Basketball Burnout

It always happens that partway through the second weekend of the tournament I get a little tired of the whole thing.  The games stop being as exciting – there are large point margins for the favorites.  For the second half of the Sweet Sixteen, Davidson winning was exciting but they did it handedly, so the game wasn’t exactly thrilling.  I didn’t even stay up to watch the end of the games and Memphis blowing out MSU (I was wrong there….).

I didn’t find the Elite Eight any better.  I think the fact that all four one seeds have advanced to the Final Four says it all.  The Davidson-Kansas game was close and exciting, although I had to miss most of the second half due to remote observing.  Plus, Kansas won which is the boring “expected” outcome.  I wasn’t impressed by any of the other games – the UNC game was exciting for about five minutes of the second half, but it was determined with several minutes before the end of the game.

I’ll watch the last three games, but I feel no investment at all – there’s no underdog, no team to cheer for.  One of the teams will win, and I really don’t care which it is.

Galaxy Zoo!, Human Bias and Why I Love Astronomy

I was looking for papers on astro-ph for the Graduate Student and Postdoc Seminar Series that we have started when I found a paper entitled “Galaxy Zoo: The large-scale spin statistics of spiral galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey” by Land et al. I decided immediately that this was a paper worth looking at since zoos are awesome. I’m writing about it here because it’s an extremely interesting paper – I highly suggest reading it.

Galaxy Zoo is an online project where volunteers classify the morphology of galaxies targeted by Sloan for spectroscopic follow-up. The idea is to use public involvement to classify these hundreds of thousands of galaxies. Each galaxy is classified multiple times – on average there are 39 distinct “votes” for each galaxy. Of interest to this paper is the classification of the spirals – they can be classified as a clockwise (Z) spiral galaxy, anti-clockwise (S) spiral galaxy or other – a galaxy that is spiral but whose sense of rotation cannot be determined. The clockwise and anti-clockwise directions refer to the direction the spiral arms are winding and hence the assumed direction of rotation.

The motivation for this paper was that previous studies of the rotation directions of galaxies had found dipole pattern on the sky – challenging the assumption of isotropy of the universe (the idea that the universe is the same in all directions). What this paper found instead is that the observations could be satisfied by a monopole moment – an over abundance of one galaxy rotation direction to the other. Since all the previous studies had used galaxies concentrated in a single part of the sky and measured only part of the “dipole” term this would explain previous work and restore isotropy.

This paper looked at the Galaxy Zoo project and was able to show a bias in the users categorizing of S galaxies to Z galaxies. The galaxy classifications that were used from the GZ project had to be considered “clean” – more than 80% of the votes agreed on the classification. The authors looked to see if there was some bias that prevented Z galaxies from being classified cleanly as often as S galaxies. That is, the thought was that there could be some underlying bias causing Z-wise galaxies to be classified as “other” more often than S-wise galaxies. They took a subset of galaxies that had been classified cleanly and placed both the original images and mirror-flipped images into the data base and allowed users to classify the galaxy type. In the original data set, more S galaxies are seen than Z galaxies, so one would expect the situation to reverse with the mirror images if the over abundance were the result of the true galaxy distribution. However, they noted a S galaxy excess that was statistically identical for the mirror images. This suggests some human bias that makes it easier to classify a galaxy with a certain rotation or “handedness”.

The authors mention a neurological study that had shown it might be possible for the brain to see a certain “handedness” better than another. They also mention that it could be website design – one button is easier to find than the other. Personally, I think the first suggestion is much more interesting. I wonder if they have data on whether there users are right- or left-handed and have looked for possible correlations. One of the reasons I’m so excited about this paper is because I found the linking astronomy and neurology to be amazing. The pure astronomical question of isotropy of the universe was also important and intriguing, but that’s where the paper bogs down into statistics and math (but not too badly). The first few sections on the sample bias are extremely interesting because they’re addressing a large issue – is there some overall bias to how humans perceive the sense of rotation of galaxies?

