Category: Math

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Microsoft Excel Anyone?

So I have been going Excel crazy recently by trying to compile stats, keep score and just record wins and losses over several seasons for teams. So I’m going to focus this for anyone who is some what resourceful with Excel and wants to help me out.

My dilemma is that I have a column that is counting the streak of the said team. For example, let’s say if the team wins 5 in a row, loses 2 in a row and then wins one… the column will say the following:

W1, W2, W3, W4, W5, L1, L2, W1

Now that is a relatively small scope of what i have. I have recorded data of over 130 games so far, and I am trying to figure out a way to automatically calculate what is the longest winning streak, losing streak, etc.

I can provide the Excel sheet if someone wants to give it a try. Any help or suggestions of further stats to determine from the given data would also be greatly appreciated. Just leave your email in the comments or contact me directly and I can send you the file.

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Grab Bag Of The Month

I haven’t really gotten a chance to post recently, been busy with classes and finals and what not but I’ll put up a couple of cool clips I saw recently below the Facebook rant.

Anyways, I had been collecting my “application” requests on Facebook for maybe 2 or 3 months now and finally late last week it cracked triple digits. I have gotten random invitations bid on what my friends are worth in “friends for sale”, another application that is titled “how many kids” and certainly the “which swear word are you?”. Sure every now and then there is a good one like “Oregon Trail” or a March Madness Bracket Selection but the other 100 or so that have stayed on my sidebar to rot (take a look at the thumbnail here) really start to make me angry. Facebook has become littered with these nonsense applications, ridiculous ads and useless features like the chat that they just added. I totally agree with what my roommate said the other day, “Like I don’t have enough ways to instant message someone already? Why do I need this chat?” The “People You May Know” feature on the side that suggests people you may know by looking at common friends is a good addition and you have the potential of meeting with an old friend from another country or elementary school so I will not criticize that but these other things are really making me an ABG.

To view the videos regarding the awesome kick save by a pitcher, a great way to get into home plate without being out and an awesome penalty shock in hockey, please read on.

Continue reading “Grab Bag Of The Month”

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Weekend Recap and More

Didn’t post anything over the past two days because basically my day has been encompassed of sleeping, eating, LOTS OF STUDYING, some Smash and March Madness. All of this probably started Thursday night, (notice the last post is from Friday at about 4:20 AM). I looked over the Section 0 and 1 that night and played some Super Smash Bros. Brawl – a game that was probably not a fan of at first, because I was never really into character games like that but I think it is safe to say I might have rushed to judgment on that one. Whoops. As for the studying for this big exam goes, I breezed through Section 0 and 1 that night because it mostly reviewed Algebra and Pre-Calculus stuff as well as basic probability concepts. That wasn’t so bad and it only covered about the first 50 pages of this exam review book (out of 400+ pages). Then Friday I started a little bit of Section 2 – Conditional Probability and Independence. Yea that was a review of the Prob/Stats class I have already taken but that was about a year ago and since I haven’t used much of these concepts since then, there is a tendency to forget. I was real good yesterday with a solid 5 hour lockdown mode and completely finish Secion 2 with its 20+ problem sets that I did twice just to make sure I had everything down pat. Section I got through most of it last night and today and now I think this pretty much covered everything I knew, maybe another section on random variables I think. Then the new stuff starts.

Okay, enough math stuff for this post. I’ll try to limit those to one paragraph a post. I’ve been playing quite a lot of smash in the time where I have had nothing else to do but don’t confuse that with me being any good. You can probably apply that to March Madness brackets as well where it’s always good to get humbled by your sister and a fellow math major who didn’t even know what ESPN stood for – Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (for those who didn’t know). My two picks for today both went down the drain – Texas just stunk it up against Memphis who I have said all year isn’t a very good team (maybe they’re a little good now). Davidson who after everything was in the game even though Curry shot like 5/24 or something but those last 14 seconds… no excuses. They took too much time to bring the ball up the court. No excuses.

