Round 1 Results and Thoughts

The first round started as expected but was full of some interesting surprises. Let's take a look.

According to the Consensus Big Board, my average of as many top-100 player boards as I can find, Green Bay had the biggest value pick, grabbing Bryan Bulaga at 23 for a 13.2 spot value. There was a lot of reaching going on in the first round, most notably by Jacksonville (reaching 47.2 spots Tyson Alualu) and Houston (Kareem Jackson, a 22 spot reach). Denver picking Tebow was a 31.1 spot reach, but this one is tricky because of Tebow's strange throwing motion, non-pro experience, but immense intangibles.

Biggest values still on the board: Clausen (13), Sergio Kindle (25.3), and Taylor Mays (yuck! 27.5)

What about Detroit? Suh was the consensus #1 player, so grabbing him at 2 was a slight value. Best was a slight reach, 5.4 spots, but they traded up to grab him. Best was clearly a gamble; if he pays off, Mayhew will look like the greatest anti-Millen ever to grace this planet. I like the pick but am nervous at the same time. I guess we'll see.

Here's the overall first round rankings. Remember that the consensus board ranks each pick using a BPA mentality. It doesn't necessarily mean anything about the quality of each pick but indicates how each pick compares to the overall talent board. Jax may wind up looking like geniuses, but for now they own the Al Davis Draft Award for 2010.

Remember: positive numbers are Values, negative numbers are Reaches.

1 St_Louis == Sam Bradford -2.8

2 Detroit == Ndamukong Suh 0.89999999999999

3 Tampa_Bay == Gerald McCoy 0.2

4 Washington == Trent Williams -3

5 Kansas_City == Eric Berry 1.1

6 Seattle == Russell Okung 1

7 Cleveland == Joe Haden -3.6

8 Oakland == Rolando McClain -1.8

9 Buffalo == CJ Spiller -1.4

10 Jacksonville == Tyson Alualu -47.2

11 San_Francisco == Anthony Davis -6.7

12 San_Diego == Ryan Mathews -15.1

13 Philadelphia == Brandon Graham -5.1

14 Seattle == Earl Thomas -1.6

15 NY_Giants == Jason Pierre-Paul -3.6999999999999

16 Tennessee == Derrick Morgan 6.5

17 San_Francisco == Mike Iupati -3.9000000000001

18 Pittsburgh == Maurkice Pouncey -10.5

19 Atlanta == Sean Weatherspoon -5.5

20 Houston == Kareem Jackson -22.0999999999999

21 Cincinnati == Jermaine Gresham -2.3

22 Denver == Demaryius Thomas -9.6

23 Green_Bay == Bryan Bulaga 13.2

24 Dallas == Dez Bryant 9.4

25 Denver == Tim Tebow -31.1

26 Arizona == Dan Williams 10.2

27 New_England == Devin McCourty -0.5

28 Miami == Jared Odrick 1.5

29 NY_Jets == Kyle Wilson 6

30 Detroit == Jahvid Best -5.4

31 Indianapolis == Jerry Hughes -4

32 New_Orleans == Patrick Robinson -9.8

Consensus Draft Ranking 2010

As I did last year, I will be again producing a "Consensus Draft Ranking". This is where I produce a consensus top 100 player board by averaging as many top 100 boards as I can get my hands on, then use this list to rate how much of a reach or value each pick was (throughout the first 100, of course.)

This year, with my software already in place, I will be Tweeting the results live as they roll in. Check it out at http://twitter.com/spacecataz1663

When all is said and done, I'll post the overall results here.

Space Weather, Ho!

We've finally had a solar storm! Ooooooh! Data! Plots! Explanations!

It started yesterday and continued today, as seen in the Space Weather Prediction Center's real-time Kp index. Kp is a single number that characterizes magnetospheric activity through ground based measurements of the Earth's magnetic field. It ranges from 0 to 9, 0 being nothing; 9 being doomsday. 4 or 5 is what I would call "stormy" or "disturbed" conditions. We hit that yesterday and reached a Kp of 7 early this morning.

It should be pointed out that while Kp was high, the "Disturbance Storm Time", or Dst index, was not very high (more accurately, it wasn't very low.) Dst is a rough measure of the amount of energy being deposited into the magnetosphere; the lower the number, the more energy there will be. This storm racked up a Dst of -40; a good storm will hit -100 or more.

I started receiving electron flux warnings from SWPC yesterday afternoon. This is a warning that the radiation belt electron flux (or how many electrons pass through a certain area per second) surpassed 1000 cm^-3*str^-1*s^-1. These are "killer electrons", or electrons with enough energy to penetrate the outer shielding of spacecraft and cause electric charge buildup on internal circuits. While the 1000 mark is one of SWPC's warning levels, the exact "danger zone" for electron flux depends on each satellite and is rarely well known.

