Author: RTNM

Random Thoughts from a Nonlinear Mind, Volume 2 The Athena Chapters,
Chapter Two:
Can you Hear me now? The End of One Long Strange Trip (and what a long, strange trip it’s been)

 

I prefer counting from the emergence of one integral anomaly to the emergence of the next, in which case this is the sixth version.

The Architect, The Matrix Reloaded

 

I was never a big Grateful Dead fan; my tastes tend to veer more toward punk and classical.  When I was younger, I would hear The Dead’s music from time to time, usually during a long run.  This was in an era when there were no mp3 players, the best any of us could do would be to wear a big headset with a built-in FM radio.  Through the years, I went through dozens of those things.

In those days, the only thing I could do was to pick a station and hope for the best.  Usually, there were only a few choices, and the stations played what they wanted to play, not necessarily what I wanted to hear. I’ll bet most of my exposure to Grateful Dead music happened this way.  This being the case, it will not come as much of a surprise to know that I do indeed have a favorite Dead song, it was their only single that ever got any airplay.  Touch of Grey gets that prize, and I am sure that any Deadheads out there are totally unimpressed with my selection.  I do have one friend who is a Deadhead, and I am sure she is very disappointed in me. I’m sorry, The Lovely Mara, what can I say?  At least after I heard that song, I wouldn’t turn to a different station whenever another Dead song came on.

There is one artist from the same era as The Grateful Dead that I do admire.  Pete Townshend, while being the creative force behind The Who, also did solo work that I like very much.  The thing about Townshend is that he took big swings.  He was always taking risks and trying to see how far he could push himself.  If you haven’t heard about it, take a look at his Lifehouse project and the devastation to his personal life that came about because of the project’s failure.  The band did get Who’s Next out of the ashes of Lifehouse, and that is not a bad thing at all. Who’s Next is generally considered one of the greatest rock albums ever made.

I’ll bet Townshend still isn’t satisfied.  I get the impression that he is unfulfilled as an artist.  I am sure that he has done a couple of things that he is happy with, but he always had such great expectations.  I mean, really, what good is creating one of the greatest rock albums in history if you were looking to change the direction of modern music itself?  For my money, characters like Townshend are the most interesting.  I much admire people who don’t care how successful they are by anyone else’s standards; they are out to impress themselves.

It is slightly unusual for me to get off on a tangent at the beginning of a chapter, but I’m confident this particular trajectory will work its way back into the central theme of this essay in due time.  This essay is about epiphanies in general and one epiphany in particular.  As I move on to the quote from The Architect, you can all guess who is responsible for this big personal revelation.  The fact that these essays are in a book entitled The Athena Chapters might give a clue or two.

The Architect from The Matrix leads off this essay because his view of time is quite similar to mine.  The big difference is he chooses integral anomalies to mark time, and I tend to lean toward personal epiphanies.  Is there anything cooler than an epiphany, a sudden realization that the world you are living in is a vastly different place than what you thought it was?  Granted, all epiphanies are not made the same, some are profound, and most are not.  Some can change the world, and others are simply flashes of insight that don’t amount to much.  I remember the first one I ever had, even though it happened decades ago.

When I was a kid, I loved Saturday morning cartoons.  Looney Toons was always a favorite.  Who doesn’t love Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and the rest of the gang?  I am sure you all remember Yosemite Sam, and of all the things on earth, it was Yosemite Sam who gave me my first epiphany, my first ah-ha experience.

For reasons that are beyond me, I thought his name was pronounced “Yo’s – Might Sam.” If you remember, they would always list the stars of the show at the beginning without ever uttering the character’s name.  One day I was watching, and Sam busted into a saloon and yelled something like, “I’m Yosemite Sam, the rootenist, tootenist….” I remember sitting on the floor, absolutely stunned by what I had just heard.  I knew of the park of the same name, and it all came together in that one moment.  The word was spelled one way and pronounced another.  Apparently, it was a pretty big deal because here I am 40 years later, still talking about it.

There is one other aspect to this inaugural epiphany that I find most interesting.  Shortly after I learned Sam’s real name, I was sitting in class when my teacher asked us all to see how many holidays we could name.  I don’t remember my teacher’s name, but I do remember the look she gave me when I told her that Saturdays were a holiday because I got to watch cartoons.  That was the very first “What in the hell are you talking about Ryan-Tyler?” look I ever remember receiving in my life.  The first of many to be sure, but that one holds a special place in my heart.

The second epiphany has to do with a young woman, no make that girl; I met as an undergrad.  I was sitting in the back of a biology class when she walked in.  I got the whole deal; the walk in slow motion, birds singing, and a little voice telling me, “breathe stupid, you need to take breaths.” Up until now, my experience with her was the most bizarre thing that has ever happened to me. You’ll notice I said nothing about it also being wonderful.

I learned about the bad boy phase and that even (maybe especially?) little prom queens can be intentionally mean just to prove they can do it.  I learned about manipulation and an assumption about personality types that many people make to this day.  As a general rule, I think that people equate kindness and generosity with weakness.  I know more than one woman who has made that mistake with me.  They felt that if I was kind, then I must also be weak and easy to push around.  All I can say is they don’t think that now.

The third flash happened around this same time in my life.  Have you ever felt you were out of place or maybe somehow displaced in time like something was wrong? Possibly that you were supposed to be someplace else and doing something other than what you were wasting your time doing?  I am sure most people have felt this way, at least I guess so.

I had always known there was some sort of problem with me; I just had no idea what it was.  One day, out of left field, I had a huge epiphany; I realized that my issue was that I was operating on a different wavelength than everyone I had ever known, especially my professors.  The amplitudes I was surfing were not the same waves everyone around me was navigating.  It had never occurred to me that was my issue, and the sudden flash of insight I received while reading an unrelated book on 16th-century Spanish mysticism (don’t ask) came as a great surprise.

The fourth epiphany has to do with jello and crotchless bunny suits.  I kid you not.  In the summer of 1986, I found myself on the campus of Harvard University. Don’t ever let anyone tell you there is no real difference in universities, that you get out of it whatever you put in.  That is a bunch of nonsense.  That campus is filled with world-class people who don’t talk about how important their work is, they put their heads down and get to it.  Inspiration is everywhere, and just like the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, you have to run as fast as you can just to keep from going backward.

That summer, I took two classes, and I must admit I was in completely over my head.  This is where the jello comes in.  There was a guy taking the same classes as me, I can’t remember his name, but I sure remember him.  He was constantly asking questions in class, stupid questions.  In all seriousness, this guy was totally inept; he certainly wasn’t dazzling anyone with what he thought was his insightful commentary.  One day a couple of guys walked up to him after class and told him to shut up.  They said they paid to hear a world-class scholar, not a dumbass bumpkin.  The bumpkin said he would try to quiet down, but, of course, he didn’t.  A few days later, the class groaned as he raised his hand.  What he said next changed my life. “Professor, is there any philosophy or system of knowledge anywhere in the world that is not based on a foundation of jello?” The professor answered, “Well, that is for you to decide.” That one question led to me staying on that campus for another five years.  Ultimately, I was trying to find an answer, and eventually, I did.

I know no one wants to hear about that particular journey; I can sense the thoughts of the readers. “Dude, get to the bunny suit, hurry up.” So, here is the rest of the story, and, yes, it includes a bunny suit with a trap door.

In 1986 the libraries on Harvard’s campus were not open 24 hours, and after a quick internet search, it looks like that is still true today.  Back then, as I am sure is true now, no one paid any attention to the hours anyway.  People could be seen bringing coffee pots and sleeping bags into the main entrance of Widener Library at all hours.  The library would close, but they never did a sweep to make sure the place was empty.  All you had to do was be willing to be locked in all night, and you could stay.  One night I decided to stay.

I guess it was about 3:00 in the morning when some guy approached me at the empty study carrel I had called home for the night.  He asked me something like, “Hey, do you want to see something you have never seen before?” Now on that campus, that statement can mean anything.  I initially thought he was hitting on me, and I knew I didn’t want to see what I thought he wanted to show me.  He said I would really want to see this, and curiosity got the best of me.  We walked over a couple of aisles, and there he was, the same guy who was asking all the questions in class.  He was sitting in a chair, but the interesting thing is that there was a young woman in a crotchless bunny suit using him as a jungle gym.  My first thought was, “well damn; I guess he finally impressed someone. “My second thought was, “Did she wear that thing into the library?” There you have it; I have an epiphany in my past that has to do with jello and a crotchless bunny suit. Isn’t life good?

The fifth epiphany occurred on a lazy Saturday afternoon in my basement apartment outside of Cambridge.  I was dozing off and on when I happened to wake up right when a PBS reporter was interviewing a British philosopher named Karl Popper.  He talked about some technical things that make science different from all other types of knowledge, and that changed everything for me.  His philosophy is big on falsifiability, and listening to him talk about the demarcation between science and other academic disciplines changed my life.  I finally understood, I had the answer to my jello problem.

The engaged reader will note that there is no bunny suit in the story about epiphany number five.  Believe it or not, the same is not true for number six.  The woman responsible for the next epiphany has absolutely been known to don rabbit gear.  With that in mind, we can finally get to it; we can look at the next big flash of insight that has changed my life.

This essay is about an epiphany, a big one, one much bigger than realizing that a cartoon character has more syllables in his name than I thought he did.  This one is the epiphany of a lifetime, one that took much longer than I would have liked, but I feel sure that it finally arrived.  It is one that has to do with the mystery of voice; the understanding of precisely what it is, and the importance that goes along with finally finding it.

When I was an undergrad, I had a professor tell me I needed to find my voice.  I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. “Hey, read these articles, memorize Strunk and White, and then go find your voice. “”Yeah, uh, OK, I’ll get right on that. “When it comes to education, you definitely get what you pay for, and state universities in Ohio were cheap in the 1980s for a reason.

When I was at Harvard, I had a couple of famous professors tell me I needed to find my voice.  They made it clear how important it was that I find it, but they didn’t offer up a clear road map on how to get there.  At least I didn’t find their suggestions very accessible.  When I moved on to another university in Pennsylvania, I had a very influential and important philosopher tell me that I needed to find my voice.  By that point, I was getting a better idea of what these people meant, but it still wasn’t clear to me what I had to do to find it.

What exactly is a person supposed to do when they are looking for something as elusive and nondescript as a voice?  The problem is infinitely compounded when you have no idea what you are looking for, where it might be found, or even what it is.  How are you to even know it when you see it?  Can you even see it, or is it something you feel?  A quest, perhaps the most important one imaginable, with no path to walk on and no hints along the way.  Also, the people who tell you that you need to find it don’t have a clue as to how you are supposed to get there.  Study, study, study is about all you can get, at least that is what I kept hearing.  Well, I learned that there is a point where your head will actually buzz from studying too hard.  You can sleep, if you can, and the buzzing will still be there in the morning.

