Top of the Mountain

On the controls review at Gorman Heritage Farms (GHF) for Social Venture Partners Cincinnati, I looked into my old and tattered leather Coach briefcase and grabbed my Mont Blanc pen. I had used that pen during most of my years at Accenture.  After all it was J.R. (one of my co-Accenture Partners) and I performing the interviews at GHF.  I was living the nostalgic consulting days with J.R. using my old pen and briefcase.

Alas - the ink cartridge was dry (after all I had not touched the pen for over 10 years).  So off to Staples to get replacement cartridges.  You can't buy just one - they come in a two pack ($12.29).  I probably have a stranded extra cartridge buried somewhere in the junk drawer contents of my old Accenture desk junk -  but finding it would be impossible.

Mont Blanc's were the "in" pen during the 80's.  Priced at greater than $100 it was the status symbol of its day (taking the place of the gold Cross pens). Today, the Miestertuck Le Grand retails for $425.  Every consultant trying to emulate the Partners purchased their Mont Blancs to "look the part".  I was racing to the top - so I needed the pen.

Status symbols (pens, watches, cell phones, rings, designer clothes, cars, and now Starbucks cups) are the many objects that people use to "elevate" themselves.  Those objects (and their cost) become a vicious spiral of "keeping up".  Peer pressure affects each of us in different ways at different times in our lives.  In some cases we follow others thinking the path to the top is where everyone else is headed.

I received one of the better spiritual books about climbing to the top (as a gift for teaching Sunday School) called "Hope for the Flowers" by Trina Paulus.  Here's the Amazon.com summary:

In the tale, the caterpillar heroes, Stripe and Yellow, want something more from life than eating and growing bigger. They get caught up in a "caterpillar pillar," a squirming mass of bodies, each determined to reach a top so far away it can't be seen. Finally disillusioned, they discover that the way for the caterpillars to find their particular "more," who they really are, is to enter the cocoon and "...risk for the butterfly." Hope for the Flowers has helped people gain the courage to leave jobs, change their lives and explore their love for another human being.

Mont Blanc - The highest European Mountain Top.  Every caterpillar's initial dream-- but with time runs out of ink.  :)

Put your little foot

It was another birthday celebration (60th milestone), this time for P.Y. last night.  His famous quote of "How Lucky am I?" was celebrated with the book "Luck: The essential guide" by Deborah Aaronson.  Since P.Y was traveling the next day, I read some of the dos and don'ts of travel luck.

For instance, always leave home with the right foot first and arrive at the destination with the right foot first.  Both P.Y and L.Y. immediately said "Of course, we always do that for good luck". 

So immediately I began thinking - what foot do you start out with?  Left or Right?  Does it vary by function - stairs, getting up, running, skating etc.  or whether you are wearing boots, or sandals; or  whether you are left handed, right handed (or should I say left footed, right footed) or physical nature of your feet - big foot, little foot? 

And what about all those sayings "Put your best foot forward"; or "Getting off on the wrong foot"; or "Jumping right in with both feet"?

Or maybe this right foot luck thing is just Hokey Pokey :)

Missing Shakespeare's Punchlines

Jenna organized a family outing to the CCM (Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music) production of Midsummer's Night Dream at the Patricia Corbett theater last night.  The first Shakespeare play that Mom took me to was Midsummer's Night Dream (probably back in the 60's).  So it was ironic that the set and costumes were set in the 1960's but the prose was all "Shakespearean". 

It was either the acoustics or my unpracticed listening of the Shakespeare prose that created the feeling that I was sitting in a foreign country wishing for translation headphones.  Even my faded memory of the plot was little help in understanding what the actors were saying.  It's a shame to hear the rest of the audience laugh while you sit there dumbfounded on what they are laughing about (like missing the punch line of a joke).

By the second act (and late into the evening), there was some question of whether we would stick it out. Poor Ellen probably didn't understand a word or thing about what was going on. But feeling the duty of not skipping English Literature class at high school/college, we stuck it out to the end.

Missing a few punchlines is no great tragedy. 

Heart Beat Theory

I was walking along with J.R. and K.M. when I mentioned the well studied and scientifically proven theory I invented called the Heart Beat Theory :)   I invented this theory to justify why I don't run for exercise (or exercise too much).

Heart Beat Theory:  Each individual has a predetermined number of heartbeats in their life - consequently you need to be sure to conserve your heart beats. 

Note that exercising by running would use too many heartbeats and thereby reduce your elapsed time for life.  In describing this theory, many have countered that runners (who during their runs have overexercised their heart beats) have such low pulse rates (hence conserving heart beats during the day to day activities).  They use this argument to convince me that running is a great way to exercise.

