listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.go theremore quotes

# information: exciting

DNA on 10th — street art, wayfinding and font

# The Ptolemaic Clock — A Proposal

## the standard clock

Consider the lowly wall clock. It's practical and generally tells the correct time. It's the same clock everywhere and after a while it gets boring pretty quickly—maybe now?

In a standard clock, the bezel is fixed and the hands rotate.

In the regular clock the face bezels stay in place and the hands move. Why am I telling you this? Well, maybe you see where I'm going.

## the Ptolemaic Clock

Who says it's the hands that have to rotate? Instead of rotating hands and a stationary bezel, consider the clock with stationary hands rotating bezels.

In the Ptolemaic clock, the hands stay in place while independent minute and hour hand bezels rotate to simulate the movement of the hands.

In the Ptolemaic clock there are two independent bezels and two independent hands. The bezels rotate counterclockwise to simulate the standard clockwise motion of the hands. The hands are not moving but in the frame of reference of the bezels, it's the hands that are rotating. The position of the bezel is always related to the current time and the position of its corresponding hand.

The bezel can move clockwise.

Thanks to Rodrigo Goya for suggesting the name for this kind of clock—Ptolemaic Clock, named so after the geocentric Ptolemaic model of the solar system.

## telling time on the Ptolemaic clock

To tell the time on the Ptolemaic clock is a process identical to using the standard clock. You look at the bezel numbers at the ends of the hour and minute hands.

On the fixed bezel layout, most people will take a short cut and tell the time by the position of the hands. This works as long as you have a standard clock. On a Ptolemaic clock the position of the hands tells you nothing.

Here is a Ptolemaic clock telling us it is 6:30. It uses the same position of hands as in the figures above.

You know this because the blue hour hand points to midway between 6 and 7 on the inner hour bezel and the grey minute hand points to 30 on the outer minute bezel.

It is 6:30 on this Ptolemaic clock.

After 15 minutes, it's 6:45 and our Ptolemaic clock bezels have moved a little bit.

It is 6:45 on this Ptolemaic clock.

Can you tell what time it is on the Ptolemaic clock below?

If you answered 8:50, you are correct. It is 8:50.

## customizing the Ptolemaic clock

Customizing your Ptolemaic clock is easy. Simply adjust the hands to desired positions and set the time by moving the bezels. The clock below shows the same time as the clock in the above figure — both show 8:50.

This clock tells us it's 8:50. Compare this to the clock in the figure above, which also tells the same time.

## ptolemaic clock — hard layout

In the clock design shown here, the hands are the same size and only differ by color. To make things less confusing, emphasize the hour hand.

To make things more confusing, remove all color and number cues, keeping only a single symbol on each of the bezels to indicate 12 o'clock and 0 minutes. This is shown in the clock below.

In the hard layout of a Ptolemaic clock, there are fewer cues. I think it's 8:50.

## news room parodies

Spice it up with multiple Ptolemaic clocks side-by-side telling the same time with different hand positions.

Suppose it is 2:30 in Vancouver—this is my location. The clocks below all show 2:30, but with hands set to 5:30, 11:30 and 7:30.

Looks like a wall of clocks in a newsroom. Except these Ptolemaic clocks tell us that it's 2:30, three times over in Vancouver.

These hand positions are those that would appear on a standard clock showing the times in New York (5:30), Paris (11:30) and Tokyo (7:30).

Let's now use the Ptolemaic clock to show times at these three locations but with the hand set to the curiously satisfying layout of 10ish minutes to 2.

A challenging panel of Ptolemaic clocks.

### TIP

Set both hand positions to 12 o'clock and then remove the hands; to tell time, read the numbers on the hour and minute bezels at the apex of the clock.

### EXTENSION

Sophisticated implementations of the Ptolemaic clock could periodically randomize hand positions to keep things interesting; by the time you've figured out the time in the morning, you're wide awake.

Every minute the clock randomly resets its hand positions. The movement is smooth and the bezels follow.

## hardware implementation

If you would like to implement the Ptolemaic clock, I would be happy to hear from you. One should be able to take a regular wall clock, reverse the direction of the hand mechanism and rig a freely moving bezel to each of the minute and hour mechanism. The hands should not move and can be fixed to the front glass plate, for example.

