Water in the News

Here are four recent articles (three in German) about water-related issues:

• “Wir verlieren unwiderruflich die besten Böden”, Süddeutsche über Wasser-Quantitätsprobleme, Landwirtschaft und Plastik in Südspanien
• “As a major Indian city runs out of water, 9 million people pray for rain”; the Washington Post about lack of water in India
• “Überdüngung geht weiter“, TAZ über geplante Regulierung der Nitrat-Ausbringung in der Landwirtschaft
• “Wem gehört das Wasser”, Süddeutsche Zeitung über Effekte des Klimawandels auf die Trinkwasserversorgung (in Franken)

I did a wonderful #statistics experiment with students in stats class the other day on random numbers:

I divided the class into two groups. I gave a coin to one group and told them to flip this coin 20 times and record the resulting sequence of heads and tails. I asked the other group to come up with sequence of heads and tails in their heads and record the best sequence they can come up with. I told them I would leave the room and come back after five minutes, look at both sequences, and tell them which was created by the coin and which one in the heads of the other group.

These are the two sequences they came up with

HTTTTHHTHHHHTTHHHHTT

and

HTHTHTHTHTHTTHTHTTTH

Can you guess which sequence was constructed by what group?

Here is some background:

• Nice explanation using Markov Chains by Paul Ginsparg
• I had borrowed the idea from Ilya Perederiy, and especially from this vido by “numberfile” linked to on Ilya’s blog
• the post “Randomness: The Ghost In The Machine?” raises a few interesting philosophical questions, such as why Lady Justice, is usually both carrying sword/scales and is blindfolded, hence including an element of randomness to her. There is also some historical context, such as sometimes political leaders have been chose through random processes: “in Renaissance Venice, the doge was chosen by sortition — a type of lottery”, which a process that this wikipedia article confirms.

I have setup a raspberry pi as a measurement computer. Now I can access it

a) on my Mac by mounting a directory, using SSHFS 2.5.0 via

sshfs -o volname="<MOUNT_NAME>" <USER>@<IP_ADRESS>:<directory_on_raspberry> <directory_on_my_mac>

b) on my iPad! I use OpenTerm to ssh into the machine, run scripts, and I use ShellFish (currently in beta) to basically mount the directory with the output into the file system (I mean into the Files App) on my iPad.

Whoooopeee!!

I had linked to a post by Peter Rukvina’s last time. I am doing it again – this time he linked to Rosie, who started a blog in 2019 called “press pound”.

I can’t applaud Peter’s comment enough:

I’m happy to see the corner turn from “why did blogging die when we loved it so?” to “I’m going to start a new blog!”

Since I while I have a new job at the Research Facility for Subsurface Remediation (VEGAS) at the University of Stuttgart (link to newly setup webpage and twitter presence). I’ve been thinking about it for a while and came to the conclusion that both this blog and the associated planetwater twitter presence will move to more private conversations, although still associated to water.

As a first, I want to give a shout out to Peter Rukvina at ruk.ca. There is a lot of talk about a renaissance about the open web. A renaissance of RSS. A renaissance of blogging. Peter has been there since before I started to be there — and he is still there, stronger than ever! His recent post, My Own Private Underhay, is an orbitruary on surface. Really, he is laying out his way of life. He boils it down to this:

What I have started to do, in my daily life, is that when I’m faced with small forks in my road–take the car or take the bike? watch TV or join a committee? have a nap or call my mother? order pizza or learn to make pizza? –- I will take the fork that, while it might be a little harder, require a little more effort, might take me out of the realm of things I’m comfortable doing, is the fork that’s best for my family, my community, and the planet.

I encourage everyone to go to Peter’s site and check out his humanitarian- printing- open- (source) and overall kind- ness!

Ein Regengenerator der anderen Art… nicht multi-site und nicht vektor-autoregressiv, aber trotzdem schön… 🙂 https://rainbowhunt.me

Hello World from micro.blog!

I would like to invite you to the following session at #AGU18:

• title: “Space-Time Data and Models” — click here to submit an abstract
• ID: H114
• co-convener: Laureline Josset

The problem of estimating a variable at unobserved locations and/or times is important for many areas of research, including geosciences, civil-/ environmental engineering, soil sciences, agriculture, ecology, forestry, meteorology / climatology, oceanography, health / epidemiology.

The amount of data gathered is increasing (e.g., advances in measurement technologies, remote sensing, or citizen science). Challenges remain related to the interplay between heterogeneous measurements and improvements in models that can make use of the various types of data. This session aims to bring contributions together that demonstrate how to improve datasets and maximise their use through measurement techniques, statistics, and modelling, e.g., via

• innovative ways to measure data in the environment;
• the incorporation of innovatively measured data into modelling (usefulness, relevant scale);
• the inclusion of as much information as available to improve prediction (secondary / heterogeneous data, data on different scales);
• the consideration of the variability in the quality of the measurements;

Please find a pdf about the session here.

(cross-posted from claus-haslauer.de)

How to Filter a List in Python; also: how to compare two results of %timeit

Twitter might soon be broken (#BreakingMyTwitter). Really, third party clients might be broken, due to API changes. More details are available at apps-of-a-feather.com, a website from a group of third party twitter clients.

I am happy with Twitterrific, both on the mac (both before and after the revival) and on iOS. I have never used a native twitter client on any OS. I am not sure since when it is known that the end of the third party clients could be near. Version 5 of Twitterrific has been out since October 2017. Was it known then?

Now, as I have posted before, I appreciate the free web. The existence of this website is evidence of this. I guess, a lot of things can happen until June. It would be nice if open alternatives (e.g., micro.blog, mathstodon) would gain more users. On the other hand, on work-related topics, it seems like Twitter has recently stepped over a critical mass threshold, and I do enjoy the conversations there. Yet again, I know people who leave twitter, because of trolling and because of being not open. As they say, the future remains interesting!