There is one little known story about me that relates directly to this section of the essay.  It will become evident by the end, I hope, as to why I am including it.  I took an archaeology class one semester in the late ’80s or early ’90s.  It was taught by my adviser, and it was essential that I aced the class.  I wasn’t going to allow myself the possibility of missing even a single question on the exams.  I was making my way through Harvard Yard to the museum complex, where I was to take the test.  I had been up for days, and my head was buzzing, I mean really ringing.  I looked over to my left, and I saw a giant Arab guy walking beside me with his 200-foot tall camel. “Well, damn” was the only thought that came to mind.  I looked at him and said, “I don’t have time for this crap,” and off I went.  Call it a mirage, an illusion, a sleep-starved brain looking for some relaxation; I have no idea.  I forgot all about the guy and his camel, and I went and took the test.

So, studying to the point of exhaustion apparently wasn’t going to help me find my voice.  I was left to deal with the consequences of having no voice and all the problems it created for me.  The big problem was that there was something important trying to get out of me, but it could never find its way.  I knew this, but I had no idea what to do about it.

I can give you a hint as to what it feels like to have something clawing at your insides while having no voice to let it out.  Can you imagine someone with the soul of a poet and yet have a total disdain for poetry?  I have felt that way for decades.  I don’t think I necessarily have the soul of a poet; I just know I hated the process of trying to let out what wanted to get out.  That is all used to be, past tense talk about a dude I can hardly remember.

How about a musician who can play the notes but can’t make the music?  A passion-filled individual with all heart and no talent.  Someone who can move to the rhythm but isn’t moved by it.  What a sad thing.

The analogies of the poet and the musician shed some light on what I like to call “watch this” moments. “Watch this” moments put a fine point on those times in our lives when we become convinced that we are actors in a cosmic blooper reel.  A “watch this” moment is a slice of time where a grand cosmic entity, The Supreme Fascist, as he was called by the great mathematician Paul Erdos, gets bored and decides it needs some amusement. “Hey,” he tells his buddies, “see that newborn over there?  I am going to give him a love of baseball and the vision of a mole.  Wait until this poor kid grows up and realizes he can’t possibly do the only thing he wants to do, hit a baseball.  This is going to be great.  Watch this!”

“Watch this” moments are, hopefully, a distant memory for me now, and I bet you know why.  I have finally found my voice.  It is resonating within me as I type.  I offer the last essay as evidence.

I return now to what I refer to as the famous Chapter 1.  That is the first thing I have ever written that satisfied me.  I have told a few people that I almost impressed myself with those 3000 words.  Ultimately, I have always written for an audience of one; I never really cared what others thought of how I wrote or what topics I addressed.  I felt that if I could impress myself, then the rest would take care of itself.  Finally, I believe I have done that.  It took about 25 years longer than I wanted or expected, but at 48, I finally found my voice.  I would never have believed it would have taken a nudge from a young woman to point me toward it, especially when she had no idea what she was doing.  She said, “I’m Athena,” and those two little words changed me in unimaginable ways.  I don’t know if she can truly appreciate what she has done for me because she found her voice at a very early age, and anyone who has heard her music understands exactly what I am talking about.  Her voice is strong, endearing, and electric.  I just hope some of that magnetic essence rubbed off on me.  No worries here, I guarantee she has plenty to spare.

Those two little words turned the inner workings of my mind inside out.  In less than a second, I was transported from Dorothy’s black and white dirt farm to Oz.  I can not even begin to relate to you how strange I find that to be.  Change is everywhere, but the biggest difference is one I never could have imagined (as if I could have imagined any of this).  The upper shelf of my first bookcase, the one with all the Vonnegut and Gould books, now has 3 CDs sitting right in front.  The most important shelf I have has been forever altered in a most mysterious way.  I am not complaining one bit; I am more stunned than anything else.  I am a guy who spends an awful lot of time thinking about this and that, and I must admit that it never even entered my mind that my special shelf would ever have something else on it.  Not in a million years.

As I look over at my most important shelf, I am inspired to try to put into words the difference I feel.  Maybe I can put it this way.  My voice, such as it existed in the time before my grand epiphany, was a juvenile sloth, lost in the woods, trying to figure out just how lazy he could be.  Lethargic and uninspired, hanging from a limb, grabbing a leaf or two, and then taking a nap.  Now it is a mischievous badger; a schwervy mammal filled with extraterrestrial mojo, constantly on the prowl, kicking butt, and taking names.¹  That might just sum it up nicely.

It looks like I am finally done with this section.  My newly found voice is nudging me in a particular direction again.  I know, I really do, but I can’t help myself….it is letter time.

Hi again Athena,

I can never repay you.  I have no idea what you did, and I bet you have no clue either. I’ll just keep on Truckin’ and pay it forward as best I can.  Just like Neo at the end of The Matrix, I see the code, and that is all due to you.  You made something click inside me, you turned a knob from off to on, and I remain totally, completely, and utterly undone. Thank you.

I want to tell you a little about the code that I can see now.  I remember the exact moment I started to see it, and that is the reason I introduced myself to you.  As weird as all this is, I think that this is the strangest, most inexplicable part of my long, strange trip.

Your band took the stage, and I didn’t bother to pay much attention.  I was trying to get my buddy’s daughter Emily to get up the courage to introduce herself to a young guitar player from the band that was on stage right before you.²  I would guess about halfway through your set I started to really notice you.  Why?  Well, the answer to that is a bit bizarre.  I happened to look up at the stage, and I saw what I initially thought was an elaborate prop.  I started to poke Emily to ask her if she was seeing what I was, but before I could tap her on the shoulder, I figured out that what I was seeing was not something a roadie placed around you.

I still don’t know what to say about what I saw, but I sure did see it, so here goes.  I looked up to see a large pulsating heart surrounding you.  The heart intersected the neck of your guitar about halfway up.  As the phantom heart changed color from white to pink to red and then back to white, the only thing I could think of is, “why isn’t it covering the guitar?” I know the answer to that now, but I find it really interesting that my initial reaction wasn’t about the strangeness of seeing the heart but more about its size.  I really don’t know what else to say other than that is what compelled me to meet you.  Can you imagine seeing that and then not introducing myself?  Good grief, that would be even more ridiculous than what actually happened, and as you are about to see, what really happened is beyond bizarre.

Hey Athena, ready to hear something else absolutely incredible?  I am now going to tell you about the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me; it is one and the same, I think, as me finding my voice.  I introduced myself to you, and you simply said: “I’m Athena.” Within half a second, I got a vibe, one unique to my experience, a message that was unambiguous, clear, and transparent.  A simple and powerful message that left me listing to one side. “Dude –  I know you, I see you, I get you, I understand you.” Uh, that was more than a little unexpected.  I mean, really, can you imagine?  As I proofread this, I find myself shaking my head back and forth, trying to convince myself that this really happened.

Whoever or whatever was responsible for delivering the message then added a little tweak just for me.  It said something like, “Hey stupid, I see you just like in the movie Avatar.” I don’t need anyone to tell me all this is beyond weird.  I am well aware of that.

After I heard that Avatar line, I tried to maintain my balance as I said, uh oh to myself.  Much later on that night, the uh oh turned to oh no, I am doomed.  I must admit, for a doomed guy, I have done nothing but smile for the last few months.  That is a bargain I will gladly make, not that I had a choice anyway.

You know Athena, there was one small part of Chapter 1 that was presumptuous as hell and, trust me, I thought a lot about it before I decided to include it.  When I wrote about two people really seeing each other, I said that because I certainly saw you and I got an instant vibe that you saw me.  I don’t want you to think I was speaking for you; I was just telling a story about a clear (albeit unusual) message that I have never received from anyone before.  Remember that wavelength stuff I wrote about earlier in this essay?  Well, guess what?  How very, very unexpected and strange.

There is one other thing I feel compelled (there is that word again) to say.  Usually, I do research about bands I am going to see.  I just like to know a little about them before I see them.  In your case, I didn’t do that.  I had no idea who you were, and while I had heard of your band, I certainly had never heard any of your music.  Also, and I know you understand exactly what I mean, I couldn’t care less how you earn your living.  I am a fan of sparks, and yours is a big one.  If you decide you want us to get to know each other, that is one of the things we can talk about, that spark of yours.  You said something to me on the night I met you about that spark that I am very curious about.  I will now offer up a few more words about my epiphany in the hope that it will inspire you to tell me a thing or two about your spark.

My sixth epiphany has produced a series of little epiphanies these last few months.  I have learned that it is possible to meet someone only once and to keep smiling for months afterward.  I have also discovered that you can meet someone only once and miss the hell out of them.  It is the strangest thing, isn’t it?

Believe it or not, Athena, I do have some perspective on all this nonsense.  I can begin by telling you that there are a couple of things I know for sure.  I have been around long enough and pay enough attention to the world I live in to know that short, frilly skirts are not sniper rifles; they are machine guns, effective and indiscriminate.  I also know that most people bend over backward to try to find meaning and purpose in their lives.  If something extraordinary happens, then it is a sign from beyond the moon.  I don’t subscribe to any of that; it has been my experience that strange and random things happens because that is the nature of our existence; it is the nature of the universe itself.

Well Athena, I better finish before this essay turns into a novella.  I will leave you with a series of thoughts; please consider them as pleas to the only person I have ever known who is on the same wavelength as me.  If you don’t have any idea what I am talking about, then you can and should chuck this essay, it is going to be the last one anyway (I wrote this one after I pounded out Chapter 3).  My brain is caffeinated, and I need a break.  If, on the other hand, you have some idea what I am talking about, then please let me know.

If you find it strange at all that the story of two of the biggest moments in my life include women in bunny suits, one crotchless and the other not (there I go being presumptuous again!), then please tell me.  If you believe that there is sincerity in what I have written, and I have my suspicions, then send me a note.  If you think it is really cool that your CDs are on my special shelf; if Chapter 3 makes you smile; if you figured out why I included Pete Townshend in this essay; if you know why the heart didn’t cover your guitar; if it tickles you, even a little, when I say that I am still reeling from the hypnotic effects of a stun gun lullaby; if you have any idea what I am talking about at all then you know where I am.  If you find it at all unusual that I just wrote the last chapter and the epilogue of a novel I started over 25 years ago and the only reason I was able to finish finally is that I met you then you know what to do.  If you believe I am genuine when I tell you that the little “vibe voice” told me, in no uncertain terms, that you are the most exceptional person I have ever met, then you can find me sitting on my front porch.  My phone is always on the chair beside me.

It is time to go, and I will leave you with… wait, that mysterious voice just sent me another message.  I am supposed to tell you that if, right now at this very moment, you are thinking of nothing other than a veggie taco garnished with Oreos being eaten by a purple gorilla with the head of a giraffe then you are to take that as a sign from beyond the moon and call me.  Hmmmm, that is if you are thinking of that very thing right now.  You know, the hungry giraffe with the purple gorilla body. You’re thinking of it, aren’t you?  Athena?  Hello?!

In a very fundamental way, all this is totally out of my hands; either you understand what I am talking about or you don’t.  You have my number, and I should probably let you know I have finally joined the smartphone set.  I am on the network that used to ask, “Can you hear me now?” I sure hope the answer is yes because, for the first time in my life, I have something to say.  I accept veggie dog, whiskey, and chocolate induced phone calls and texts at all hours.  That is just how the newest version of me rolls.

