Histograms in Excel for Mac 2008

While I do have a whole 'nother post coming up about the failings of Excel 2008, one major issue that was resolved is the analysis toolpak causing Excel 2004 to crash. "Luckily", this problem is fixed by removing VBA from Excel 2008, which means there is NO analysis toolpak. Not that it was ever great to begin with, but I guess histograms are nice. Anyway, I figured people might actually want to do histograms of their own. To that end, I created an excel file that does histograms.

Some of the stuff is a bit of kludge, but I'm sure it's fairly self-explanatory: put your data in column A, and the number of points in the appropriate cell. If you need more bins, change the number of bins and adjust the chart accordingly.

Link Here

Obviously, this is intended for Excel 2008 (and 2007), but it should be backwards compatible with earlier versions, as long as you have the necessary updates to read the new file format.

EDIT: As noted by a comment, the previous file had an error in the formula that was incorrect. It is now fixed, and the total frequency should be the same as the number of data points. (Thanks, Matt!)

You keep using that word [logic]: I do not think it means what you think it means.

From Francis Collins, who argues the following as scientific evidence for God:

An additional set of observations I found quite breathtaking and do to this day is the fact that the physical constants that determine the nature of interactions between matter and the way in which energy behaves have precisely the values they would need to have for any kind of complexity or life to occur.

I interpret the argument to be thus:
(1) the physical constants necessary to support life are extremely rare
(2) because the life exists, then God must exist.

I am skeptical that (1) is true, since we don't know ANYTHING about extraterrestrial life to say what could or could not be supported by different physical constants. It is outside our realm of knowledge to say that lifeform X could not exist under conditions Y because we don't know about all the different types of X or even all the different types of Y.

But for argument's sake, let's suppose you accept (1). Then you hit the BIG logical fallacy:

Because life exists (and the conditions to support life are astronomically rare), God must exist.

Which is completely ass-backwards, because the logical sequence of events is:

God exists => the physical constants of the universe are tuned perfectly => life exists.

Since we are alive, this statement CANNOT be disproven. It can only be disproven if we find (a) perfect tuning of physical constants of the universe and (b) the LACK of life. By definition, it would seem difficult to both determine the physical constants of the universe while not being alive and also proving that no life existed elsewhere in the universe.

This is an extremely basic logical fallacy that I learned about in 8th grade in the math unit on logic, but I'm sure I had an intuitive sense of why this was incorrect earlier than that. Claiming that this is "scientific evidence" for God is just plain BS, cuz last I checked *real* scientists (and scientists-to-be) use logic.

USPC 2009

Update: Well, it turns out I was off by 3 on Window Pain (doh!), but Nick was nice enough not to penalize me for the late submission on Magic Puzzle'Rs - which means I actually ended up with a score of 95 and rank of 105 (about a 50 place drop from last year). Which actually is a bit heartening, because if I didn't make stupid mistakes, a score of 125 would put me at the 44-48 rank and being on top of things really would have netted me a top 20 finish this year. There is hope for 2010!

Well, I knew I probably wouldn't do as well as last year, given the little prep time I had this year. Overall, though, it wasn't bad. I think if I had spent an hour or two reading over the instructions so that I knew what puzzles would be nice to do and strategies to take, (and how to put in the answers) along with being in top shape, I could have scored in the 180 range.

Here's the breakdown:

1. Battleships - I finished this first and very quickly, due to a (correct) early guess on the second cruiser position. I forget my writing scheme, so I had to break out the white-out (doh!).

2. Sudoku - I wasn't really on top of my sudoku game, so I took a crack at this and stalled a few minutes in. I left it alone, came back later, made one guess and extended until I found a contradiction, and then changed it and solved the rest. Took about 20 minutes. (blargh)

3. KenKen - The instructions were somewhat confusing, but I figured out that 2 square cages *could* be multiplication or addition, and 3 square cages *must* be multiplication or addition. It should have been worded differently (ie. 2 square cages can be any operation, but there is a constraint on 3 square cages). Anyway, the singleton 2 helped by forcing the 4+6 on the 10 in the same row. 20 and 40 had to be multiplication, which forced some early numbers, and then there was a bit of casework on the bottom and top rows to get the rest.

4. Sum Thing - I guessed that the center node was the key, since it intersected with 4 pairs of lines - forcing it to be 4. I struggled a bit with placing the rest, until I realized that the 5 had to be in the only unconnected node to the center and it came around nicely.

5. Eminent D'OHmain - In retrospect, rather easy, if a bit time consuming. Probably took me around 15 minutes (after the test) to solve. (which really isn't that much better than my sudoku solve for the same number of points)

6. Switch Cheese - Really easy this time: I got all 10 differences in a few minutes using the good old cut in half, flip over and vdiff.

7. Writer's Block - I initially started looking at 3 down without significant progress and then went to 2 across and filled in everything nicely. Unfortunately I crossed off the MICHENER by accident and messed up the bottom left area. Ended up answering incorrectly. Doh...