FYI- based on the plot quality and fonts used, SWPC is clearly using IDL to generate their output. They should switch to a more modern language *coughpythoncough*.
**EDIT** It was pointed out, rightfully so, that only a short time ago I was a die hard IDL fan. As such, this comment is a bit hypocritical. Whoops.

Let's take a look at what could be driving this activity. The first key item to look at is Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF, or the Sun's magnetic field that is locked in the solar wind and carried to Earth). Specifically, the Z-component or "Bz". When IMF Bz is negative, the IMF can couple to the Earth's magnetic field to deliver energy to the magnetosphere system. The coupling method is called magnetic reconnection; I'll get to this later... eventually. The other things to notice are a jump in both solar wind density and Earthward velocity. Both increases cause the magnetospheric system to be driven harder, which we saw in the electron flux and in the Kp index. I'll need to see more data to figure out what kind of solar storm this is, but right now I'd guess that this is a high-speed-stream event.

I'll follow up on this storm and let you know if anything really fun happens with it.

Best Internet Thursday

Welcome to a new feature of this blog:
BEST INTERNET THURSDAY!
Mondays are typically reserved for examples of good internets; Thursdays are now roped off for the best the internet has to offer. Today's example: Conservapedia!

Has there ever been such an accurate aggregation of knowledge put forth by man? Me thinks not. And if you don't believe me, listen to this: Conservapedia has banned more IP addresses than the total number of users and the number of updates to the site combined. Why would they do this? As Andy Schlafly, creator of the site, says himself in this interview with a hard line reporter, it's to ensure that the site is only changed by "the best the public has to offer." Now that's integrity.

Here's an example of the upstanding excellence of Conservapedia via its article on Climategate.
Picture 1:

Caption: Al Gore on CNN's American Morning, December 9, 2009, in which he stated that snow is melting from the polar icecaps and glaciers at a rapid rate, and that the "global warming deniers" manipulated the emails from CRU out of context.

Picture 2:

Caption: Image from NASA showing a record snowfall in the western United States on December 9, 2009, contradicting Gore's claim. (NASA)

So next time Al Gore talks about the ice caps melting, just whip out the image of snow in the western United States while shouting "YA-BURNT!"

It's this type of hard line truth that makes Conservapedia the number one source for accurate knowledge in the world.

Computational Science and Reproducibility - Part 1

When developing numerical computer models with which to do science, an easy trap to fall into is creating an experimental environment that makes it very difficult to reproduce results from an earlier time. This problem is articulated very well by the people over at ArsTechnica, but given my every day experience with this challenge, I thought I would share my perspective here.

Depending on the model's complexity and the rate of development, it can become challenging to reproduce a simulation that was performed two years ago or one that you performed just two hours ago. This may sound surprising, but those who depend on such models understand how rapidly these situations arise. All of these things (and more) can change between one run and a subsequent, seemingly identical run:

1. The source code changes in a seemingly innocuous way. A change for efficiency or to improve the appearance of the source can lead to this. If changes in the input parameters of the code must be changed through the source, this can often lead to changes in the results that are difficult to diagnose in the future.
   
2. The input data changes. Many codes require a plethora of input data, and these files are often swapped around to see how different sources create different results It's easy to lose track of which files gave which results. Even when one is careful, small changes in the input can create large changes in output. Once, I updated some files that listed satellite positions so that they contained additional significant digits. Such a change sounds harmless, but the one one-hundreth change in the satellite's position produced drastically different results!
   
3. The settings have changed. Grid resolution, numerical scheme settings, input parameters, smoothing and blending factors, activation of additional capabilities, and more - all of these items can be changed from run to run. As a code matures, uncountable combinations of settings are possible. Trying to reconstruct the right settings to reproduce a set of results is not an enviable task.
   
4. The code was run on a different computer. Changing compilers, CPU architecture, or linking to different external libraries are all things that can change results- sometimes drastically. This problem frequently manifests itself when care is not taken to ensure the proper precision of floating point real numbers throughout a code. Various compilers handle this differently, and numbers that you thought were double precision can become single precision without warning.
   
5. Breaking a long run into several parts can also change results. When simulations take days to weeks (even on super computing systems), it is commonplace to develop a system that allows you to save progress and restart the simulation later. Care must be taken to ensure that stopping and restarting yields the same answer as an uninterrupted simulation.
   
6. The code gives different results when run in parallel versus serial mode. Large computer simulations can be sped up drastically through parallel computation- that is breaking the problem up into smaller parts and spreading the work over several computers. If not implemented correctly, there can be changes in the solution when switching from serial (one computer) to parallel mode. Things can get trickier if there are changes when the number of CPUs used increases (though the code was always used in parallel).
   

When you lose reproducibility, others can no longer independently verify your work- a key tenet of well-performed science. Furthermore, you can not return to an experiment for further analysis and open questions about your conclusions will persist. In the best case scenario, this leads to inconveniences in research and time lost when you are required to start from scratch. In the worst case scenarios, failure to reproduce results can strip you of your credibility.