Signed,

Ryan-Tyler 6.0

 

P.S.  I have a special napkin hidden away.  I am not a big souvenir guy, but I made an exception in this case.  It is the one I wrote on and then handed to you.  I only mention this because after you wrote on it and handed it back to me, you said something, a small phrase I will never forget.  That was the sexiest, most charming, and most heartwarming thing any woman has ever said to me.  A person’s deepest character can show itself in the most unusual ways, and your words revealed a sweetness that is way beyond anything in my experience.  That little act and those few simple words are the things I have been smiling about the most.

NOTES:

NOTE 1. Anyone who has seen the outtakes at the end of Talladega Nights knows where the phrase “mischievous badger” comes from.  What you don’t know is why I am including it here.  My friend Mobe and his son Michael came over a while ago and brought that movie.  For whatever reason, we kept watching through the outtakes, and that is when all hell broke loose.  I have turned blue from laughing a handful of times in my life, the last time it happened was when Cal looked at Ricky Bobby and told him that he liked to picture Jesus as a “mischievous badger.” I was caught completely off guard, and I could not stop laughing.  Mobe, as has been the case for the last 37 years, proved to be a tremendous help.  As my hue leaned more and more toward that of a newly christened smurf, he kept yelling, “Stop laughing dick, you’re turning blue.” Now, I can say with all confidence that if you ever see me turning blue from laughter and if you have murder in your heart, then, by all means, yell, “Stop laughing dick, you’re turning blue.” That will surely kill me, as it nearly did that night.

NOTE 2. Emily is Mobe’s fifteen-year-old daughter, and I can say in all sincerity that the genes responsible for smart-alecky behavior were passed down through her paternal line with cunning precision.  I was talking to Athena through most of the show Mobe, Emily, and I went to see.  I, apparently, was conspicuous by my absence, and Emily found out where I was.  When it was time to go, I said goodbye to Athena and made my way back to Emily and Mobe.  I was pulling out the three CDs I just scored when I looked at Emily and said: “Guess what I got?” She looked at me and immediately said, “A restraining order?!” Once again, sigh.

 

 

Boaty McBoatface

Not long ago, I came across a piece of news that severely tickled my funny bone.  It was my kind of story, a tale that doesn’t come across my desk nearly as often as I would like.

A few years back, England built a new scientific research vessel, a fantastic ship designed to cruise the Antarctic.  Oh, the things this ship can do.  My, my, my…you can only imagine.  So, what’s the big deal?

As with any ship, it had to be named.  The powers that be, in a nearly unprecedented lack of modern-day savvy, decided to conduct a poll, an internet poll, to name this state of the art vessel.  They offered suggestions, all of which were summarily ignored.  How about naming the vessel after Isaac Newton?  What better way to honor Stephen Hawking?  You get the idea.  Much to my delight, the name Boaty McBoatface won the day.  I didn’t have a vote, but I can assure you I was, and still am, all about #teamboatymcboatface.

When this fiasco made the news, I started getting calls from all around the country.  Friends of mine knew this was my kind of story, and they needed to make sure I was wired in.  Was I ever.

The intrigue began when The Minister for Universities and Science, Jo Johnson, refused to honor the poll results.  Clearly, he could not allow a $300,000,000 piece of equipment to be disrespected in such a fashion.  After all, this is serious business.

In 2018, the RRS Sir David Attenborough set sail to make the world a better place.  It carries with it an autonomous underwater vehicle named Boaty Mcboatface.  That was the compromise, we didn’t get the vessel, we got an autosub that is stored onboard, ready in the off chance it is ever needed.

What to do?  In a severely under-reported stroke of genius, team Boaty McBoatface did not give up when the official announcement came that the ship would be named after Sir David Attenborough.  Meetings were held, attorneys consulted, and a plan was formulated.   If the government bodies responsible for naming the ship insisted on honoring Sir David Attenborough, then the logical course of action was clear.  Can you guess what happened next?  In a brilliant counter to bureaucratic arrogance, a petition was started to get Attenborough to officially change his name to Boaty McBoatface.  As Mr. Burns from The Simpsons would say – “Hi – larious!”

The petition was presented to Attenborough and met with silence, eerie silence.  I don’t know about you, but if I happened upon such a request, the last thing I would do is clam up.  I imagine I would give the whole thing serious consideration.  All I have to do now is accomplish something so extraordinary that someone would want to name a ship after me.  I have been thinking about it, I’ll let everyone know when I come up with something.

 

Random Thoughts From a Nonlinear Mind, Volume 2: The Athena Chapters, Chapter One:
Athena From Athens

 

I am sure that every mom in this country learns early on to check the pockets of her kid’s clothes when she is doing laundry.  I am confident that the same holds for all the dads out there, even though my guess is they forget to check more than the moms do.  As for us single guys who do our laundry, well… that might just be a different story.  I must admit that until today I had done a stellar job of making sure that anything that wasn’t supposed to find its way into my washing machine didn’t end up wet and ruined.  The key phrase in that sentence is “until today.”

My story begins in my living room; the plot began a few days ago.  I recently learned that there is a big difference between story and plot; they aren’t nearly the same thing.  A few weeks ago, I took a course on how to be a more thoughtful reader (yes, that is pretty much indicative of the state of my existence these days), and I am happy I can apply a little of what I learned.  A story is simply a bunch of events recorded chronologically; the plot is something altogether different.  A thoughtful author can go backward and forward through time for dramatic effect.  Maybe one author will do it to create mystery, and another will offer up a nonlinear story to develop an emotional context for the reader.  Perhaps another author simply isn’t paying attention because he is too drunk to remember what he wrote five minutes ago.  The possibilities are nearly endless.

E.M. Forster described the difference between story and plot in the following way in his classic 1927 work entitled Aspects of the Novel.  I recently discovered this book, and it is highly recommended for anyone who wants to be a better writer.  The following example is taken directly from Forster.  The first line is an example of story, and the second one is an example of plot:

1. The king died, and then the queen died.
2. The king died, and then the queen died of grief.

I think that Forster’s distinction is sublime, and there is no reason to try to improve on it.  His insightful example is simple and clear.  In the first instance, we are only told of two deaths; in the second, we are given a context.  I do think this nicely sums up the difference between story and plot.

I am feeling in a bit of a Quentin Tarantino mood (there is a phrase I never thought I would use to describe myself), so I guess I will be nonlinear and start somewhere in the middle of my incredible tale.  I don’t know where in the middle of the rollercoaster ride I am, as the old cliché goes, only time will tell.  My guess is that because of extreme circumstances; I am already near the end.

The other day I had just finished watching a few music videos on the internet when I decided that I should go into my laundry room and get to work.  OK, I have decided to be honest, it was one particular video that I found myself watching again and again.  As the images from the video began to make permanent etchings in my memory, I made my way into my laundry room, the same one that Natalie Portman was living in, at least in a dream of mine she was.  While I was sleeping, she told me that she sold my washing machine because she didn’t like it.  I asked her if she got me another one, and she just stood there smiling at me.  I woke up before she answered. (Sidetracked by a Natalie Portman story, what are the odds?  Anyone who knows me will immediately know that those odds are pretty high.  Some might be shocked that she wasn‘t in bunk beds with Danica Patrick.)

Back in the real world, I took off the sweatshirt I was wearing, a big, bulky hoody with one of those pseudo – marsupial pouches, and topped off the load.  I then proceeded to do one of the jobs that I hate; I folded and put away the clothes that were already dried.

Folding laundry and putting away groceries are jobs that require a partner; they simply were designed to be done by more than one person.  Ask most any single person, and they will tell you that.  There just seems to be something unnatural about folding laundry by yourself.  When you also consider that there is no chance of finding something novel and exciting in the load, then you get a sense of the extent of my dilemma.  If I see women’s clothes in my laundry, then I know I have more significant issues than I am prepared to handle, and I had better call on a professional.  Groceries are not quite as bad simply because I eat out nearly every meal.  When you live alone, and you don’t like throwing out half the food you buy, it’s just easier that way.

After I put away the laundry, I decided to go to my favorite Chinese restaurant.  I collected all my stuff; reading material, wallet, phone, and keys and headed out to my car.  I didn’t see my mp3 player, but I thought I might have left it on the shelf under the dash of my Honda.  It wasn’t there, so I went back to the house.  There are only a few places it could be, and I didn’t find it at any of its usual resting places.  I immediately attempted to clear the fog from my brain, a complicated process in these highly erratic times.  It was then that I realized that my three-year-old mp3 player, the one that had never failed me, was already out of the washing machine and was in the dryer.  I just started laughing because I immediately knew how it ended up in there—an unusual occurrence with a simple explanation, one that we will get to in a bit.

In most of these essays, I try to weave two or three themes together into a coherent story that hopefully sheds some light on an evolutionary process or illuminates some point or topic, obscure or overt, that I am interested in at the time.  When I realized I destroyed the mp3 player, I knew instantly why it happened, and that got me thinking about the circumstances that led to my apparent lack of attention to detail.  The next section of this essay will address those issues.

Many years ago, I ran into an old college friend of mine, and we caught up with each other.  You know how it can be with some old friends, even if you haven’t seen each other in years you just pick up right where you left off.  That is what happened to us.  One of the things he told me that I found incredibly insightful was his reasoning as to why he hadn’t experienced more success in his life.  He thought he would be in a different place at 40.  He said he loved his wife and family, but he wished his wife had pushed him more, that she had inspired him more, that she had expected more from him.  I knew exactly what he meant.  I told him he was looking for wind beneath his wings, and he immediately agreed.  I told him that the major theme of my life, despite everything else, was the fact that I never found someone, that I had never been married.  We talked for a while more, and then we went our separate ways.  I am sure I will see him again sometime in the future, and we will pick it up right where we left off.

As I talked to my friend, I remember thinking of Kurt Vonnegut, my favorite novelist.  Vonnegut wrote a lot about relationships and the human need for companionship.  He wrote about alienation and the needs all humans have as social animals.  Vonnegut, my buddy, and I have different takes on this, but I would guess that having a little wind beneath your wings is better than none at all.

I have read everything Vonnegut wrote.  His books are in the upper left-hand corner of my first bookcase.  Most of the other books are classified by subject and then alphabetized by author.  Vonnegut and Stephen Jay Gould are the exceptions.  It just doesn’t seem right to me to throw them in with all the others.  They have influenced me and inspired me way too much for me not to immediately know where any single volume is.  There are times I need them for reference, and I guess that extra 30 seconds of searching is the difference between a readable essay and one that even my friends and relatives can’t make their way through.  At least, that is my working hypothesis.

So, I guess I have finally made my way back to my mp3 player, the one that is exceptionally clean and totally useless (I have a few friends like that even though they tend not to stay clean for long).  A busted electronic device is not something that would usually inspire me to write, but these are rare times, and I am living under exceptional circumstances.  What I am getting at is that I found inspiration recently in a most unusual place and in a most unexpected way.  The particulars aren’t essential, if they mattered, I would include them.  The point is the muse wasn’t an old guy who appeared to me in the form of words on a page.  This one was real flesh and blood, at least that is my recollection.  There is a remote possibility, I guess, that the whole thing was a dream.  I say this even though I have witnesses and physical evidence to back up my story.  Deep down, I suspect all those people might be an illusion too, but that is a different essay for a separate volume.