Here’s some good news for me I guess, I went 7/8 in my women’s bracket. Only incorrect pick was having #3 Duke in the Elite 8 over #2 Texas A&M. Looking forward to the UConn/Rutgers game on Tuesday – I really think the winner of that game will represent the left side of the bracket in the Championship game. On the other side I don’t think Pat Summit gets stopped this year either and will win her game vs. A&M and then beat UNC. I’m hoping for a Rutgers/Tennessee game – one can only hope.

Probably gonna go watch Valley of Elah now – a movie Joe recommended to me. I’ll see how it is, if I like it, might post about it tomorrow if I have time. Opening Day tomorrow for Blue Jays and Yankees. I might post a story tomorrow or something soon about my facination with the Yankees. Obviously there’s gotta be a reason everyone thinks I’m a closet New York Yankees fan.

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(A)ctuary, (B)aseball, (C)ollege Basketball

Well I haven’t really posted much about what is going on recently so I’ll try to hit as many of those as I can in this post. Gonna cover my ABC talk here… a little regarding my actuary test that I really need to start studying hardcore for, probably gonna talk a little baseball (who wins what division and makes the playoffs) and a tournament called March Madness.

I finally registered for my first Actuary exam. It’s called Exam 1/P – Probability. You can guess what topic is covered on there, but it’s a 3 hour test of rigorous stuff which I am not looking forward to at all. I’ll probably cut back on this blogging a little bit just a little bit because I really need to start studying for that. I am on Chapter 2 of the book which is really well written and I think there are like 10 in total and the exam is the 2nd week of May. Not a lot of time left and I know I will look for every opportunity to try not study, so if you see or talk to me where I am wasting time, tell me to go and study for my test. It’s really cool stuff though (yes I’m a math major) but the concepts and what not and calculating the probability of this event or that event happening given that you already know this or that about the situation. What else could you want?

Anyways, enough math talk and back to sports. I’ve woken up the past few days and really tried to get back to watching ESPN in the morning with my “breakfast” whether that be at 8am or 1pm and you can really tell baseball stuff starting to creep their way into the news. Before the season officially starts over here in the US, I’ll put up a little prediction for each division and why.

AL: Boston (East), Detroit (Central), Los Angeles (West) and Toronto (Wild Card)
NL: New York (East), Chicago (Central), Los Angeles (West) and Philadelphia (Wild Card)

I know I’m gonna hear a lot from my Yankee friends about how could I leave them out of the playoffs but here is why. Andy Pettitte is experiencing problems already before the season starts, you already can’t count on Moose after the season he had last year plus you throw in two rookies in the rotation and you are asking for trouble if you expect them to carry a team to the post season. Mariano isn’t getting any younger and what’s Joba gonna do if the pitchers that pitch before and after him can’t get the job done?

As for Boston and Detroit, they both just have ridiculous offenses that will carry the team. Boston I like their pitching more with Beckett having a solid minor league outing two days ago and Papelbon ready to slam the door shut in the bullpen. Detroit concerns me with their pitching injuries but I think they can overcome that in the early going with their monstrous lineup that they will field everyday with Magglio, Cabrera, Sheff, and company. For the West it was a toss up between Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim or Seattle and I went with Angels simply they have been there more often recently and even with the loss of Escobar and Lackey being injured in the early going, I think the West has fallen significantly talent wise and it will be a disappointing season for that division. Wild Card where most people certainly could through the Yankees in there but I think the East can produce three 85-90+ win teams and I think if Burnett can stay healthy, and the addition of Eckstein and Rolen on the left side of the infield from a team that won the World Series not too long ago should help Wells rebound and let’s not forget Rios who is about to sign a long term extension to stay with the team.

As for the NL, I don’t understand how teams don’t automatically have the Mets representing the NL in the World Series… some are even doubting if they will win the division. Here is a team that if they didn’t have the biggest collapse of all time would have easily won the division with 3 weeks to a month to go in the a season and now they go on and add without a doubt one of the most dominant pitchers in the league right now. How does that not improve the team? How does that not make them the front runner by a long margin in the NL? I just don’t get it. In the Central, could the 100 year anniversary of the Cubs winning the World Series mean something to the city and its fans? Can they stay healthy long enough to do something down the stretch of the season and make the playoffs? I think Kerry Wood will be a solid closer for them now that he is hitting 90+ on his pitches again in spring training, this team has a potential to run away in the Central. For the West, you could randomly choose any team (minus the Giants) and they have just as good of a chance to winning the division as any of the other 3 teams. The reason I chose the Dodgers are because they finally added a power hitter in Andruw Jones as their CF and let’s not forget who is managing this ball club now. Joe Torre knows how to win and you know he wants to stick it to the Yankees by having a very productive season on the West Coast. I probably would have taken Phillies to win the division had the Mets not made their move and I certainly don’t see too many teams giving them a problem although they could face an in-division foe in the Braves for that wild card. I don’t really see it but people have said to keep an eye out on them.

