Speak With Data

During the Olympics in Rio, surprising to many, no one contracted diseases last seen in the Oregon Trail. Also surprisingly, the U.S. Woman's Soccer Team was upset in the quarterfinals by Sweden, who after tying, smartly played defense to force the game into penalty kicks. After the game, American goalkeeper Hope Solo criticized this as an act of "a bunch of cowards." Hope Solo, while being an excellent goalkeeper, is terrible at PR. This was not well received by the US Soccer Federation, her teammates, the Swedes, and the sports community. Yesterday, the USSF announced her contract would be terminated and she would be suspended for 6 months, meaning she could be resigned, but not until February 2017 (1). Which at first glance, sounds pretty severe, especially given her crime was trash talking. As of right now, the US Woman's National Team has two games, friendlies on September 15 and September 18, on the schedule for that time. The 6 months after the Olympics are...

This is going to be the first in a number of posts that look at a number of structures, vehicles, weapons, and other of technologies from fiction in terms of whether they could exist in our real, not fictional world. First up: the Wall, from the book series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, and its TV adaption  Game of Thrones  (cue the epic music). For those who have  been living under a rock for the past few years  not read the books or watched the show, here is an attempt to describe the Wall without too many plot specific details: it is a giant wall of ice and magic that protects the people living in the Seven Kingdoms, which are south of the wall, from the people (refereed to as Wildlings or Freefolk) and/or ice zombies (White Walkers or Others) living north of the Wall. The closest real world examples would be Hadrian's Wall (which protected Roman-occupied England and Wales from the Scottish) and the Great Wall of China (which protected th...

This weekend, the NFL preseason kicks off in Canton with the Colts and Packers. Also, the Olympics, International Champions Cup, and the Indiana State Fair are happening. So, it’s a busy time in sports and artery destruction. So definitely it’s going to be entertaining, and maybe it will impact your health in 20 years (I can dig some football, futbol, sports only on TV every four years, and random fried things). But, as you see your favorite NFL team founder, excel, or be somewhere in the middle over the next month, how much should you draw from that in terms of the next few months of your life? Some may say very little because it’s 4 (or 5, for the Hall of Fame Game teams) games, mostly featuring back ups. And of course, the 2008 Detroit Lions managed to win every preseason game and lose every regular season game. But that is hardly a deep empirical analysis. Of course, with the limited sample size, a strict, actual winning percentage is a bad measure of team performance. Winning...

Everyday, all of us think of questions we want the answers to. From serious policy considerations, to trivial pop culture curiosities, from comparing sports teams to dissecting demographics, plenty of thought and energy are expended seeking answers to these questions. In my work as a engineer in the defense and automotive industries, I’ve had a variety of questions that need answers. How the best way to develop a project? What might be the cause of a defect in a product? Is there an inefficiency in a manufacturing process? How can it be fixed? And, in answer these questions, I have been also been required to “Speak With Data.” Tell the answer I have found using data that can be seen plainly, and speak for themselves. I have always asked myself what would happen if I applied that philosophy to more of society’s questions. So that is what this blog is. Or, an attempt at. Using data to create a voice to answer the questions we all have, in topics from major policy to history to sport...