However there is a corollary to the Heart Beat Theory to combat this attempt to get me to exercise by running. 

Corollary 1:  "Wide fluctuations in rates of heart beats are also dangerous to one's health."

As the theory progresses in science there will be many other corollaries developed.  But for now - keep the heart beats moderately moving :)


PS.    You can use the Heart Beat Theory for other justifications - like napping :)

Echoes

My recent posts on birthdays and world population "Billion Person" days continues to intrigue me (naturally I'm a statistician).  I've always loved reading Harry S. Dent's books about the coming booms and crashes based on his study of demographics and U.S. birth rates.  So it was appropriate that I read the Oct. 3, 2012 National Vital Statistics Report on 2011 preliminary Birth data.

So What?

Here is a small sample size to put the chart in perspective.  Susan was born in 1957 (the second highest record year for number of births 4.308 million).  She had her first child (at age 34) Jenna in 1991 (note 1991 was the ninth highest year for births 4.158 million).  I'll spare you the chart of rates of birth by age of women, but it clearly shows highest rates of birth  for women aged 25-34 (no surprise here). 

So we have the big boom - 1954 -1964  -  46.012 million births over a 11 year span

and its Echo  1989 - 1993    -   20.375 million births  over a 5 year span

What kind of sounds will we hear in 2018 - 2020?     Babies crying?


PS -  I'm getting old and telling old blogs (or should I say echoing old blogs).  Just noticed my entry March 19, 2010  Coonskin Hats.  A good statistician would ask - what happened in 2007 with the record number of births 4.317 million?   Maybe some static feedback?

Erroneous Company

Well I'm in good company making the same mistake as Johnny Carson regarding the "Birthday Paradox".  Actually I have no excuse since I have a masters degree in statistics.  Looking back at my Dec. 1 2009 Blog "A Statistician's Birthday", I made the classic mistake of statistics -  mixing combinations with specific probabilities (like Johnny Carson did on his show - Feb. 6, 1980). Consequently, I feel obligated to ReBlog and correct my mistake!

For those interested in the details read the Oct. 1, 2012 NYT article "It's my Birthday too, yeah".

Here is the summary:

(1) How many people would be enough to make the odds of a match (two or more with the same day) at least 50-50?
(2) How many people would be enough to make the odds of a match with your specific birthday at least 50-50?

The answers for 50-50 and 92%

(1) 23 people for  50%  probability              and for 43 people the odds are 92%
(2) 253 people  for 50% probability             and for 921 people the odds are 92%


So next time you are in a room of 1,000 people - announce your birth day and see if there is a match.  Maybe you will be more lucky than Johnny Carson was (actually his birth day - Oct 23 matched it was the other audience member test that failed).

PS.  Ed McMahon was pretty close with his 1000 person guess (if he was answering question #2)

PPS -  I posted this two days too early. Oct. 5th is the MOST Common Birthday.  So a good statistician would point out that certain days are not random.   Add nine months to Jan. 1  :)

Fertility & Mortality

I had mistakenly put the 7 billion day in my Outlook calendar as October 18th 2012. The reality is that the United Nations announced that the world population hit 7 billion humans on October 31, 2011 - a year earlier!!   Naturally the statistician in me wondered why I was off by a year?  And how could the various news articles have such wide variation in forecasted dates?

Here is what the news articles have reported:

1804 - 1 Billion
1927  - 2 Billion  -  123 years
1959  - 3 Billion   -  32 years
1974  - 4 Billion    - 16 years
1987 -  5 Billion    -  13 years
October 12, 1999   6 Billion  -  12 years
October 31, 2011   7 Billion  -  12 years

2023, 2025   8 Billion -  12 to 14 years
2041 , 2050  9 Billion  -  16 to 27 years
2081, 2083  10 Billion  -  31 to 42 years

It all comes down to fertility rates and morality rates.  Even small variations in these rates of change create huge fluctuations in yearly forecasts and it appears the most sensitive variable is fertility!

With just a small change in fertility the estimate of world population by the end of the century (2100) varies between 6.2 billion to 15.8 billion.   YES even a possible prediction of population DECLINE!  That is with an assumption that life expectancy will increase from 68 years to 86 years by the turn of the century.

Why is this important?  Because living in a world with flat population or declining population will be VERY DIFFERENT from the world we have experienced so far. 

Mark your calendars now - October 15, 2024 - 8 Billion!


PS - Population this moment  - U.S. 314,500,734World 7,043,098,14214:55 UTC (EST+5) Oct 02, 2012