I was somewhat concerned at first that the most interesting question in the paper to me was more neurology than astronomy. After a moment or two, though, I realized it was just the sort of question that made me love astronomy – a BIG one. What I mean by this is that I think the most interesting questions address large, broad topics. Why does the human brain perceive an S-sense of rotation better? fits this category. However, the corresponding questions about what parts of the brain are involved and what chemical pathways, etc. don’t. For me, both the big questions and the methods for solving them in astronomy are interesting. I can ask How do galaxies evolve? and then go measure lots of properties of galaxies and try to figure it out. I find it easy to stay in the framework of the big picture – after all the smallest objects I’m looking at are still enormous and complicated systems that are interesting as individuals.  It helps me keep that wonder in mind. Which is why I love astronomy – we have the best questions.  Hopefully, everyone feels that way about the science they’re studying.  But, still, try to beat How did our galaxy/solar system/galaxy cluster/universe form?

Sweet Sixteen

March Madness is far from over. Which is good as I’ll be lost once the college basketball season is over – it’ll be months and months until (professional) football starts. There have been some good games and some not so good tonight.  The games tonight have been about how quickly runs can change the game and how little the first ten minutes has to do with the rest of the game.

• Louisville-Tennessee: Louisville dominates the first half.  Tennesse pulls to within one point early in the second half.  Louisville pulls back into a comfortable lead and never looks back.
• Xavier-West Virginia University: Xavier led for the first half and this looked to be an uninteresting game.  WVU shows up for the second half and forces the game into overtime where Xavier wins.
• Washington State University – UNC: WSU kept it close for the start of the game and played well with nice ball movement. But UCLA started pulling away around the minute mark and had a 14 point margin by half time, extended to twenty points by the end of the game.
• Western Kentucky University-UCLA: UCLA led easily early but WKU had a late resurgence – they trailed by 21 at the half and whittled UCLA’s lead to 4 in the second half.  By the last minute UCLA had opened the lead back up.  Recognizing that the game was over, the WKU coach put his bench in for the final play of the game, which was a gesture I really liked.

Ouray!

A very belated trip report, written as I’m avoiding homework and depressed about the fact that I haven’t climbed at all since Ouray except for twice at the gym. I’m once again making myself promises about starting to climb more, but I mean to keep them this time unlike all the previous times. Many of the people mentioned in here frequent rockclimbing.com and their username is often used in place of their real name.

After over two years of trying, redpointron (or just Ron), convinces me to come to the Ouray Ice Climbing Festival. I kept telling him no when I lived in Bloomington and climbed regularly with him, but now I’ve moved to Ithaca, so it’s a great idea. Actually, I just have a longer winter break (the Fest was during break) and don’t have to go to the AAS meeting the week before. (I don’t miss that one at all.)

I flew into Montrose on Wednesday afternoon. The flights out were relatively uneventful. Another climbing cohort was on the same flights out. (A Bloomington climber who Ron knew but I had never met somehow.) He picked me out from the airplane crowd and we passed the layover in Houston chatting. When we made it to Montrose the visibility was too poor to land – they told us we had enough fuel to circle for twenty minutes before we would have to redirect to Colorado Springs. Ten minutes later the clouds cleared up long enough to allow us to land – yea! Ron and Reese were there to meet us and take us back to Ouray. Another member of our group was supposed to be arriving, but her flight on United was cancelled/severely delayed out of Denver.

On the drive back to Ouray we made a stop at the Orvis Hot Springs – clothing optional natural hot springs. (In our group there really was no option – we were the naked house!) Then it was onwards to Ouary – a quick stop by the awesome house we were staying in to drop off gear and inward to town and the gear shop! Many good things lived in that shop. Most importantly, I bought ice climbing boots! I was borrowing crampons and axes from Ron, so I was already to start ice climbing. Unfortunately that would have to wait until the next day. We headed back the Montrose way to pick up March – she had finally managed to arrive from Denver. She bummed a ride with some guys heading out to go skiing, so we met them halfway between Montrose and Ouray. Unfortunately, United hadn’t brought her luggage with her. (Super kudos to Ron here for the recommendation to avoid United.) It was off to dinner at the Mexican restaurant in town, where I met reno and sharpie – buddies from festivals’ past that Ron met through rc.com. We went out drinking afterwards, and I had my first Yeger bomb. (Note: As with all proper climbing trips, much drinking occurred. We were always responsible and had a designated driver.)