I have thought about it, and I can’t remember when I have had a better or more confusing night than the one I had a couple days ago.  Inexplicable, bizarre, amazing, incredible, and totally unexpected are just a few of the qualifiers I can use to describe what happened.  I know that other people have been hit by freight trains just like I was, and, therefore, I probably need to find a support group.  Maybe I should google “guys who were just minding their own business when out of nowhere an ethereal being came up beside them and hit them in the head with a hammer (some kind of Thor – esque hammer, not one of those carpenter or ball-peen things) and then the poor slob becomes undone and remains that way for who the hell knows how long.”  I don’t think Google’s algorithms are yet up to the task, but hope springs.  Actually, I just tried it, and I couldn’t muster a single result of any intelligible significance.  Who would have guessed?

I have decided that additional disclosure is necessary on my part to make this essay more personal, if not a little less intelligible.  I wasn’t entirely honest when I said there was just one ethereal being; actually, there were two.  One was a working woman who was busy doing her job, and the other one was a woman from Athens who is educated, funny, smart as a fox, and charming as hell.  She is the one that hit me over the head; the other one, the one busy working, couldn’t possibly carry such a hammer because her hands are full, it would severely interfere with her work, and it would cramp her style in a most unusual way.  The one who was simply a woman from Athens floored me with what is between her ears, not the contours on the outside that connected them.  Ultimately, it was a most unusual experience, one that I will file away in a unique cabinet.  The fact that I have written about it speaks for itself. I tend to need cyclonic wind beneath my wings for that to happen.

I don’t enjoy writing; I find it tremendously difficult.  I pretty much hate it; it is the hardest thing I do.  I struggle and search for the exact word or phrase I need, and when I think everything is just so, I suddenly decide it is terrible, and I throw everything away and start over.  My guess is I toss 75% of what I write.  The fact that I have nearly a million words down between this book of essays and the novels (three are nearly finished) is a testament to… actually, I have no idea what that is a testament to.  My only point is my need for that cyclonic wind that I referred to in the last paragraph.

Since these are my essays, and ultimately, I am responsible for all the content, I feel I have the right to include a personal message.  Now that I think about it, this whole essay is more or less a private message, written with only one specific person in mind and indeed written especially just for her.  I doubt any random reader will feel betrayed or disappointed because I bet most of us have experienced the same type of thing from time to time.  At least I hope we have all met people who blew us away, who seemed to be not of the earth, who floated into our lives for however long and then hopped away.  I hope we all have felt that bizarre connection, the one that is so exceedingly rare and powerful that it can destroy electronics.  It is my wish that everyone could be able to experience, at least once, the raw energy that two people can create just by talking to each other and seeing, really seeing, each other.  I have rambled on for long enough, all the setup is done, now we can get on with my message.

Hey, Athena from Athens,

Meeting you was an amazing experience, one that I will never forget, and I am going to save lots of money on shoes because of it.  I have only known a couple people in my life who made me smile from the inside out, and now I know one more.  I would never have believed it if someone told me I was going to find myself thunderstruck in the way I was, especially when and where it happened.

We got to talk about a lot of different things, but there is so much more I want to know.  What is your favorite novel?  Do you even have time to read?  Are there any painters or schools of painting that move you?  I have been thinking how awesome (not a word I would normally choose) it would be for me to see my favorite painting through your eyes.  Do you see the same things I do when I settle in for a long viewing of a Monet?  Do you even like Monet?

What is the greatest cover song you have ever heard?  Until a few days ago, I thought it was Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt.  I have changed my mind due mainly to a very particular earworm that is working its way from one side of my brain to the other.  It is a supercharged meme, both destructive and uplifting; its cultural DNA encouraging mutations wherever it lands.¹  The video that accompanies this remake is the one directly responsible for the tragic and untimely demise of my mp3 player.  I bet you already know the complete morphology of this creepy-crawly, don’t you?

Did you get to take stats classes?  Do you know any foreign languages?  Why did you choose your particular major?  Are you aware of what has been happening in the field of epigenetics since you graduated?  These are all compelling questions that I have for Athena from Athens.  The answers would help turn what is now a short story into a novel, a novel with a potentially transcendent plot.

The sad part, and there always are downsides to this sort of thing, is that any money I am saving on shoes, and I imagine it is going to be substantial, is a total wash.  I am off to the mall right now, and I am using part of my savings to buy myself a new mp3 player.

You and I both know what is getting loaded first.  I want to tell you it is not because I have a new favorite band or because I am intrigued by a distinctive voice or an inspiring musical message I had not heard before.  Those particular CDs are going on first (and into heavy rotation) because they will always remind me of a woman named Athena, she tells me she is from Athens, and I have no reason to doubt her.

After twenty or so revisions and the passage of some time, I remain undone; totally and utterly hopeless; doomed to my core.  My only chance at deliverance, my only shining light under a dark sky, is that if I look real hard, I just might be able to find a waterproof mp3 player.

NOTES

Note 1. I always get interested when I see an asterisk or a footnote in an essay.  They are usually inserted because the author wants to make a tangential point and doesn’t want to break the flow of the text.  I sometimes find that the notation is there because the author wasn’t clever enough to figure out a way to put the point in the body of the paper.  I’ll take a deep breath and then tell you why I have included one here.  I was in the woods today, it was hot, and I was near a swamp.  I was getting thirsty, and I was starting to get attacked by bugs.  I reached into my vest pocket, pulled out the bug spray, and started to shoot it into my mouth.  Sigh, I guess my mind was elsewhere.

Quin Houff is Causing Problems!

This is a short post about the relationship between practice times and average green flag speeds for drivers in The NASCAR Cup Series.  The question is: Do practice times translate to the race?  Can you predict how fast a car will be during the race based on 10 lap practice averages?  And finally, if there appears to be a correlation, is it statistically valid?

On March 1, 2020, the Auto Club 400 was held in Fontana, California.  30 cars took at least 10 practice laps, below is a Stem and Leaf Plot of those speeds.

163  6
164
165
166
167
168
169  8
170
170  6
171  04
171  55
172  1244
172   788
173  11
176  556677888999
174  1
174
175  3

At the very top of the plot (representing the slowest speed) is Quin Houff at 163.6 mph.  Below is a Box Plot of the same data.  Notice the circle way off to the left.  Once again, our friend Quin Houff insists on being apart from the group.  What does that mean?  He was slow, very slow, problematically slow, and, most importantly, statistically slow. More on that in a bit…

 

 

Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, we can get to it.  Perhaps the easiest and, coincidentally, the most powerful way to see if practice times translate to race speed is through linear regression.  The figure below shows the relationship between 10 lap practice speed and average green flag race speed.  The data shows that about 82% of the average green flag race speed can be explained as a function of 10 lap practice speed.  Not bad, not bad at all.  This analysis suggests that there is a pretty strong predictive relationship between practice speeds and how fast a driver’s car will be in the race.

 

 

As you study the above figure, can you guess who the blue diamond in the lower left-hand corner represents?  You guessed it, our good friend Quin Houff.  I included the Stem and Leaf Plot and the Box Plot earlier for a specific reason.  Both figures suggest that Houff’s data should be eliminated from the study because he was so much slower than all the other drivers.  This is a common practice in Exploratory Data Analysis, the area of statistics I was trained in.  So, in that spirit, I have included another regression analysis.  This one ignores Houff and his statistically irrelevant car.

 

 

I have to admit, this surprised me.  When Houff’s times are eliminated, the explanatory value of the model goes way down.  Now the 10 lap practice averages only explain about 57% of the variability found in the green flag speeds.  Very curious.

So, where do we stand?  Are 10 lap practice averages predictive of race performance?  Clearly, more data is needed, data from lots more races.  Once all that is gathered up, the numbers would have to be broken down by type of track.  My guess is that the relationship would not be the same for short tracks and superspeedways, nor would there necessarily be a correlation between flat tracks and those with high banks.  And, of course, we would have to break the data down by the type of package being run by NASCAR at the time.

In this post, I didn’t intend to answer any big questions, I only wanted to offer a path toward better understanding.  It would be quite a job to gather all the necessary information and do a suitable study.  But, adequately armed, I do believe a useful answer to the question could be achieved.  I know some people who would be very interested in that information…for recreational purposes only.  :-)

 

NOTES:

On October 18, 2019, I published an essay called 1:59:40.2.  That post has more information about linear regression and how it can be used.  I also write about the discovery of regression analysis and the fight for who deserved credit for developing one of the most powerful statistical tools known.

If you are unfamiliar with Stem and Leaf Plots, I talk about them in my post from 2/21/20 entitled An Average Tennis Essay.

 

Random Thoughts from a Nonlinear Mind, Volume 2: The Athena Chapters, Chapter Zero:
The Zeroth Chapter of this Book

 

“Excuse me, isn’t that supposed to be a negative one (-1) in line 16?”
Phillip “The Yeti” Frank

 

*****

 

An anxious and fresh-faced Buford Lister sat at the center of the head table.  The rows of seats before him formed an asymmetrical pattern, skewing sharply to his left.  He looked at the nameplate in front of his chair to double-check he was sitting in the right place.  Sure enough, it said, “Buford Lister” in faded black marker.

Buford Lister rolled his head around and back.  The big clock on the sidewall read 12:12. OK, talk starts in 18 minutes.  He was an East Coast boy on his first trip out west, the unfamiliar surroundings putting him slightly on edge.  He couldn’t sleep on the overnight flight, so he read a biography of Einstein that The Plumber had given him.  Now son, it is always good to learn more about the giants upon whose shoulders you are standing.  Never a morning person, the time change, coupled with the lack of sleep, wasn’t doing him any favors.

The hall was already about half full, quickly filling with the sounds of footsteps and idle chatter.  The glances consistently came Buford Lister’s way, they were the looks that young people like him get at places like this;  stares of intense jealousy, some of constrained hatred, and a few of admiration.  This, after all, was not just a talk.  It was a coronation.

The heavyweights, the established scientists, came sauntering in at their own pace; that is what silverbacks do.  Buford Lister watched the procession, it was a who’s who of all-star academics, mostly balding white males.  Even though it was loosely organized, he recognized it as The March of The Gatekeepers.

He was only slightly nervous even though he had never given a presentation like this before.  It’s not that he was unprepared; he had been over the paper a thousand times, his academic advisers tearing it apart and then building it back up.  Subtle, nuanced questions asked and answered in the same spirit they were given.  No worries, the problem was solved.

