Take a Chance
Frost fair
This week end Strandman will be going to the Frost fair on the Southbank http://www.visitsouthwark.com/frostfair-15-17-december and I was interested in finding moe of the history.
Prior to the outbreak of bridge-building that occurred in the 19th Century, it was not uncommon for the River Thames to freeze over. Will Global warming (and freak weather conditions) return this wonderful event to us? Read on and you will see not...
One of the earliest recorded occasions was in AD 250 when the river remained under ice for nine weeks. During the 'Little Ice Age', which is usually dated around 1500 - 1850 AD, the whole of Northern Europe experienced markedly cooler conditions and as a result the river froze more frequently.
The process required a long spell of cold, dry weather. Ice patches would initially form near banks and bridges, and grow until they formed solid areas of ice. These would eventually meet up until the river surface was frozen. When the ice was perceived to be thick enough, people would venture onto the ice to hold frost fairs - carnivals on ice that involved dancing, winter games and, most importantly, drinking. It was not uncommon for the freeze to last over three months, as in the case of the winters of 1683 - 1684 and 1715 - 1716.
In 1434, 1506 and 1575 the ice was thick enough to allow people to abandon bridges and drive their carts and carriages across the ice, but there was little in the way of organised entertainment or celebration. The earliest recorded frost fair was in 1564 - 1565, when people congregated on the ice to take part in a football match, archery contests, dancing and feasting.
It too was unorganised and spontaneous, but the fair of 1683 - 1684 was very different. It lasted from December to early February and was much bigger, creating a mini-London on the ice. Whole streets of booths were constructed across the river between Southwark and Temple, with different trades occupying different areas of the fair. London's entertainments were replicated and Londoners could pass their time drinking watching bear- or bull-baiting, wrestling and horseracing on the ice. Printing presses created souvenirs for visitors and a whole ox was roasted at Hungerford Stairs. Charles II visited, accompanied by his court, and the printed souvenir created for him can be seen at the Museum of London.
1814: The Frost Fair
The fair of 1814 is the best known and biggest of all London's frost fairs. The freezing process started at the beginning of January after a period of unseasonably mild weather and a week-long fog. The temperature dropped dramatically and, by the end of the month, the ice was thick enough for about 70 brave souls to venture from one bank to the other. Once people realised that the ice between Blackfriars Bridge and Three Crane Stairs was strong enough to hold their weight, they ventured out in their thousands.
By the next day, London traders, who had always been quick to make a penny or two, had turned the whole area into a fair. Rather than the stalls and booths going across the Thames, they ran down the middle and this mall was named the 'City Road' (note italics).
At first the stalls were quite simple, either selling warming drinks, often alcoholic despite the lack of a licence, or providing a variety of amusements. They were quickly joined by nine printing presses creating frost fair memorabilia. A sheep was roasted on the ice and spectators were charged just to look at it; after it was cooked it was sold as 'Lapland mutton'. As the fair attracted more Londoners, the range of products and activities grew and people clamoured for souvenirs that were marked with 'Frost Fair 1814' and 'Bought on the Thames'. By the end of the week a small herd of donkeys were tempted onto the ice to give rides.
The ice continued to hold, though at the edges there were weak spots. 'Watermen' had to rescue two women who fell through the ice, although a lead-laden plumber who had attempted to cross the ice was, unsurprisingly, less lucky. When the thaw did come, it came quickly. A week after the river had frozen, three people had to be rescued from a large piece of ice that had broken away and by the next day the rise in temperature was indicated by a shower of sleet.
This later turned to rain and the ice started to become unstable, sweeping two men down the Thames. The tidal action of the Thames returned and by Sunday huge cracks were appearing in the ice surface. Within 24 hours the ice was quite gone and the river flowing as usual, though the cold weather lasted until late March.
1814 was to prove to be last fair. A new London bridge was built in 1823 slightly upstream from the old bridge which was eventually demolished in 1831. The structure of the new bridge was less bulky then its predecessor, which had acted as a dam. The demolition of the latter and the narrowing of the river through the creation of the embankments on either side permanently changed the flow of the river.