It was up bright and early the next morning to go climbing! We stopped by San Juan Mountain Guides on the way to the ice so that Marcy could rent some gear since hers was still in Denver. We made it to the School Room bright and early and set up three ropes on the brilliantly named routes 5, 6, 7. (Or 6, 7, 8 – I don’t quite remember. All the routes in the School Room are numbered and it’s hard to remember which number goes with which.) Setting anchors was easy since there were chains at the top. This was also when I discovered that a 60m rope isn’t long enough – 70 meters is much, much nicer as it easily reaches across the creek at the bottom of the School Room (see the picture below).

Looking down the School Room

I did my first ice climb ever – it was wicked fun! Extremely tiring though – I only did two and a half climbs that day and I was beat by the end. I went up the first climb with leashes, but after that it was leashless all the way. It was so much nicer without leashes – being able to leave the tools in the ice and shake my hands out. I worried a bit about dropping the tools, but I could always lower back down and pick it up. Not that I ever dropped a tool. Being able to shake my hands out was extremely important as it helped return circulation and prevent the screaming barfies (where your hands hurt so badly you either have to scream or barf). My hands would be completely numb by the end of a climb. It wasn’t from cold, even though I didn’t have the best gloves, (I stayed surprisingly warm throughout) but because I would lose blood flow from having my hands above my head. It was best to stop often and shake your hands out – both to reduce the pain of returning circulation to small doses and to make sure you could continue to grip the tools. All in all, it was a good first day – I learned a lot and earned my beer for the night.

Me getting ready to ice climb

It was a lazy dinner around the house that night and an early morning to start climbing. It was the first day of the festival so we wanted to make sure we got some ropes up. I think the area we were climbing in was the Alcove – it was just between the School Room and Lead Only area. The climbs were much longer here – you lowered down on the rope and climbed out. I was nervous about this at first, but I was assured that there was a walk-out if necessary. I asked about a haul and was assured again that there was a walk-out. I warmed up on the top of some climb – nicely making sure that I didn’t lower down to the steep scary bit. I then climbed Vic The Pick. It was a very nice climb but long! Then it was lunch time and off to a clinic! The nice thing about the festival starting was that there were vendors with hot food. I had a women’s beginning ice climbing clinic in the afternoon thanks to one of Ron’s friends offering me the spot.

Ron’s Colts helmet leading the way out of the climb that I refused to do all of

Since I was in Ouray for the Festival there were fun activities going on every night. Friday and Saturday night had the silent and live auctions, respectively. There was a cover charge for food and all the beer you could drink (and climbers can drink a lot) with awesome gear available and all the proceeds going to the Park and local volunteer fire department. Reese and I both got the same awesome fuzzy earflap hat at the silent auction. The devious plan of the organizers worked well – having had my share of beer I was much more inclined to purchase my hat. I actually ended up over indulging a tad on Friday night and volunteering myself for driving on Saturday. It was quite enjoyable to watch other people get excited at the live auction – including reno buying an awesome painting. The auction on Saturday was followed by the “Dress to Impress” party and our group was replete with crazy hats and Colts paraphanalia. I ended up leaving the party early to hang out in the hot tub at the house before returning to collect everyone for the night.

Most of the gang and the obnoxiously bright reflective strips on my jumper

There was, of course, more climbing (and trips to the hot springs at Orvis). We hung out at the Five Fingers area Saturday morning. I ended up not climbing but if I ever finish the roll of film (not: 36 exposure film is not recommended), I will hopefully have some awesome photos from that morning. Sunday morning was another clinic followed by an adjournment to town to watch the Colts game (a sad loss to the Chargers). Then Monday morning rolled around and it was time to pack and the off to the airport. All in all an excellent trip – I learned to ice climb and met tons of nice people. Hopefully I’ll be back next year.

The Process Never Ends

I had a temporary break over the weekend with Betsy visiting and basketball, but it’s back to the grind. I just finished an assignment that’s due in astrophysical processes tomorrow, which means I can go to Judo (as I need to since I’m supposed to belt test – yikes!) but doesn’t mean that I get any more of a break than that. Instead, it means it’s time to start on the stat mech assignment.  Or the cosmology.  Better yet, my talk for seminar.  The talk was actually supposed to be tomorrow but seminar was canceled since everyone (read: the faculty involved) is out of town.  Small mercies are nice – I would be much less happy right now if I was also working on a talk.