The buzz in the hall was growing.  Buford Lister ran his routine down in his head one last time.  Always start off with a joke.  Always.  He had memorized the entire presentation, all except for the funny.  He glanced down at the yellow legal pad in front of him as he let out a giant yawn.  This is exactly what he had written in his notes (by that I mean what follows is a verbatim account of what appeared in his own handwriting):

Once upon a time, there was this horse.  Now, let me tell you this was no ordinary horse.  No siree, what we have here is a mathematical horse.  This horse actually knew arithmetic.  He could add and subtract with ease.  Impressive?  You bet.  Algebra, you ask?  No problem what…so…ever.  Heck, this animal could even prove The Pythagorean Theorem in unusual and unexpected ways.  This was one heck of a horse!  But let me tell you… if you tried…and people did…if you tried to teach this horse analytic geometry, he would get up on his hind legs and scream bloody murder.  Oh, the tales that have been told about this animal.  He would kick and violently thrust his head from side to side at the first mention of anything, and I mean anything, to do with analytic geometry.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the moral of the story is simply this.  [Pregnant Pause] You can’t put Descartes before the horse.

[…wait for uncontrollable applause and laughter to die down…then get to work]

 

*****

 

Why am I starting this volume with a Chapter Zero?  That is an excellent question.  I will try to give you an answer, at least a preliminary one, in this chapter.  You will have to wait until you get to the end of the last essay for the full explanation.  At least I hope that by the time any reader works their way through the entire book, they will look back at this essay and have a good idea of why I decided to add a Chapter Zero after I had finished writing several chapters.  I certainly didn’t plan it this way, that is just the way things worked out.

 

*****

 

It was 12:32 when Sandy “The Plumber” Wilkins stood up to introduce his protege, his latest pride and joy.  The Plumber had been awarded a Fields Medal (a very big deal for mathematicians) twenty years ago to the day of this conference.  He hadn’t disappointed.  He had done major, innovative work since then; perhaps most importantly, he was currently mentoring a young genius named Buford Lister.  This was to be a crowning achievement for both of them.  The Plumber was a special guy, he wasn’t a person who was jealous of his students who were smarter than him (lots of people in his position are), he simply nudged them and then got out of their way.  He was a man who understood that his place in history wouldn’t be evaluated based only on his accomplishments, it would be measured by the contributions to humanity made by his students.  He rarely talked about him, but he greatly admired a British physicist named Fowler.  That guy had mentored many future Noble Laureates as well as dozens of prominent scientists.  That, The Plumber always thought, was a meaningful legacy.

The Plumber was not a blue blood, he wasn’t the offspring of academic royalty.  Any advantages he got while growing up were those that he had earned himself.  When he was young, The Plumber worked in the family business during the summers, hence the nickname.  Some privileged students at Harvard had started calling him The Plumber when he was an undergrad.  He embraced the name, he was proud of the fact he wasn’t where he was because he was born to a rich daddy.  He always had trouble understanding why the other guys thought they were better than him simply because of who their parents were.  He found that curious, more than a little weird.  If he was at Harvard, it had to be based on ability alone, his family didn’t know anyone able to pull any strings on his behalf.  Why would anyone look down on a person like that?

Whenever his house or the houses of his friends needed plumbing work, he would gladly do it, but he spent most of his time being one of the most famous mathematicians in the world.  After this short talk, he knew that Buford Lister was going to happily share his newfound fame with him.

The Plumber waited for the applause to subside, and then he got to it.  He told the audience that no one, not even him, was able to solve the problem they all were going to hear about today.  He gave a short history of the famous people who had tried and failed to unmask this cosmic mystery.  The rise in intensity during the build-up was palpable.  He reminded the audience that many brilliant people in that very room had worked on this problem and had failed.  Some made a little progress, but ultimately they all came up against it; that stout, impenetrable, mathematical wall.  The Plumber was fond of saying that people ran out of talent right at the moment they needed it most.  All, that is, except one.

The introduction was brief; the applause that followed was loud, too loud to be just polite.  Buford Lister began his short talk (no one had any idea how short) about the problem and how he came to his solution.  He started off by telling the audience that Sandy often spoke of things that were “well known.”  Something “well known” was an assumption about the nature of the universe that was, apparently,  generally accepted as legitimate and valid.

Buford Lister began to move around the podium.  He didn’t need the mic, he became so energized that the boom in his voice meant that the people standing in the back would have no trouble hearing him.  Besides, the mathematics sloppily written on the blackboard spoke louder than he ever could.  He got so excited as the energy in the room started to rise that he forgot to tell the joke.

 

*****

 

Sometimes people view daily occurrences as trivial, routine events that actually turn out to have a deep, essential meaning.  I think that happens more than we all realize.  There are probably things in your own day to day life that you view as unimportant, which really are profound if you took the time (as if you have the time) to think about it.  This certainly is true in my case.  Much of this book can be understood in terms of things once viewed as trivial that turned out to be of critical importance.  Here is a fine example…

Over a decade ago, a lifelong friend of mine named Mobe (you will hear much more about him later) innocently handed me a CD he had purchased a few weeks earlier.  He hadn’t bought any new music in a long time, but he was compelled to get this particular disc.  He had heard one of the songs on the radio and liked it a lot.   As it turned out, uh, I kind of liked it, too.

I am not the type of person who dabbles in things.  When I get interested in something, I tend to do my due diligence.  I learn as much as I can about the topic, be it dark matter, string theory, British Literature, or a punk band who made a CD that I thought was really good.  As you might imagine, I bought everything this group had done.  I still have that pile of CDs in my house.  I ripped the music for my portable devices, and I (sigh, sigh, sigh) started going to their concerts.  I had no idea that by handing me that CD, Mobe was putting me on a life-changing path.  How was I to know that around ten years down the road, I would walk into the dingiest concert venue imaginable as one person and walk out as another?  How could I even imagine that hearing that music would start a chain of events that ultimately would change me in a most fundamental way?  The easy answer is that I couldn’t.

This Chapter Zero nonsense is, at least on the surface,  about heat and the way it is measured.  Slightly underneath the surface, within the subtext, is an in-depth discussion about how seemingly trivial things can change lives.  I am the first to admit that Athena generated quite a bit of heat the night I met her, but, inexplicably, this essay is not explicitly about the night we met.  The thing is, this essay is a little different than those to follow.  The subsequent essays detail what happened to me when she introduced herself; this one is a bit more mysterious in structure and content.

 

*****

 

The young and suddenly energetic Buford Lister was feeling it, Mathematical Mojo emanating out of every pore.   As he started his presentation, he actually began strutting (Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to introduce to you The Mathematical Mick Jagger).

“I always wondered what that meant…for something to be well known.  At first, I suspected that someone, maybe decades ago, had run the proof and confirmed the mathematics of whatever argument it was that Sandy was talking about on a given day.  Then I reached that critical point in the life of any scientist; I had an intense realization that just because something was in a textbook didn’t mean that is was right, true, or even meaningful on anything other than a superficial level.  I realized that nearly everything I believed, at least the important things, I believed simply because someone told me the ideas represented an accurate reflection of reality.  This, of course, is standard fare for all non-scientists in the world.  I don’t know anyone out there in the real world who knows anything worth knowing that they weren’t told is true by someone passing themselves off as an authority figure.  Self-perpetuating nonsense, generation after generation; no one questioning the validity of the ideas, everyone just wanting to fit in.  I decided that day to break free of socially constructed knowledge; at that very moment, I made the decision to reduce all my knowledge to mathematics.  We are here today so that I can talk about what I found.”

Buford Lister went on to tell the audience that the conjecture had been confirmed.  The proof was to be found in the lines of mathematics.  Buford Lister declined to go through the proof, that would have taken way too long.  “The proof has been vetted.  It is correct.”

 

*****

 

In 1931 something very interesting and more than a little strange happened.  OK, I am sure lots of noteworthy things happened in 1931, but I am speaking of one thing in particular.  During that year, a British physicist named Sir Ralph Howard Fowler (Sir Ralph to you and me) came up with an intriguing insight.  His discovery created a problem concerning the standardized numbering systems that scientists like to use.  Sir Ralph discovered an essential relationship between thermal systems that appeared so trivial to those who came before him that they thought it not worth mentioning.

I am not going to talk about the exact nature of the discovery.  It is irrelevant.  And besides, if I did nearly everyone reading this would stop and move on to the next thing on their list of things to read.  If you want to know more then you can Google the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics, trust me, you can learn all you ever wanted to know.  I am interested in just a couple things when it comes to this Zeroth Law.  The first thing is what it is.

The Zeroth Law says something like this:  If A = B and B = C, then A = C.  Well, duh!  That is what everyone thought before Fowler came along.  Could anything be more obvious?  All the scientists working on thermal systems passed this little nugget over when it came to naming and numbering the universal laws of thermodynamics.  Originally there were three of them called, believe it or not: The First Law of Thermodynamics, The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and The Third Law of Thermodynamics.  After the three laws had been documented, Fowler came along and said something like, “Uh, excuse me but there is a problem.”  And there was.

It seems that trivial little relationship between A, B, and C is critically important when it comes to deriving the mathematics of the previously mentioned three laws.  Also, it is fundamentally important if you want a mathematical definition of temperature that can relate the concept of heat to what a person sees when they read a thermometer.   This created a bit of a problem.  There were already three laws in place, and the one that everyone passed over, the trivial one that everyone ignored, turned out to be fundamental to the whole enterprise.  With Fowler’s insight, that little relationship instantly became the most fundamental law of thermodynamics.

The problem then became one of what to do.  Science has some very specific rules when it comes to naming things.  Scientists spend a lot of time and energy putting things into different categories, it is a big part of what many of them do.  Physicists have a particular problem when it comes to naming and categorizing things like laws.  The most important one always comes first, that is just the way it is.  The problem here is that the three laws already in existence were very well established.  Everyone knew them by those names and numbers.  Fowler came up with just about the only solution possible, he named his insight Law Zero.  With one publication, the world was introduced to The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics.  I remember scratching my head when I first was introduced to the Zeroth Law decades ago.  I knew there had to be a story behind it, and sure enough, there is.  I think it is a fascinating one.

 

*****

 

Out of nowhere, it happened, the beginning of Buford Lister’s waking nightmare.  A huge man in a Grateful Dead tee shirt stood up.  He wasn’t from a major university, it wasn’t even clear that he had an academic appointment anywhere.  No one on the podium seemed to recognize him, and this was a guy you wouldn’t forget.  The man, nearly seven feet tall with shocking white hair down to his waist and a beard to match, rose and said the infamous words that ruined more than a couple reputations and destroyed the promising career of Buford Lister.  “Excuse me, isn’t that supposed to be a negative one in line 16?”  It was quite the spectacle to witness him wildly gesticulate as he made the sign of a -1 in the air with his right index finger.

Buford Lister laughed, as did the entire audience.  The hall held 1500, every seat was taken, and the people standing along the back wall added another couple hundred to the total.  Over the laughter, another voice from way off to the left said, “Yes, I see it.  That should be a -1, not a 1.”

Buford Lister felt a rush of anxiety as he put his head down to look over his copy of the paper, the same paper he had read thousands of times.  It can’t be…no…it can’t be.  He, along with everyone else there, knew that a mistake on page one would negate the entire proof.  Time seemed to stop as he considered what was going to happen if that tiny number 1 was really supposed to be a -1.  He looked the first page over hard, looked over at The Plumber, looked back at the stranger, and then said: “I have no idea how this happened, it appears you are correct.”