Finally, some March Madness. Yesterday wasn’t a good day for me… both Tennessee and West Virginia lost for me and today started off real well with impressive wins by Davidson and Texas but what a let down Michigan State was against Memphis. They really just blew them out of the water in that first half up 50-20. Intriguing matchups here in teh Elite 8 with all 4 #1 seeds still alive. Make a note that never in the history of the tournament have all 4 #1 seeds made it to the Final Four… and I don’t think it will happen this year either. I’m counting on either Texas to really use that home court and explosive offense to slow down Memphis just enough to pull out a victory where a #2 beating a #1 isn’t that much of an upset. My Upset special however comes at the hands of the Wildcats from Davidson. Kansas needs to be put on notice. Curry can light it up and he did against Wisconsin in the first half and that just led to more trouble in the second half. What I liked for Davidson was that other players stepped up as well and they will need to do that again if they want to eliminate a #1 seed. UNC and UCLA really shouldn’t have many problems even though UCLA gave me a score by allowing Western Kentucky to stick around that late in the game. UNC has really showboated their way through the tournament and nothing would make me happier to see Louisville beat them, but I just don’t see it happening.

An update on the 8th grade kid who went 16/16 on his Sweet 16 teams… he went 7/8 this round – his only incorrect pick being Tennessee losing to Louisville. This kid has made only 8 incorrect predictions out of 72 games that have been played so far. That is a remarkable 89% accuracy. Simply amazing. Congrats kid.

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Grab Bag!

I had so many things I had saved up to write up in one post instead of cluttering with multiple posts everyday but that all got lost in a Firefox beta update. So here goes what I could find on the fly right now.

First my deepest condolences to Vivake for the loss of his hero who just happened to be the governor of New York. That is certainly said in tongue-in-cheek but what a tough and sad piece of news to handle for a guy who had apparently built himself some legacy and certainly would have ran for the Presidency one day… no more.

Also was visited by Jimbo today which certainly I did not expect. Good to see him after the longest time (although it could be that I had seen him last before I saw Mike Cloonan). Sad part on that is Mike and I go to College together. Go figure.

First let’s start off with a comic that were one of the many things that the good friend of the blog Krishna continues to send me on a daily basis. I only wish I had the time, or heck, even less laziness to blog about some of the article he shares. Maybe if he has some free time on his hands, he’ll guest blog? Well here is the comic.

Then here is a clip of Shaq that I saw live over the weekend while I was in Brooklyn… and by live I mean on tv. The hustle to save the ball and the jump are all remarkable but if you look at it from the a different angle (the second video), you can see that there are very young children sitting in that front row and for a guy the size of Shaq to see that and to be able to jump over and completely avoid causing any harm to those kids is simply remarkable.

Finally this last one is about Differential Geometry. I was working on a homework today that I had long put off and certainly this picture does not show everything that was done but this is one that I ran across when I tried to integrate a curved surface. I won’t go more into detail for fear of losing the few readers that I do have (but mostly because I myself don’t know the details) but it was fun to do it anyways.

Just an FYI, baseball season is around the corner and I will get around to doing my season previews soon hopefully. Not that I claim to be an expert or anything but it is certainly fun to go back and see how well you did. I will do the same thing once the March Madness starts.

I am just full of random things in this post… my good friend from Ireland comes home in exactly a month (31 days to be exact) and that happens to fall on my birthday. Cool.

P.S. You better enjoy the amazing math up there… I even put off talking to my buddy from Reading, Pennsylvania just so I could do that amazing piece of art up there.