Ron Frisard's Blog

David McCandless on data visualization

Just saw this great TED talk on data visualization. Just great.. Here is his webpage. Also the interactive data visualization he talks about in his talk about supplements.

Benford’s Law

I was listening to one of my favorite webcasts recently (Radiolab) and they were talking about this engineering at GE in Syracuse who noticed more pages used on a logarithmic table book then others. This got him thinking that there must be some guiding principles of how numbers multiplied together create certain numbers over other numbers. here is a good explanation of the math.
Well his formula that determines what the percentage of digits should be in what order on all numbers in the universe are being used everywhere! One of the biggest areas is law enforcement. If you are cheating on your taxes or stealing from teh balance sheet you better double check that you did not create any random number. Here is the story in Radio lab - I highly recommend it.

Another Hans Rosling presentation at TED

By far, Hans Rosling is the most interesting guy I know on the internet. If I created a bucket list of who I would like to have dinner with before I die, Hans Rosling would be near the top. This discussion he focuses on a future where the world comes together and everyone moves forward into financial prosperity. Check it out..

“Press your luck” game show - FAIL

I was listening to This American Life this week and was fascinated by the story on Micheal Larson. He stacked many TV’s in his living room and recorded many infomercials and game shows. After many hours studying he realized that in the game show “press your luck” the board was not random (like they said) but followed a certain pattern that he figured out.
He took this hidden talent to the show and made the most money in game show history!

Patientslikeme.com - What a great way of social websites..

Well I just watched the video below from TED-MED on the patientslikeme.com website. It was moving and really put the whole heathcare thing into perspective. Isn’t it time to put the Geek’s in charge of heathcare.

Mr. Feynman: Take the world from another point of view

I really do not believe in role models that much but if I would pick one that I truly admire it would have to be Richard Feynman. Not only did he contribute to the atom bomb and also win a Nobel prize in Physics, he was a world renowned Bongo player..
Here is a great series video from the BBC on how to look at the world from a different point of view..

Here is the rest of the series:
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Another good link of video from a previous old NOVA.

Watched Apollo 13 last night…

I must of watched this movie about 100 times and am still not sick of it. You can take many things away from such a movie but one of the themes I like the most is “teamwork”. Being an Astronaut makes you part of a close knit group and you trust your life with them. I guess the whole traveling cross country in a diaper to confront the guy you have a crush on does not really fit into this image..
One part that I felt this way was when Jim Lovell’s mom is looked after by Neil Armstrong. Also I like the line his mom made about landing a washing machine to calm his daughter’s fears.
The main reason for this post is my biggest meaning of teamwork - building the CO2 filer for the LEM. This was a true story and sometimes you forget how much NASA likes photos..

This is the team with the contraption and discussing how to relay the procedure to the guys on the capsule.

This is the actual unit installed.

Leo Laporte gets mad at Arrington on Gilmore gang

I am a regular listener of Leo Laporte for many years going way back to the TechTV days.  I had heard about this incident but this was the first time I saw it.  Leo is really mad at Arrington’s thought that he was tainting his view because he got a review unit.. Ouch..  Also this is the keyboard cat version - love these things..

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The endowment effect and industrial sales

For many years I have been fascinated by sales ~ how it is done, why people buy, etc. Not all people buy things based on engineering fundamentals like my engineering econ prof would of thought. Well, I just read a really interesting article on the concept called the endowment effect. Basically it states that once you “marry” the idea of owning something the buying decision is already done. In the example in the article the guy trys on a pair of jeans and starts to think about how they would go with his shoes.
In industrial sales I see the same concept repeating itself. A good specialists slightly nudges a customer to start thinking about “day 2″ while the buying decision is still going on.
Here is a link to the article. A must read..

Revenge of the Nerds..

John Hodgman is a local boy made good story…  Besides his big gig as “PC” on the apple comericals he is also on the Daily show every once and a while.  Here he is at the Radio and TV Correspondents’ Dinner this week - very funny.  Can’t geeks and jocks ever get along??

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