The Plumber, one of the experts who had vetted the paper, dropped his head into his hands as people began to walk out.  The other people at the head table started mumbling to themselves as they got up to leave.  All left their seats except for one, Buford Lister sat paralyzed in his chair, his eyes glued to lines one through sixteen.  This can’t be happening.  How can this be?  How did this happen?

Author’s Note (you will occasionally get these throughout this volume): Rarely does an entire career, an entire life, get derailed in a singular moment like this.  Most times, things like this are the result of slow, smoldering implosions.  Buford Lister knew there would be no second chances, he had embarrassed the people who believed in him most.  He instantly realized that things would never be the same.  He was right, at that very moment (blah, blah, blah negative one, negative one) life as he had known it was over.

 

*****

 

I love the tale of The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics.  It is not the science that won my affection, it is the story behind the law’s discovery and how it got its name.  Fowler’s brilliant insight created some pretty cool problems, don’t you think?  My little flash, while much more elusive and undoubtedly not brilliant, has also created its own set of issues.   I will leave it to each and every individual reading this book to reach their own conclusions on the matter.  All I know is I was standing against a wall in a dive bar drinking a beer (and, I might add – minding my own damn business) when I saw a chick; that constitutes the simple beginning of my story.  The moment she introduced herself things, and by that, I mean each and every one of them, were permanently and fundamentally altered.

How about a Breaking Bad style flash-forward?  If you are anything like the people who read this book before it was published, there is a very good chance that, at some point as you are reading along, you are going to view this collection of essays as some kind of bizarre and tragic love story.  Do me a favor, if you ever feel like you are reading a book that is simply about a hopeless guy’s attempt to get a pathetic lunch date from a beautiful punk rocker chick I want you to refer back to this chapter.  The Zeroth Chapter of this book, like every other chapter, is included for a specific purpose.  The major reason I am including this essay is because I think there is much more to my story than an empty stomach and an intense attraction.

My situation, even though it also lead to the inclusion of a number zero, is unlike Sir Ralph’s in many ways.  He had rock-solid mathematics and logic to back up his claims.  He actually convinced all the other scientists that there needed to be a Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics.  Can you imagine?  That is a huge deal.  I, on the other hand, have no such proof to offer as evidence of my dramatic and mind-numbing discovery.  All I can do is try to string sentences together in a somewhat meaningful way.  By doing this, I hope to convince Athena that something magical happened on the night we met.  The invitations to join me on my quest have already been sent.  No RSVP required.

 

*****

 

Scientists are a tough bunch.  Forgiveness is not something in their vocabulary.  One mistake, especially one like this, and you are done.  No one will ever recommend you for a job, that is if they even give you your degree and send you on your way.  After episodes like this, lots of places hand the poor slob a master’s degree and tell him not to let the door hit his butt on the way out.  At least that is what they usually did back in the day that Buford Lister made his grand mistake.

Like everyone else, he was given only one chance to lose his reputation.  Once it was gone, there was no getting it back.  There was no appeals process, no redemption; the only viable option was oblivion.  Go now and live out your life in total obscurity, that was The Plumber’s implied message as he sent Buford Lister on his way.  The two of them never spoke again.

As best as anyone could figure, this is what happened: copies had been sent out across the country by a student on work-study, mimeographed copies.  The paper was 84 pages of dense formulas, that meant that just a few copies were sent out in the mail.  The people who got their copies made mimeographs of their own.  And on and on and on.  By the time the bulk of the people got their copies, they were reading a faded version of the original.  The Yeti had picked up a near-pristine copy from a table outside the lecture hall.  Apparently, so did the other guy who quickly caught the simple mistake.  Not many smudges on their prints, marks that people might assume are a minus sign and such.

As for The Plumber and Buford Lister, well…they both wanted the paper to be correct; so much so that they simply missed it.  In their defense, the first page was basic background information; it consisted of high school algebra.  A departmental secretary had typed out those pages, and maybe she made a mistake.  A smudge here got interpreted as a minus sign there.  That is just a guess.  The fact is, no one really knows.

The sections in the paper that were really important, the stuff that constituted a breakthrough, were logically tight.  The passages that were going to make history had been vetted and were correct.  The problem was that the sections that were going to alter the foundation of the natural, the physical, and the social sciences all needed that number on line sixteen to be a negative one, not a positive one.

 

*****

 

The next essay you are going to read is one very special to me.  I started writing it the night I met Athena.  I was in a haze the entire time.  It has been many years since then, and I am the first to admit that my vision is still cloudy.

Chapters One through Fourteen are much different than this one.  You will see how I changed my mind over and over as I thought about what meeting Athena ultimately means to me.  Each chapter is a snapshot of what I was thinking at the time.  Each reveals my struggle to figure out why she has had such a tremendous impact on me.  I came up with a bunch of ideas, you will read about them.  I guess the best way to put it is to say that you are going to learn about my struggle to make sense of the most important night of my life.

 

*****

 

The lecture hall where The Lister Affair took place had been completely renovated decades ago.   The blackboards were all gone, replaced by whiteboards and projection screens.  A small, circular vent that lecturers had used to hide chalk was gone, in its place was mounted a panel to relay the remote control wishes of the wizard du jour. 

The changes, though, weren’t quite enough.  To those sensitive to these types of things, that space still reeked of doom and confusion.  The demons brought to life so long ago were still in their prime, lurking in the ceiling corners and in the aisles where they patiently waited their opportunity to pounce.

Those ethereal creatures cared very little that the coast was unusually cold on the big day, the day of another coming-out party of a young superstar.   A guest lecturer, a young assistant professor from a major Midwest university, was invited to give a talk about his latest research project.  Scientists from all around the world were there.

The old man sat in the back of the lecture hall and fidgeted in his chair.  These things make me so damn uncomfortable.  He knew that the audience members were going to be watching him as much as they would be The Hotshot, the latest in a long line of prodigies to strut through the gates of the university.  Nothing he could do about that.

The Hotshot started with the flash of insight that got him on the right path.  He looked directly at the old man and said, “Sir, I was reading through one of your papers for what must have been the 100^th time when I paused to take a sip of my warm beer.  I nearly choked because I could feel something, an ambiguous flash.  I didn’t quite know what it was, but I had a sense that it was important.  I went for a walk.  After I finished, I jumped in the shower, and it was right when the water hit me that I realized the answer to this dilemma.  I understood why the path that you took was the wrong one.  I knew I had to zig where you had zagged.”

The old man thought back to when he was as young and arrogant as The Hotshot.  He remembered the sleepless nights, the little flashes of insight, and the occasional big ones.  His mind wandered; he didn’t have to listen to this; he knew his own research better than The Hotshot did.  Hell, he knew that little shit’s research better than the little shit himself did.  He had been through it again and again, looking for that one small mistake, the one oversight that would lead him to throw the manuscript in the garbage.  He never found it.

He watched as The Hotshot droned on and on about how uninspired all the attempts to work out the problem were until he, a divine gift from the cosmos, was sent to grace humanity with his special kind of genius.  It is a simple fact of human nature that sometimes the only way a person can feel better about themselves is by making other people feel worse.  The Hotshot was already feeling good, but he was taking more than a little joy (schadenfreude, right?) in the demise of the old man.

The math was becoming tighter the longer The Hotshot went on.  The old man wondered how he could have missed it, how he did not see the solution.  I was so close, I was right there time and time again.  All of it, every last hour of work…meaningless.  He tugged on his long gray beard and wondered what kind of prize he would get for living a wasted life.  Deep down, he knew he would get what everyone else in his circumstance gets, nothing more than an empty plate of remorse.

Author’s Note: There are rare times when atheists pray.  It is not what you think.  It is usually not when they are in dire straights, and they believe they are about to die.  No, the times that nonbelievers desperately appeal to a higher authority are times like these.

This is what he did: The old man closed his eyes and hoped and wished that someone from the back of the room would stand up and say, “Shouldn’t that be a negative one in line such and such?”  His prayer, while totally sincere, went unanswered.

After the bows and the obligatory curtain calls, the old man limped his way up to The Hotshot; there were so many things he wanted to tell him, none of it relevant right at that moment.  He cleared his throat and extended his hand. “You, young man, have solved a problem I have spent a lifetime trying to solve.  Thank you.”   A quick glance away, and Buford Lister was off.  Thunderous applause (you wouldn’t believe how loud) followed him out.  It never occurred to Buford Lister, the man whose face was often mistaken for a tattered road map, that the applause was for him.

 

Random Thoughts from a Nonlinear Mind, Volume 2: The Athena Chapters Preface

 

Do you have any idea what a Preface is as opposed to an Introduction?  I have read thousands of books, and I must admit that I was not clear on the distinction, so I hit my favorite search engine (Google) and got to work.  For the last few hours, I have been doing some research, and I have learned a few interesting things about the difference between a Preface and an Introduction.  Apparently, in the Preface, I am supposed to tell you how the book came about and why you should read it.  At least, that is what most everyone knowledgeable about these types of things seems to agree on.  I am going to start there.

It is really very simple, I wrote this book because I was compelled to.  Over five years ago, I went to a punk rock concert that changed my life.  There I met a woman I am calling Athena.  I still shake my head whenever I think of her.  Every night (and I mean every single night) I wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning and stare at the ceiling.  I keep asking myself the same question over and over: “OK genius, what was that all about?” My answer varies depending on my mood that day.

As it turns out, the day after I met her, I decided to make it my mission to see if I could get this incredible lady to go to lunch with me.  That is pretty much it.  Deep down, I wanted to see if my head would pop off the next time I saw her.  Of course, there is much more to the story than that, the chapters in this volume give the details.

I started writing these essays because a singer in a punk band changed my life with one evening of conversation.  The transformation was instantaneous, it took me no time to realize that something highly unusual was happening to me.  As it turned out, meeting her was the most fascinating, life-altering experience I have ever had.   That, briefly, is how this book came about.  She said, “I’m Athena,” and I went home and gazed at my blinking computer screen for years.  Nothing unusual about that, is there?

The next thing a Preface is supposed to do is give the potential reader a reason to keep turning the pages.  So, why should you read this book?  I do have a couple reasons.

I have gotten in the habit of asking people to go home and write about their significant others.  I tell them I will patiently sit while I wait for them to give me a rough draft.  Of course, being the nice guy that I am, I let them know I would be more than happy to edit anything they come up with.  I usually ask them to do this after they launch into intense criticism of me for wasting my valuable time by writing this book.  By asking them to write, I am trying to get them to understand how difficult a thing it is to do.  Go ahead, give it a try.  Start typing and try to come up with something interesting to say about your husband, wife, or partner.  Make it something intriguing enough that you would be willing to share it with the world.  While you are at it, make it unique.  Try your best to come up with something exciting and unexpected; tell us all something we do not know.

If you give that last paragraph a little thought, you will see that it is nearly impossible to do something like that.  At least no one has taken me up on my challenge.  Not a single person has come up with anything at all to say.  Not a single one.

So, why should you read this book?  For starters, this collection of essays is not about my wife or the mother of my children.   I have never been married, and I have no kids.  This collection of essays is simply about what happened to me when I met a chick with a guitar.