## conclusions

It should now be clear that the Ptolemaic clock is superior to the standard clock. The reasons are

• it's much harder to tell time on the Ptolemaic clock, which makes your brain do more work
• it tips its hat off to a simpler time when we didn't know anything and hints at the possibility of regression anytime
• it will confuse everyone
• you have a great excuse for being late
• return to geocentric values!
• you can customize your own Ptolemaic clock by moving the hands to arbitrary locations
• two Ptolemaic clocks can have their hands and bezels at different positions but still be telling the same time
• two Ptolemaic clocks can have their hands at the same position but be telling different times
VIEW ALL

# Quantile regression

Sat 01-06-2019
Quantile regression robustly estimates the typical and extreme values of a response.

Quantile regression explores the effect of one or more predictors on quantiles of the response. It can answer questions such as "What is the weight of 90% of individuals of a given height?"

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Quantile regression. (read)

Unlike in traditional mean regression methods, no assumptions about the distribution of the response are required, which makes it practical, robust and amenable to skewed distributions.

Quantile regression is also very useful when extremes are interesting or when the response variance varies with the predictors.

Das, K., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2019) Points of significance: Quantile regression. Nature Methods 16:451–452.

### Background reading

Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2015) Points of significance: Simple linear regression. Nature Methods 12:999–1000.

# Analyzing outliers: Robust methods to the rescue

Sat 30-03-2019
Robust regression generates more reliable estimates by detecting and downweighting outliers.

Outliers can degrade the fit of linear regression models when the estimation is performed using the ordinary least squares. The impact of outliers can be mitigated with methods that provide robust inference and greater reliability in the presence of anomalous values.

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Analyzing outliers: Robust methods to the rescue. (read)

We discuss MM-estimation and show how it can be used to keep your fitting sane and reliable.

Greco, L., Luta, G., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2019) Points of significance: Analyzing outliers: Robust methods to the rescue. Nature Methods 16:275–276.

### Background reading

Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2016) Points of significance: Analyzing outliers: Influential or nuisance. Nature Methods 13:281–282.

# Two-level factorial experiments

Fri 22-03-2019
To find which experimental factors have an effect, simultaneously examine the difference between the high and low levels of each.

Two-level factorial experiments, in which all combinations of multiple factor levels are used, efficiently estimate factor effects and detect interactions—desirable statistical qualities that can provide deep insight into a system.

They offer two benefits over the widely used one-factor-at-a-time (OFAT) experiments: efficiency and ability to detect interactions.

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Two-level factorial experiments. (read)

Since the number of factor combinations can quickly increase, one approach is to model only some of the factorial effects using empirically-validated assumptions of effect sparsity and effect hierarchy. Effect sparsity tells us that in factorial experiments most of the factorial terms are likely to be unimportant. Effect hierarchy tells us that low-order terms (e.g. main effects) tend to be larger than higher-order terms (e.g. two-factor or three-factor interactions).

Smucker, B., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2019) Points of significance: Two-level factorial experiments Nature Methods 16:211–212.

### Background reading

Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2014) Points of significance: Designing comparative experiments.. Nature Methods 11:597–598.

# Happy 2019 $\pi$ Day—Digits, internationally

Tue 12-03-2019

Celebrate $\pi$ Day (March 14th) and set out on an exploration explore accents unknown (to you)!

This year is purely typographical, with something for everyone. Hundreds of digits and hundreds of languages.

A special kids' edition merges math with color and fat fonts.

116 digits in 64 languages. (details)
223 digits in 102 languages. (details)

Check out art from previous years: 2013 $\pi$ Day and 2014 $\pi$ Day, 2015 $\pi$ Day, 2016 $\pi$ Day, 2017 $\pi$ Day and 2018 $\pi$ Day.

# Tree of Emotional Life

Sun 17-02-2019

One moment you're $:)$ and the next you're $:-.$

Make sense of it all with my Tree of Emotional life—a hierarchical account of how we feel.

A section of the Tree of Emotional Life.

# me as a keyword list

aikido | analogies | animals | astronomy | comfortable silence | cosmology | dorothy parker | drumming | espresso | fundamental forces | good kerning | graphic design | humanism | humour | jean michel jarre | kayaking | latin | little fluffy clouds | lord of the rings | mathematics | negative space | nuance | perceptual color palettes | philosophy of science | photography | physical constants | physics | poetry | pon farr | reason | rhythm | richard feynman | science | secularism | swing | symmetry and its breaking | technology | things that make me go hmmm | typography | unix | victoria arduino | wine | words