Sometimes it seems overwhelming.  It’s not the amount of work that gets to me – I’m managing to handle that (so far).  It’s the fact that as soon as one task is finished it’s time to start another assignment or project – there’s never any down time.  Even if I do take an evening off, I feel guilty for not starting on more work.  Oh well, it’s what I signed up for.

On a happier note – I’m working on a very belated trip report from my trip to Ouray to ice climb.  It should be complete and posted soon.

Break’s Over, Back to Work

Spring break is over and it’s back to the usual grind of homework, homework and more homework. Betsy left this morning to go back to sunny warm California where she’s actually just starting the quarter break. (I’m a little jealous.) I had a good time while she was here. We mainly sat on the couch and watched basketball, which was all either of us wanted.

Some of my classmates came over for games and wine on Saturday night. I had bought Boggle just for Betsy and had been practicing just for her with TextTwist and WordTwist (a Boggle-based game) so she didn’t humiliate me like she used to in Bloomington. We also played Apples to Apples and Betsy and I were missing the in-joke connection somehow. I did learn a new trick – what do the green cards you win say about you? Two of mine were cold and cruel (I don’t remember the rest right now) and were almost too appropriate.

The basketball was, of course, amazing (see earlier posts). Mainly, Davidson rocked. Also, how can you not love Curry? He’s just so happy and excited.  I have also already decided how I will select my first round bracket for next year – the win goes to the team that doesn’t have individual names on the jersey.  Unfortunately, I managed to forget about filling my bracket out this year until after the games started on Thursday, so no evidence as to how wrong I may have been.  Sadly there was no office pool to encourage me – I may have to fix this for next year.

Speaking of basketball, I’ve found a new blog I like – Uncertain Principles. It has science and basketball! It made it into my heart forever with this post, a tournament bracket filled out based on the ranking of physics PhD programs at the universities. The champion? Cornell.

Basketball, Round 2

• Duke loses! This is all that is important from this game. I didn’t even catch it, but the score made me happy. Good luck to WVU.
• Wisconsin-Kansas State: This was a good game, very exciting – and dirty. I love nitty-gritty defensive basketball. Amazing things from this game: double technical and things falling from the rafters. Wisconsin wins, go Big Ten!
• Stanford-Marquette: I wanted to see Stanford lose for some Ivy League revenge, but, alas, it was not to be. Even though their coach was ejected with three and a half minutes remaining in the first half. It came down to the last few seconds, but Stanford scored at the end and prevented Marquette from making a last second play.
• Michigan State – Pitt: I was once again cheering for the Big Ten. MSU managed to hang on and grab the win – the game was much closer than the final eleven point margin would indicate. It was over, though, when a Pitt player got called for an offensive foul for a charge and rolled his own ankle in the process.
• UCLA – Texas A&M: Betsy allowed me to cheer against UCLA, not that it mattered. We both love to see brackets busted and hate the one-and-done freshmen, so it was permitted to cheer for Texas A&M, even though Betsy is there now. While it was a close game, our cheers didn’t matter in the end.
• Davidson wins – yea!  I have my team for the tournament.
• Purdue lost: I can’t quite believe I’m sad about this.
• Memphis barely squeaks by – I’m predicting they’ll be the first one seed out of the tournament.

Basketball!

March Madness is in full force. The best days of the tournament kicked off today. Thirty-two games between today and tomorrow and I’m still waiting for the first 16-1 upset in tournament history. Betsy’s out here from California and we have big plans to sit on the couch and watch a lot of basketball. This post will be updated as I feel like it with my thoughts on the latest happenings in the tournament. Not all the games are listed, just the ones that caught my interest. Or that CBS decided to show me.