And now? The Thames is now too fast-flowing to freeze over, though there were plans to freeze it as part of the Millennium celebrations using modern technology. The two methods suggested both involved a system of underwater pipes to keep the surface frozen. It was suggested that chemicals could be used to lower the temperature of the river. However, objections were received from the Port of London Authority who were worried about the effect on commercial activity on the river.
Strandman regrets...
(Pictures to follow)
SM
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Dead or Alive?
What are the odds of dying?Strandman brings you a most useful table- reproduced from source below. If you wanted to know (and clearly these are US facts) the chances of… then read carefully. Clearly check chances of radiation (as now changed for UK) and bedroom accidental deaths!The table (Click Here) was prepared in response to frequent inquiries, especially from the media, asking questions such as,
or
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(The odds given below are statistical averages over the whole U.S. population and do not necessarily reflect the chances of death for a particular person from a particular external cause. Any individual's odds of dying from various external causes are affected by the activities in which they participate, where they live and drive, what kind of work they do, and other factors.
Source: National Safety Council estimates based on data from National Center for Health Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau. Deaths are classified on the basis of the Tenth Revision of the World Health Organization's "The International Classification of Diseases" (ICD). Numbers following titles refer to External Cause of Morbidity and Mortality classifications in ICD-10. One year odds are approximated by dividing the 2003 population (290,850,005) by the number of deaths. Lifetime odds are approximated by dividing the one-year odds by the life expectancy of a person born in 2003 (77.6 years).)
Hours of safe fun ahead!!!!
SM
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What does Random look like?
VISUALIZING RANDOMNESS. Evenly distributed points in space, depicting numbers, came from a good pseudorandom-number generator (above), but the tendril patterns (below), which arise from another source of numbers, are far from random. Pretty though.
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Take a Chance 4
Scientists put randomness to work - Science that is..
Since the dawn of written history, people have exploited the randomness of a roll of a die to inject their games with the thrill of the unpredictable. Today, randomness is finding myriad other uses, such as encrypting credit card numbers in Internet transactions, deciding how to allocate treatments in drug trials, choosing precincts to call in national polls, running online gambling sites, and helping physicists simulate phenomena ranging from the weather to traffic patterns. These applications, however, require many more random numbers than can be obtained from rolling a die. A busy commercial Web site, for example, uses hundreds of thousands of random numbers every minute to mask its users' credit card numbers. And in the research world, computer simulations eat up millions of random numbers in a matter of seconds. To accommodate these needs, researchers are creating a precise science out of something at which toddlers excel: making chaos at breakneck speed.
Randomness is a slippery concept, easier to talk about than to define. Scientists instead tend to say what it isn't. A random number is one that can't be predicted.
Knowing some of the random numbers in a list doesn't make it easier to figure out the others. Over the past few decades, computer scientists have designed computer algorithms that produce a good approximation of true randomness. These algorithms churn out long sequences of pseudorandom numbers, which are scattered about the number line in roughly the same distribution as random numbers are. These pseudorandom numbers are unpredictable enough for many, but not all, purposes.
Now, physicists and computer scientists are figuring out ways to pull true randomness out of the physical world. One Web site, for instance, generates random numbers from the noise of a radio tuned between stations. And a commercial device put on the market last March harnesses nature's ultimate source of randomness: quantum physics, which Albert Einstein famously described as God playing dice.
More soon...
SM
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Can you?
| | Did you see that lovely Planet Earth Polar bear thing? Well consider this: There are two bears - white and dark. We may reasonably ask several questions: |
1. What is the probability that both bears are male? Writing 'm' for male and 'f' for female and counting the lighter bear first we get four possible outcomes (ff, mf, fm, mm) of which only one should be considered favorable. The answer, therefore, is 1/4.
2. Now assume I told you that one of the bears is male. What is the probability that both are males? Of the three possible outcomes (mf, fm, mm) only the last where both bears are male is favorable. The answer is 1/3.
3. Now the last question. I am telling you that the lighter bear is known to be male. What now is the probability that both of them are males? Please stop for a while and think of the problem. Try to answer the question before looking into the solution.
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Male bears, first solution to the last question
Since it's now given that the lighter bear is male there are only two possible outcomes (mf, mm). Thus the probability that both are male goes up to 1/2. Note how each additional piece of information changed the number of possibilities and, hence, the probability of the outcome.