How many women have ever inspired a book to be written after a single meeting with them?  We all know the answer, right?  Not many.  How about people in general?  How many people in the history of the written word have ever inspired a person who met them one time to sit down and spend years in front of a keyboard?  My guess is that number is not very large either.

The fact that someone, especially me, wrote a book about their experience of meeting a person once is reason enough to give the first couple chapters a read.  If you find them interesting, and I hope you will, then the rest of the book should go down smoothly.

 

Random Thoughts from a Nonlinear Mind, Volume 2: The Athena Chapters Introduction

 

This collection of essays is about a dude that went to a rock show and met a chick.  I have done quite a bit of research on the topic of people meeting each other at concerts, and it appears I am obligated to refer to all such individuals as dudes and chicks.  I can’t just say that a man met a woman at a show and go from there.  Apparently, I am obligated to adjust my seat, kick off my vans, and pull my pork pie hat down real low before I can tell the story of what happened when a dude met a chick unlike anyone he has ever known.

The only other thing you need to know before you tackle the next three chapters (huh, three?) is that in the spring of 2011, a rip in the space-time fabric of the universe was detected in a dive bar located somewhere in the Midwest.  At that moment, the dude, ever so sensitive to the quantum structure of reality, became unstuck in time.  The chick, ever so cool, bounced.  What follows is simply an elaborate attempt by the dude to get the chick to meet him for lunch.  No kidding.

That is the original introduction that I wrote over two years ago.  Initially, I wrote three essays about the woman I am calling Athena (not her real name).  Things quickly got out of hand as the ideas for new chapters just kept coming and coming.  In about two years, I wrote all the following essays about meeting Athena.  Well, to be honest, this volume is not really about her; each essay is about what happened to me after she introduced herself.

Clearly, this situation is the most remarkable and extraordinary thing that has ever happened to me.  I really hope that remains true, I don’t know if I could stand anything more unusual than the stories you are about to read.

I hope you experience a sense of kinship while seeing me vacillate between patience and frustration; I hope you are compelled as I write of my battle between hope and hopelessness; I hope you can feel at least a little sympathy as I struggle within myself between “give her some more time” and “I don’t have time for this.” I hope you find yourself rooting for me to get my elusive lunch date with a woman who totally stunned me with two little words.  As you are about to find out, she said, “I’m Athena,” and I was forever changed.

“Write drunk, edit sober.”
Ernest Hemingway never said this.

“If you are going to do a Mathematical Deep Think, it is best that you be sober…and around 22 years old.”
Buford Lister (personal communication)

I am not that big a fan of Ernest Hemingway or his writing.  That said, there are a couple of quotes attributed to him that keep coming up in my day to day life.  The first is the title of this post.  There is no evidence that he ever said it or that he endorsed such a thing.  Apparently, he wrote in the early morning when he was stone sober.  As for the second quote, well… let’s say that string of letters is just as problematic.  We can start with a little quiz.

Who was it who said the following?

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” 

Most people that I know attribute that quote to Hemingway, the problem is that it is not apparent that it belongs to him.  I did some searching, and it appears that many people said similar things, but it is not clear if Hemingway ever said it at all.  So, who should we attribute the quote to?

Red Smith was one of the finest sports columnists we have ever seen.  He was so good that he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1976.  When asked how difficult it was to churn out a daily column, Smith replied that is wasn’t hard at all.  He said:

“You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.” 

That might be the origin of the quote.  I guess people attributed it to Hemingway because it sounds like something he should have said.  It’s always about what makes for the best story, right?

Paul Gallico, the author of The Poseidon Adventure, a movie I just watched the other day, wrote this in 1946:

It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader.

Smith’s quote is probably a few years older than Gallico’s.  I guess it really doesn’t matter who we attribute the quote to, it is the sentiment that is important.  So, what exactly does it mean to sit down at a keyboard and bleed?  I have a few thoughts on that.

In my recent past, I have come across many young people who want to be writers.  I always tell them the same thing. “If you want to be a writer, you have to know how to write.  More importantly, you need to have something to say.” As for the bleeding part, I let them in on that a little later.  If they prove that they are serious, that they really are willing to sit down at a keyboard for hours a day, I tell them that every writer must decide how much of themselves they are willing to reveal to their readers.  If they are ready to totally expose their inner being, then they are on the cusp of opening a vein over their keyboard.

Sitting down and bleeding means (at least to me) that you are writing with such depth and feeling that the reader can’t help but be impacted by the words.  Such a thing is much easier for musicians, all they have to do is switch to a minor key, and they can evoke emotion.  It is not nearly that easy for a writer, there aren’t any special keys to press on our keyboards that can instantly conjure a specific mood.  It is much harder than that.

If you sit down at a computer with the express intention of exposing your inner being to the world at large, then you are bound to bleed.  The bloodletting can be barely noticeable, or you may need to keep a supply of reasonably priced keyboards in your closet.  That is the decision any serious writer needs to make.

There is one aspect of this topic that I find fascinating, I am curious about what compels a person to do such a thing.   The implicit question is: How can a writer possibly be inspired to such an extent that they feel it is necessary to sit and bleed.  For me, that is the interesting part.

Sitting at a keyboard and bleeding is not an everyday occurrence.  Nor is it reasonable to expect such a thing from a writer.  It seems unnatural and unnecessary; after all, most of today’s best selling authors write uninteresting genre fiction.  The only bleeding they do will be the result of things like paper cuts.

Typing and bleeding is a very tough thing to do, I know…I have done it.  I do not think you have seen it yet in these posts, but that is about to change.  I will be posting one or two chapters a week from a book I wrote over the course of many years called Random Thoughts From A Nonlinear Mind, Volume 2: The Athena Chapters.  That fancy little tale is about…well,  you’ll find out soon enough.

 

 

 

An Average Tennis Essay

This post is about Rahul and his tired right arm.  One night, not long ago, he couldn’t sleep.  At around 5:00 a.m., he got up and decided to head down to the tennis courts to hit some serves.  He got all his electronic equipment together (speed gun, camera, etc.) and fired up his 1959 Ford Edsel.  He hit 88 serves before his arm started to hurt.

So, that is our setup.  We have 88 data points to work with.  All we have to do is find the average speed of the serves he hit, and then we are done.  I can tell you that the average was 95.8 mph.  Thank you for dropping by my blog.  Stop back in a couple days for another exciting and informative post!

Wait…you know that I wouldn’t be writing about the average speed of tennis serves unless I had something interesting to say.  Take a look at this Stem and Leaf Plot:

8   44455
8   666677
8   8888999999
9  0000000000111111
9  2222223
9   4
9
9   88999
10  0000111111
10  2222223333333
10   44445555
10   6677
10   888

I imagine most people have seen these before.  It is my understanding that most kids in elementary school get exposed to this handy tool.  Between you and me, I didn’t see these until I took a Ph.D. course in statistics.  This type of display wasn’t invented until the 1970s, and it took time for their use to become widely adopted.

For those of you new to this type of figure, they are pretty simple to explain.  If you look at the top line of the plot, you see “8  44455.”  The 8 is the stem, and 44455 forms the leaf.  This means that the serve speeds were 84,84,84,85,85.  Do you see how that works?  That is about all there is to it.  The bottom line reads “10  888.”  This means that Rahul hit three serves at 108 mph.

A Stem and Leaf Plot is a very nice way to visualize a data set.  Making a picture or some type of image is always helpful when dealing with large batches of numbers.  The visual representation of data is a hallmark of Exploratory Data Analysis, an approach to statistics that I heavily endorse.  After all, it is much easier to study a picture than it is a large table or string of numbers.

Whenever I am tasked with analyzing data, I first turn to the Stem and Leaf Plot.  Look at the plot carefully, and you will see why.  I said earlier that the average speed of Rahul’s serves was 95.8 mph.  Do you see the two peaks on the plot?  Are there any serves that were hit 95 or 96 mph?  The answer is no; he didn’t hit any serves that speed, so how can an average of 95.8 be representative of the data?  The short answer is it isn’t, the longer answer is coming up.

Any data set with two peaks, like this one, must be broken into two separate batches.  Instead of averaging the speed of Rahul’s serves, we need to look more closely at the data to see what might be going on.  It is apparent to me that Rahul was practicing both his first and second serve.  The first serves were the speedy ones.  The slower serves were his second serves; in those instances, he was more concerned with spin than speed.

Here is the proper Stem and Leaf Plot for the second serves.  The data has only one peak, and the average speed is now 89.13 mph.  This makes more sense, doesn’t it?  Just by looking at the plot, I would guess that the average should be around 90 mph.

8   44455

8   666677

8   8888999999

9  0000000000111111

9  2222223

9   4

As for the first serves, this is what we end up with.  The average speed works out to 102.7 mph.  That seems about right when looking at the plot.

9   88999

10  0000111111

10  2222223333333

10   44445555

10   6677

10   888

Once again, calculating averages is not as simple and straightforward as it seems it should be. If you ever need to find the average of a set of numbers, I suggest you first make a Stem and Leaf Plot.  That way, you will know if it is proper to treat the numbers as a set or if they need to be broken apart.

One last thought, I know Rahul, and there is no way he hits any of his serves that hard.  My guess is the entire data set is in kph, not mph, but that is a story for another post.

How About Some Tennis Math?

I have been thinking a lot about probability, especially the probabilistic nature of tennis. Why have I been on a probability kick lately? It certainly is a tricky and slippery subject, perhaps the hardest I have ever studied, and I guess I am just trying to keep on top of my game. Hey, you never know when a Golem or a Centaur might show up at my door with a life or death riddle based somehow on probability theory. I guess I just want to be prepared for any contingency.
tt
To begin, I will assume that everyone has a rudimentary knowledge of the game of tennis. I hope you all realize that the server has an advantage, especially as the players get better. As a general rule, this is more true for men than for women, particularly in the professional ranks. The server starts every point, and they know where the serve is going while the receiver has a minimal window of time to figure out the trajectory of the ball. With that in mind, let’s imagine the following scenario. A server wins 60% of their service points against a particular opponent. That means that the returner wins 40% of those points. We can ask and answer a series of questions based only on this information. Let’s get to it. For reasons that will become clear later, we will begin with a game that is already at deuce.

We will start our analysis with a player that wins 60% of all their service points against a random player. Once the game reaches deuce, the probability that the server will win the next two points is .6 x .6 = .36. That means that the server will win the next two points a little over 1/3 of the time, 36% to be exact. What about the receiver winning the next two points to break serve? That would be .4 x .4 = .16. So, 16% of the time the receiver will break serve by winning two points in a row. What is left? The only other possibility is a return to deuce. There are a couple ways we can figure this. We know that all possibilities have to add up to 1 so we can simply solve the following equation:

1- .36 – .16 = .48.

Therefore, 48% of the time the service game will return to deuce. The other way to arrive at that figure is with the following:

.6 x .4 + .4 x .6 = .48.

