and thermal mass to help keep the temperature stable during the mash.

link to recipe

link to pdf of above in case that link breaks

Bought all ingredients from Northern Brewer:
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale Yeast
2.4 oz. East Kent Goldings (EKG) Hop Pellets
2.5 lbs. Flaked Barley

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Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Pictures of a chickadee that I thought was a woodpecker because it was pecking at the wood siding on the house

This small woodpecker has been pecking directly on our house.  Initially I thought it was the same as this other one that we see near the house, but after looking at the pictures they are quite different.



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Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Pictures of a nuthatch?

This small bird has been hanging out near our house.
Might be a nuthatch, or a northern downy woodpecker.
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