Male bears, second solution to the last questionThe sequence of three question is supposed to lead one on to wondering what difference does it make to specify that the white bear is male. And, in my experience, the trick works too. But since it's now known that the white bear is male, its sex is removed from the realm of random. All that matters is the sex of the dark bear who is believed to be male with the probability of 1/2. A short way to express the same idea is as follows:
P("both are male" | "white is male" ) = P("dark is male" )
where P(A|B) means the (conditional) probability of A provided B is known to take place.
SM
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Chance Wednesday
Is Life always fun and games?
Is there such a thing as Luck?
Are people (some / certain) lucky (Lucy Luciano)?
Do some people get luckier by practicing more?
Strandman in the spirit of adventure delves into the deep and rich vein of Luck.
Luck is a chance happening of fortune. Luck is often regarded as a superstition, but it can be interpreted in many ways.
Strandman wants to know all the things that are considered lucky or unlucky.
I will then look for them on Fleet Street and Strand and keep a running log. Red if done (+2 points) and -2 for anything unlucky:
See running total at bottom of how Strandman is doing!
Lucky things
- Finding a penny (coin) with heads facing up [ done Thursday 3.11.06 ]
- Horseshoes (correct way up please) [police horses maybe?]
- Four-leaf clovers [not likely on Strand]
- A rabbit's foot [I will look, I promise]
- Ladybirds [Summer time only]
- Elephant with the trunk pointing up [Oh come on..]
- The number Seven [done number 7 Fleet St]
- Knocking on wood [done]
- Crossing one's fingers [typing is nightmare]
- A tea stalk standing upward on the bottom of a cup [?]{ok, ok]
- A bird defecating on one's head [Waiting under pigeons]
- The Number 13 [looking for a good one]
- Beach paintings at the NG [Done]
To be added to…
Unlucky
- Friday the 13th [done]
- The number 13 (Many buildings skipped 13 when numbering their floors for this reason) [nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! 8/11/06 added to minus side]]
- A black cat crossing one's path [nope]
- Stepping on a crack (the mother's back will break; rhymed as "step on a crack, break your mother's back' [oh no!]
- Breaking a mirror (seven years bad luck) [not yet]
- Spilling over salt (When salt was more precious than gold, if one spilt some it was believed to mean that a demon was trying to steal one's salt, but by appeasing it with a little salt over the left shoulder, the demon would leave) [don’t use salt]
- Putting a hat on a bed [no hats for me]
- Opening an umbrella indoors [not yet]
- Killing a ladybird [Murderer! No]
- Killing a spider in one's home [ I love them I do]
- Walking underneath a ladder (when being hanged, the condemned man would often be made to pass underneath a ladder before climbing it and onto the gallows) [being very careful]
- Saying "good luck" [ Rats! Did it today]
- Replying "thank you" to someone wishing good luck [no one has!]
- Putting shoes on a table. [Yuck- just unhealthy!]
- Saying "good luck" to an actor going onstage (the preferred expression is: Break a leg) [I know no actors]
- Sinistrality (being left-handed) [I am not]
- Seeing one magpie [Salute!]
- A bird flies into one's window [No]
- Cutting your nails at night [No definetly not]
- Five leaf clovers [No chance!]
- Turning a horse shoe upside down is said to drain the good luck from it and bring about bad luck [Still looking for horses]
- Avoiding eye contact when toasting with another person (7 years of bad sex in Mexico) [Will remember that]
Sure we can add to this…
Good luck points: 10 10
SM is: +4 +2 (as of 11am)
Hurrah! Off to the Casino…maybe
SM
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Free Cash Chance !
Take a Chance Wednesday
(take a chance, take a chance)
(With a care-free descent into the random nature of randomness and some advice on what I should do on Fleet Street or Strand today)
The title did say it all- I have placed 'free' cash (a £5 note) (in a plastic bag) somewhere on Fleet street / Strand at 7.48am this morning (I love the term secret location). It wasn’t random and the answer lies within the text and photos here on this post. Very Da Vinci code. Study the picture carefully- Cryptologist beware! Some are meaningless, some are pointless but some are absolutely ‘on the money’ as it were.
This web site jumped at me last night: Leon’s Random Generators. Well not literally, just popped up, on a random google search which was ironic.
Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris was my role model for today and gave me the following things to do. Firstly form and name a Band. As Strandman I am dedicated to fashion and I was up for the challenge so I accepted the mission.
He suggested (and I immediately formed) the following bands:
‘CHICKEN HAWK ROCKERS’
I like the idea- a sort of Clash meets Robert Mason / LURP fusion. I am in!
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS:
BILLY BILE BAND
THE CONVULSING EIGHT
JON YILMAZ ROCKS-LIKE TRIO
PUMKIN PISTOLS
DOCTOR BETTER NOT
BOYISH BLADES with a PROBLEM
STEEL ALICE’S FUNERAL
The band is formed and ready and we now need to have the killer Lyric.
Certain
| You burst a blood vessel? |
| When did hella chicken hearts cease? |
| The love lies bedding-zongerbird of fuzz and your 9th with three skull soups Does blank cheese and French madame’s type today for tea? |
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| More bird on mister cathode . |
| When don't you prevail not? |
| If you are a facade, spout... |
| I will erect a monument to the gods flimproblarsely. |
Feeling the will to live ebb away then and almost decided to run up Fleet Street yelling those catchy words.Then those difficult ‘tunes’ and Chord Progressions:
In the key of F
F F A# A# F F A# A# F F C7 C F F C Cm
F F A# A# F F A# A# F F C7 C F F C Cm
Muscians help me here but I suspect anti-grunge pain sound. [So, good then.]
And finally the ‘Advice’ section. Gosh I have been waiting for this:
IF YOU ARE A RUNNER MAN, BABY YOU BETTER CRACK YOUR MAGAZINE
-- ANONYMOUS (1945 CE)
So after that assault on the senses, what is ‘Random’ and how can I claim my five pounds?
The word random is used to express lack of purpose, cause, order, or predictability in non-scientific language which you might here on Strand or Fleet Street. A random process is a repeating process whose outcomes follow no describable deterministic pattern, but follow a probability distribution.
The term randomness is often used in statistics to signify well defined statistical properties, such as lack of bias or correlation. [Bias? Cricket Umpire? Me?]
Random is different from arbitrary, because to say that a variable is random means that the variable follows a probability distribution (the famous if incorrectly named bell curve) .
Arbitration requires judgement and skill- not Chance.
So the big band plays and we ask the question: Randomness -v- unpredictability?
Randomness is an objective property. [the way you or I see it, or indeed Leon may generate it].
What appears random to one observer may not appear random to another observer. The telling legal argument of what a man on Clapham Omnibus might think- (see picture at top of this article for 'Man looking cross on Strand Omnibus'.
Consider two observers of a sequence of bits, only one of which who has the cryptographic key needed to turn the sequence of bits into a readable message. The message is not random, but is for one of the observers unpredictable. So very Dan Brown.
Ever wondered about the randomness of Roulette? Can you beat the system? Well consider this…If red has come up 16 times in a row what are the chances of it being red next time? Well, is it Random?
One of the intriguing aspects of random processes is that it is hard to know whether the process is truly random. The observer can always suspect that there is some "key" that unlocks the message. This is one of the foundations of superstition. Albert Einstein (let us pray) is reputed to have stated,
"You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it."
And yet, the numerous even money bets in roulette have inspired many players over the years to attempt to beat the game by using one or more variations of a Martingale betting strategy, wherein the gamer doubles the bet after every loss, so that the first win would recover all previous losses, plus win a profit equal to the original bet. I have tried it and you need a huge store of money to do this and you walk away happy but just about even (in my experience- don't try this at home, online or in a Casino).
Another strategy is the Fibonacci system (or any other Mathematical progression or sequence), where bets are calculated according to the Fibonacci sequence. Regardless of the specific progression, no such strategy can statistically overcome the Casino's advantage (which has nothing to do with zero by the way).
Therefore, I Strandman, conclude that Random is not truly random in the sense of the word.
For a 'random outcome' to occur there must be at least one variable which changes each time the event is repeated or else the same outcome will always occur. However variables influence the outcome of an event and the more variables there are the more contorted the end result will be.
Random is applied to a situation where the end result can not accurately be guessed because of the number of influencing variables. That is Strandman’s view on life.
And you need some help with a job? Random interview questions seems good…
http://tools.monster.com/virtualinterviews/random/
SM
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