The Thrillionaires(SM) online community that I'm working on just came out with a 3 minute Inspirational Movie that is really great. I urge you to go watch it right now and to keep this email handy--it is super inspiring and uplifting:
People over 60 who consume moderate amounts of alcohol have a reduced risk for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, according to a large review of studies.
The analysis, which appeared in the July issue of The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, reviewed 15 studies that together followed more than 28,000 subjects for at least two years. All the studies controlled for age, sex, smoking and other factors. The studies variously defined light to moderate drinking as 1 to 28 drinks per week.
Compared with abstainers, male drinkers reduced their risk for dementia by 45 percent, and women by 27 percent.
The researchers acknowledge that studying the effects of alcohol on dementia is complicated by issues like beverage type, standards of quantity and individual behavior that may interact with alcohol to affect mental acuity. But there is ample evidence from other studies that moderate alcohol consumption can increase HDL, or “good cholesterol,” improve blood flow to the brain and decrease blood coagulation. All three factors may reduce the risk for dementia.
Still, the authors warn against drawing premature conclusions. “The overall safety ofalcohol use in later life,” they write, “needs to be evaluated in relation to all of the available evidence” about its health effects.
A bit of cultural news for a welcome change..
After a two year loan to the United States ,
Michelangelo's David is being returned to Italy . . .
Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime.....
One of the Biggest AWWWWWWW's of the year. The Jesusita Fire in Santa Barbara , CA this year caused these two to take shelter together. The fawn is about 3 days old and the bobcat about 3 weeks. They immediately bonded and snuggled together under a desk in the Santa Barbara County Dispatch Office for several hours. |
Animal Planet is reporting the bobcat kitten was rescued near Arnold Schwarzenegger's ranch, where it was dehydrated and near death.Predicting the Unpredictable
After graduating from college, I left the barren
It wasn't until years later that I discovered the secret, and it came via a
"Wine quality = 12.145 + 0.00117 winter rainfall + 0.0614 average growing season temperature 0.00386 harvest rainfall"
Assessing wine is considered an art rather than a science, but oftentimes creativity is about applying a little science to art as Orley did by taking into account weather and auction data. In an effort to inspire entrepreneurs to also turn ill-practiced art into science, below I share a few other examples.
The Mathematics of War
Sean Gourley, a physicist by training, wanted to gain a deeper understanding of what was happening with the war in
Gourley tells the entire story in the video below, including how he arrived at the fact that alpha (the slope of the line) is 2.56. As he explains it, guerilla war has evolved to a state of equilibrium that can be defined by an equation that there is an optimal organizational structure for fighting an organized military. Guerillas either discover this structure, and implicitly, this formula, or they get killed off.
Mathletics, Sabermetrics and "Moneyball"
The story of Sabermetrics and statistics in baseball has been told many times, so I won't repeat it here. Suffice to say that if you have any interest in baseball stats, "Moneyball" is a must-read.
A story not as widely told is that of Wayne Winston and the Dallas Mavericks. A few years ago, Winston, a decision sciences professor from
From a 2003
Ignoring every traditional statistic for players, Sagarin and Winston have designed a ranking that is modeled on hockey's plus-minus system, in which players receive credit for being in the game when their team does well. Whether they actually score points or grab rebounds does not matter.
"Did you make the pass before the assist? Did you tip a ball to someone who made a shot? Did you set a pick? Did you take a charge?" said Winston, a fast-talking former "Jeopardy" champion who, like Sagarin, grew up outside New York City rooting for the Knicks of the late 1960's and early 70's.
"Nobody's got a stat for these," Winston said. "Ninety percent of basketball is made up of things there aren't stats for."
I just pre-ordered Winston's new book, "Mathletics," due out this fall. I can't wait to read it.
How to Develop a "Prediction Function"
Step 1:
Start with some insight about the relation between two things like the fact that weather determines wine quality.
Step 2:
Identify "output" data to tune your prediction function for example, historic auction prices as an approximation for wine quality.
Step 3:
Graph the data to examine the best way to extract the function. Does the data look like it fits a line? If so, do a simple linear regression (a very simple way to do this is the Regression function in Microsoft Excel's Data Analysis package - unfortunately, it's no longer available on Excel for the Mac, but you can do it elswhere). Does the data look like an exponential curve? If so, you can do a logarithmic regression (here is an online tool for a simple regression). And you can use much more sophisticated statistics to find the right equation, if one exists.
Step 4:
Profit.
There are so many areas in which having the ability to make dramatically better predictions would enhance our lives jobs, dating and health, to name a few. I can't wait to see what the future has in store.
Mike Speiser is a Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures. His thoughts on technology, economics and entrepreneurship will appear every week on http://gigaom.com/.