Tournament sites:

• Why are games being played in Denver? It seems unfair to add the altitude issue to teams who are already traveling long distances and are on their last legs at the end of the season.
• The protection of the top seeds is going further and further. Personally, I think the committee should make sure that no team has a de facto home game. UNC, Stanford, and I know there are more.
• How, exactly, are the regions decided? Why is Cornell who is centrally isolated on the eastern side of the country playing three time zones over on the West Coast? Surely there’s a way to make sure teams don’t have to travel ridiculous distances.
• Okay, I really don’t understand tournament sites – why are both the West and Midwest regions playing games at Tampa?  It doesn’t really make sense for either geographically.

First Round, Day One:

• Xavier(3) 73- Georgia(14) 61: The final score doesn’t do this game justice. Georgia had an extremely strong game and led for quite a while. Unfortunately they couldn’t keep it together. Georgia also had a remarkable run through the SEC tournament to make an appearance int he Dance.
• Michigan State(5) 72- Temple(12) 61: I’m always glad to see a Big Ten team doing well – it speaks well for our conference.
• Stanford(3) 77 – Cornell(14) 53: It was a rout, but the rout happened early and Cornell never stopped battling – great spirit. They’re only losing one player so hopefully the strong play will continue next year and the Ivy League crown will remain away from Penn/Princeton. It’s not Big Ten basketball, but I’ll try to make it to some games next year.
• Purdue(6) 90 – Baylor(11) 79: As a die-hard IU fan, I’m normally not one to cheer for Purdue under any circumstances. However, I do like the Big Ten to represent. I’ve also been impressed with the Boilermakers this season – they’ve had amazing coaching and teamwork to play so well with such young players. They’ve epitomized what I like about college basketball this season much more than IU.
• Duke(2) 71 – Belmont(15) 70: Sadness. This game was a heart breaker. Belmont was so close to being the 15-2 upset. Besides the fact that I love a good Cinderella team for the Dance, there’s also the fact that as a die-hard IU fan, I hate Duke with a fashion. Plus, Belmont doesn’t have names on their uniforms – I love that. They hustled and played all out – I wish they managed to eke out that win. I’m not sure I want to watch the rest of the night’s games – I’m burned out after getting into that close of a game.

First Round, Day 2:

• Davidson(10) 82 – Gonzaga(7) 76: I love the fact that the Cinderella story is upsetting a previous Cinderella. Gonzaga is definitely a Cinderella no longer – they consistently make the tournament and perform well. Davidson had a good game – I always like the underdog, plus their uniforms don’t have last names.
• Western Kentucky(12) 101 – Drake(5) 99, OT: This game made me very sad. I had really liked Drake – they had a great year and a program that emphasized academics (and once again – no names on uniforms). They had been down by sixteen at one point in time but battled back to send the game into overtime. They were up by one with a few seconds left, but Western Kentucky had a great play with a three just before the buzzer. This is one upset that I hadn’t wanted to see.\
• USD(13) 70 -  UConn(4) 69
• Siena(13) 83 -Vanderbilt(4) 62
• Villanova(12) 75 – Clemson(5) 69: It was a crazy day in Tampa – two 12’s and two 13’s advance to the second round.  Most of the games were close exciting games.  Except for Siena who just dominated.
• Arkansas(9) 86 – Indiana(8) 72:  I really don’t want to discuss this game.  I’m also glad that CBS took me away from it to watch Clemson-Villanova – it was just painful to watch.  Plus, Clemson-Villanova was a much better game.  I had hope that we could get it together and pull off some wins in the tournament, but IU crashed and burned off after Sampson’s (necessary) resignation.

Something for the Rest

For those of you who don’t like college basketball (what’s wrong with you?) and are going to be bored by my continual updates, check out these blogs – one hilarious and one sciency.

• Stuff White People Like – A hilarious blog. Read it – trust me.
• Imaginary Potential - A blog about life in physics by six graduate students/postdocs.

The first is just absolutely hilarious. I can’t recommend it enough. The second has hit home with me and inspired some thoughts of mine, and I’ll probably have a follow-up post or two post-basketball.

Spring Break Begins!

It’s halfway into spring break and I finally feel like it’s starting.  I only have a few sign issues with cosmology, I’m ignoring the astrophysical processes and pretending my taxes aren’t going to be terribly complicated this year since I moved states.  Most importantly, I’m leaving for the airport to pick Betsy up!  Adventures to come soon, blog posts to follow later.