So how do you avoid such problems? In my next post, I will outline steps that the space science modeling community frequently takes to overcome the pitfalls listed above.

THERE IS A GOD AND HE LOVES US ALL.

HIS NAME IS VALVLE. OH HELL YES.

Valve Confirms Games, Steam for Macs in April

With the announcement of Portal 2, I was starting to feel a bit weepy about permanently ditching Windows several years ago. I loved HL2 and Portal, and spent more time than I care to admit playing CS:S. This announcement means that I won't have to kludge together a Linux solution if I ever feel the gamin' itch again. It is a good day.

DROID!

The commercials annoyed me, it's true. And I admit that at one point I declared that I would never buy another phone unless it was an iPhone. But I began eating those sentiments double-plus quick when I saw it in action. And, it's on Verizon, to whom I am very loyal thanks to their customer service that has bent over backwards for me on several occasions.

So now, I am the proud owner of a Motorola Droid.
More surprisingly, I've gone from being a Mac person to an Android person. Big time.

This weekend, I used the "My Tracks" application (free!) to follow my progress as I snowboarded down my first black diamond trail. I then uploaded the map to Google Maps while on the lifts. Be sure to click on the red way point marker to see my elevation, max speed, and other stats.

View First Black in a larger map

Android users can find the app here:

or learn more about it here.

I think I'll start posting more Android-esque items. This phone (and operating system) is pretty darn cool.

Whiskey Tango Friday: Lay Egg Is True!

Lay Egg is True!

Time Lapse Recession

Great animation of the recession as unemployment rate by county over the entire nation can be found here: http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

It seems to me that more and more of these types of demonstrations are beginning to surface. Has anyone else noticed that the U.S. is starting to feel more like a case study and less like a nation?

The 3rd Reviewer.

Waiting for me in my inbox this morning:

There's a good amount of truth to this satire (despite the rather tired "HITLER REACTS TO :blank: LOLZ" genre). The peer review process can be an absolute gauntlet- reasonably and unreasonably so. There are cases where a reviewer asks for ridiculous changes or additional work. Conversely, there are times when such requests are completely justified. On the other side of the coin, the authors have already put in an intense amount of work to produce their manuscript and want to be done with it once and for all! Even though the additional experiments may be warranted and not so burdensome, the scientists may be loathe to do so because, in their minds, this work is finished. I have been guilty of this myself. Finally, when only one of the three reviewers is requesting the additional effort, it is doubly frustrating. It feels like the odd man out is just trying to be difficult compared to the others.

What Does the U.S. Manufacture?

Computers, but apparently not for long:

"The trend for low-priced computers will last for the coming years," said Shih, according to the AFP's quote of a Commercial Times newspaper interview. "But U.S. computer makers just don't know how to put such products on the market... US computer brands may disappear over the next 20 years, just like what happened to U.S. television brands."

Excuse the anecdotal evidence, but a town that relied on jobs provided by a local television assembly plant was featured in a documentary concerning the impact Walmart has on U.S. economics. The cheaper, foreign made televisions acquired and sold by Walmart led to the collapse of the American plant. The freshly laid off workers in this small town found low paying jobs at their local -- wait for it -- Walmart.

A brief scan through the comments on this story as reported by Tom's Hardware suggests that the readers don't believe that this will happen. They cite higher quality products from companies such as HP versus their foreign counterparts and note, correctly, that the above prediction comes from foreign rival Acer. I am not so optimistic, however. When is the last time that Americans, en masse, valued quality over low prices?

Snow Shoes, Heras!

I haven't been on a good hike for a long while. I finally broke my dry spell this past weekend with the help of brand-spankin' new snow shoes! I took them up the local ski hill twice already; it was a fantastic hike. Click on the way points for pictures, pop the map open in a new window for a better view:

View Snow Shoeing on Pajarito - January 18th, 2010 in a larger map

I'm going to try to go very early this Friday to get some sunrise pictures; my next goal is to take my snowboard with me so that I can get down quickly.

Good Internet Monday BONUS - Delicious Science

Check out these tasty and peer-reviewed recipes over at Not So Humble Pie.

Good Internet Monday - First Person Tetris

I found this over at Tom's Hardware: First Person Tetris. It's a bit... disorientating.

Good Internet Monday - Google

Yeah, it's Wednesday. I know that. This one's a good one, though:

GOOGLE.
KICKS.
ASS.

In a nutshell: There was a recent attempt to hack gmail accounts of prominent human rights activists in China coming from China. Based on Google's investigations, the attack was most likely by the Chinese government. In retaliation, Google will no longer be filtering searches on google.cn, and may pull out of China all together.

We'll have to see if Google actually follows through with these threats, but if so, this is fantastic. The Chinese government has been horribly restrictive about what information circulates from the internet to citizens. By no longer supporting these actions, Google can deal a major blow to censorship in one of the most populous nations in the world.