8. Corral - I am not a fan of corral puzzles: they take me way too much time - so I left this out, spent about 20 minutes afterwards and still didn't get it. (I think I'm close, though.)

9. Coordinate Pairs - I started by looking at N and its possible pairs. Realized (3,0) was out of the question, as was (2,1) and (4,1), which left (4,2), and resulted in the solution.

10. Triangular Skyscrapers - Looked too complicated - regular skyscrapers is already pushing my point/minute rate - so I left this one alone. It took me about 30 min to get afterwards, once I was able to fix the positions of the 8 and 7's.

11. Window Pain - Halfway through counting, I realized what I was doing and sped things up a bit. I think the strategy here is to look at different sizes of squares and figure out possible positions for the upper left corner. Take the number of valid x-coordinates and multiply by the number of valid y-coordinates to get the solution. Bit annoying to add everything together.

12. Masyu - Spent 1 minute starting, and realized this was a much bigger Masyu than I had done in the past, with no real recent practice, so I left this one alone. I spent about 40 min afterward resolving everything but the middle of the right side, which probably would have been a good place to start. Still unsolved. (but I think I'm close)

13. C Note - I didn't have a good strategy for this one, so I left it alone. Afterwards, I realized you could start with the middle row, since exactly 2 of the 3 givens have to be ones digits. Some casework results in 56 for the middle of the right column, and some guessing led me to the answer. Also about 20 min.

14. Lucky Sevens - No complaints, but seemed real familiar. Actually in the same format as 2003 - 8. Unlucky Sevens - with many of the same words.

15. 2-3 Maze - I wasted about 20 min darkening unusable squares, screwed up a couple times, but eventually got the answer. Probably could have saved a bit of time, but oh well.

16. Sweet Sixteen - I have some intuition about trying to fit the middle 6 numbers, but never found a workable solution after some 20 minutes post-test.

17. Yajilin - Did a little bit, messed up - figured it was the same situation as Masyu (larger than expected and little practice), so I left it alone.

18. Wolves and Sheep in Fences - Also not a fan of fences.

19. Magic Puzzle'Rs - ARGH: spent over an hour trying to fit things in. I realized early that Merrell was key - since it had to be placed diagonally. I wasted about 20 minutes of trying to fit it in until I realized it would fit in the other diagonal location. Then wasted another 30 minutes trying to fit in the 7-letter names to no avail. Came back with about 25 minutes left and solved with 6 seconds to spare, but then spent 17 seconds to put in the answer. (Hey Nick, can you number the columns for me next time?) Overtime, but worth the penalty for the 10 extra points (20 for solving, -10 for overtime)

20. SuDOUku - Worked on it for a few minutes - screwed up - then solved afterwards in about 25 minutes, which is pretty good for the points award. DOH. The key was realizing which empty cells forced 2 of one number in a column or row, which then required no collisions in all other columns/rows. For instance, there is a forced 4 collision in column 7 or 8, which means all other columns contain exactly one 4, which can be placed in row 1 for column 6, which conveniently also means all the collisions for 4 are known (row, column, cell). The tricky part is realizing that there are 2 collisions for 7 along rows, columns, and cells.

21. Di-Agony - Haven't tried it and no real intention to, either...

22. Four Square - Spent about 10 minutes post test looking at some clues, but I've never really seen Snake before, so I left this alone.

23. Inside/Outside Corral - Remember what I said about Corral?

Results: I think 100 points. (Hopefully I counted correctly for 11.) I probably should've gotten 125 points (-15 for 7. and -10 for 19.) Again, if I had been able to prep and were in practice, probably could have also squeezed in KenKen, C Note, and SuDOUku for another 50 points. Ideally, maybe also Masyu or Yajilin, but I'm ok with trying to the potential 175 mark I think is doable for next year. (with appropriate point scaling)

11-year old genius, my ass

From the 11-year old graduating from East LA Community College:
"I feel it's a waste of time playing video games because it's not helping humanity in any way"

Yes, but so too is martial arts. (unless perhaps, you go into special forces. Let's not even mention his goal of being a movie actor...) For mental well-being, people do all sorts of activities to relax. Sure, some of them help humanity (volunteering at a homeless shelter, for instance), and some of them don't (yoga, television, video games). To take a stance on video games when you yourself are engaged in activities that don't help humanity is simply hypocritical.

Of course, calling an 11-year old a hypocrite is just plain silly, but when you're being put on a pedestal for graduating from college early, I feel justified in attacking your narrow view of the world.

And just to be clear, graduating from a community college when you are 11 is NOT a big achievement. I have no doubts that this kid is gifted, but to claim that he has thoroughly mastered any academic subject is a bit of a joke. The 14 year-olds making groundbreaking achievements in mathematics are geniuses; all this kid has shown is that he can read and recite from textbooks. His description of wormholes clearly demonstrates a lack of deep understanding of the topic.