If you take a minute to study that short equation, you will quickly realize why it makes sense.
tt

Now, this gets a little tricky. With the game at deuce, what is the probability that the server will eventually win the service game? Well, they can win by winning the first two points after the first deuce, which they do at a rate of 36%. The other thing that can happen is that the game can return to deuce, which will happen 48% of the time before the server goes on to win. Therefore we end up with this equation: P = .36 +.48P. Solving for p gives an answer of .692. We now know that the server will win 69.2% of all of their service games against this opponent once the score has reached deuce.
rr
Notice that this player has a 60% rate of winning individual service points but ends up with a 69.2% success rate when it comes to holding their serve during a service game that has reached deuce. That is pretty interesting, maybe even a little unexpected.
dd
We can now break down other probabilities based on how this player does against other opponents. The first category considered is 50% of service points won. Anything less, i.e., a success rate of less than 50%, and this type of analysis is not very useful. I think we can all agree that the player’s time is better spent on improving their serve than it is doing math. For all other players that are somewhat proficient at serving, the results are as follows.

 

50% of points won on serve
Server will win the next 2 points 25% of the time.
Returner will win the next 2 points 25% of the time.
Game returns to deuce 50% of the time. Server wins 50% of service games that have reached deuce.

 

60% of points won on serve

Server will win the next 2 points 36% of the time.

Returner will win the next 2 points 16% of the time.

Game returns to deuce 48% of the time. Server wins 69% of service games that have reached deuce.

 

67% of points won on serve

Server will win the next 2 points 44.9% of the time.

Returner will win the next 2 points 10.9% of the time.

Game returns to deuce 44.2% of the time. Server wins 80.5% of service games that have reached deuce.

 

70% of points won on serve

Server will win the next 2 points 49% of the time.

Returner will win the next 2 points 9% of the time.

Game returns to deuce 42% of the time. Server wins 84.5% of service games that have reached deuce.

 

75% of points won on serve

Server will win the next 2 points 56.3% of the time.

Returner will win the next 2 points 6.3% of the time.

The game returns to deuce 37.4% of the time. Server wins 89.9% of service games that have reached deuce.

 

80% of points won on serve

Server will win the next 2 points 64% of the time.

Returner will win the next 2 points 4% of the time.

Game returns to deuce 32% of the time. Server wins 94.1% of service games that have reached deuce.

 

90% of points won on serve

Server will win the next 2 points 81% of the time.

Returner will win the next 2 points 1% of the time.

Game returns to deuce 18% of the time. Server wins 98.7% of service games that have reached deuce.

 

So, why did we start our analysis with a game that was already at deuce? That is an interesting question. We began there because the math gets a little out of hand if we start at the beginning of a player’s service game. I guess I was just trying to get everyone loose and nimble. Now that we have done our warm-up and taken off our old school polyester tops, it is time to really get down to business. Don’t worry; if the math makes your head spin, you can move on to the table. There is no crime in that.
ss
The probability that a tennis player holds serve (P) is equal to the probability that he holds at love (P @ love) plus the probability that they hold at 15 (P @ 15) plus the probability they hold at 30 (P @ 30) plus the probability they hold when the game goes to deuce or multiple deuces (P @ D(s)). Got it? That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

Now consider the following:

The probability that the player holds at love = p⁴

The probability that the player holds at 15 = 4p⁴ (1-p)

The probability that the player holds at 30 = 10p⁴ (1-p)

The probability that the player holds in a game that goes to deuce is much more complicated. The equation looks like this:

When the algebra is worked out, we end up with this equation:

Whew, that was a bit of work. The good news is that we can now determine how often a given player will hold serve based on the percentage of time they will win a service point. The following table contains relevant data for select service point percentages. As you can see, it also includes lots of other information. The mathematics behind the rest of the table becomes a little mind-bending, so I have decided not to add them here. You will just have to trust that the assumptions are logically based on the probability (P) that a given player will win a single service point. The rest of the table is built on that mathematical base. You will also note that I have also included the expected outcome of various matches between players serving at different rates of success.

 

	serve pts	hold serve	tiebreak	tiebreak set	adv set	3 set match	5 set match
PLAYER A	80.00%	97.80%	52.10%	52.80%	54.80%	54.20%	55.20%
PLAYER B	79.00%	97.40%	47.90%	47.20%	45.20%	45.80%	44.80%
	serve pts	hold serve	tiebreak	tiebreak set	adv set	3 set match	5 set match
PLAYER A	80.00%	97.80%	59.80%	63.90%	71.00%	70.30%	74.70%
PLAYER B	75.00%	94.90%	40.20%	36.10%	29.00%	29.70%	25.30%
	serve pts	hold serve	tiebreak	tiebreak set	adv set	3 set match	5 set match
PLAYER A	75.00%	94.90%	51.90%	52.90%	54.00%	54.40%	55.50%
PLAYER B	74.00%	94.10%	48.10%	47.10%	46.00%	45.60%	44.50%
	serve pts	hold serve	tiebreak	tiebreak set	adv set	3 set match	5 set match
PLAYER A	74.00%	94.10%	51.80%	53.00%	53.90%	54.40%	55.50%
PLAYER B	73.00%	93.20%	48.20%	47.00%	46.10%	45.60%	44.50%
	serve pts	hold serve	tiebreak	tiebreak set	adv set	3 set match	5 set match
PLAYER A	70.00%	90.10%	51.70%	53.10%	53.70%	54.70%	55.80%
PLAYER B	69.00%	88.80%	48.30%	46.90%	46.30%	45.30%	44.20%
	serve pts	hold serve	tiebreak	tiebreak set	adv set	3 set match	5 set match
PLAYER A	70.00%	90.10%	55.20%	59.40%	60.80%	63.90%	67.20%
PLAYER B	67.00%	86.10%	44.80%	40.60%	39.20%	36.10%	32.80%
	serve pts	hold serve	tiebreak	tiebreak set	adv set	3 set match	5 set match
PLAYER A	70.00%	90.10%	58.50%	65.60%	67.50%	72.60%	77.30%
PLAYER B	65.00%	83.00%	41.50%	34.40%	32.50%	27.40%	22.70%
	serve pts	hold serve	tiebreak	tiebreak set	adv set	3 set match	5 set match
PLAYER A	70.00%	90.10%	66.30%	79.50%	81.40%	89.10%	93.80%
PLAYER B	60.00%	73.60%	33.70%	20.50%	18.60%	10.90%	6.20%
	serve pts	hold serve	tiebreak	tiebreak set	adv set	3 set match	5 set match
PLAYER A	67.00%	86.10%	53.40%	56.50%	57.20%	59.70%	62.00%
PLAYER B	65.00%	83.00%	46.60%	43.50%	42.80%	40.30%	38.00%
	serve pts	hold serve	tiebreak	tiebreak set	adv set	3 set match	5 set match
PLAYER A	65.00%	83.00%	51.70%	53.30%	53.60%	54.90%	56.20%
PLAYER B	64.00%	81.30%	48.30%	46.70%	46.40%	45.10%	43.80%
	serve pts	hold serve	tiebreak	tiebreak set	adv set	3 set match	5 set match
PLAYER A	65.00%	83.00%	58.20%	66.30%	67.40%	73.70%	78.50%
PLAYER B	60.00%	73.60%	41.80%	33.70%	32.60%	26.30%	21.50%
	serve pts	hold serve	tiebreak	tiebreak set	adv set	3 set match	5 set match
PLAYER A	62.00%	77.60%	51.60%	53.40%	53.60%	55.10%	56.30%
PLAYER B	61.00%	75.60%	48.40%	46.60%	46.40%	44.90%	43.70%

Take some time to study this table.  You will find that a 1% advantage in service points won translates into a much bigger chance of winning sets and matches.  The table is quite interesting and informative.  I will be posting many more essays on this topic in the future.  Stay tuned…

 

An Average Post…(harmonic, that is)

Sometimes I sits and thinks…and sometimes I just sits…
A.A.Milne

Sometimes I sits and thinks…and sometimes I sits and thinks about thinking…
Buford Lister, personal communication

I remember reading somewhere a long time ago, that what made humans unique in the animal world is that we can think about thinking.  Not only do we think, but we can take the process to the next level and analyze the thinking itself.  This is simply a guess, but I don’t believe any of the pets I have had during my life were capable of such a feat.  Actually, I am not sure that most…well, you get the idea.

Over the decades, I have thought a lot about how thinking about thinking works.  Back in the 80s, I tried, again and again, to sneak into a great course at Harvard.  It was called Thinking about Thinking, and it was taught by Alan Dershowitz, the famous lawyer, Robert Noczik, one of the leading philosophers from the last century, and Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary biologist who has influenced me in more ways than I would care to admit. There you have it, three superstar professors from different departments coming together to dazzle a bunch of impressionable minds.   The course was designed to show the students how different ways of thinking lead to different approaches to how we view the world and our place in it.  At least, that is how I looked at it.

That course was highly popular, and it was near impossible to get anywhere near the classroom.  When I was there, the course was taught in the Science Center, a building that resembles an old Polariod camera on its side.  There were guards checking registration slips at each entrance.  If you were a registered student and happened to forget your slip, you were out of luck, you missed that day’s class.  I often thought of trying to crawl through the heating ducts to get in there.  After a few minutes, I thought about my thinking and reconsidered, I thought better not to try it.

One day, I was sitting in the small cafe right inside the main entrance to the Science Center. Who do you think sat down near me?  It was the three professors.  I had no choice; I had to eavesdrop on their conversation.  I fell into a bit of a pattern, I made sure I arrived at the cafe around the same time on the days when the class was meeting.  I got to hear lots of conversations.  I can only recall one topic, it was the same topic the three of them talked about every week.  They talked about baseball, baseball, and then more baseball.

Why all this stuff about thinking about thinking, also known as meta-thinking?  Easy, we are going to talk about how to take averages, really simple averages.  How about this one: if Sally has 40 apples and Billy has 20 apples, what is the average number of apples that the kids have?  If I am writing a post about such a thing, you should immediately start doing some meta-thinking, right?  If it really was so straightforward, why would I be writing about it?  And that is a very good point, and of course, it is true.  I wouldn’t be writing about averages if I didn’t have something a little unusual and surprising to say about them.

The average of a and b are calculated in this familiar way:

So, if Sally has 40 apples and Billy has 20 apples, the average number of apples = 30.  No problem.  The answer is simple and straightforward.  Now consider this:

Joe’s car gets 40 miles per gallon, and Steve’s gets 30 miles per gallon.  What are the average miles per gallon of the two vehicles?

And, no surprise, that answer is wrong.  Why? Let’s suppose that both Joe and Steve drive for 120 miles.  Joe would use 3 gallons of gas, and Steve would use 4 gallons.  Now, we can add everything up.  A total of 7 gallons of gas was used to travel 240 miles.  Therefore, the average is 34.28, and that is the correct answer.  34.28 is the harmonic mean or harmonic average, it is quite different from the simple averages we are used to calculating.

This is the equation for harmonic averages:

That equation can be reduced to the following:

The important thing to think about is that you want to get a common denominator, not a common numerator.  That creates a lot of confusion when it comes to computing harmonic averages.

So, where do we now stand?  We all now know that some averages are more simple to compute than others.  As always, the trick is to know when to use a harmonic average instead of a simple one.  I will be posting more about this topic in the future.  Simple averages and harmonic averages are not alone in their “average” universe, check back in and you will see what I “mean.”