Britain's Got Talent

I love "Britain's Got Talent". Love it. Nothing on television even gets close to BGT when it comes to showing how little talent we actually have.
Look at tonight's shambles. A crap dance trio, three thousand badly synchronised dancers, a male soprano with genuine talent who completely cocked up his song, a little girl in tears, a superb dancer [who - thank God - won], a juggler who should never have left his back garden, a "singer" and "guitarist" who were, unfortunately, the same person and a latter day family sounds-like-Von-Crap. Oh yes; little girl in tears again. She clinched second place on the pity vote and is going to be popping beta-blockers and Valium^® all night.
There were thousands auditioned and the "judges" (and OMG I use that term loosely apart from the incomparable Simon Cowell) picked out the forty best. Best? Best!
Let's face it. There is very little talent on display in "Britain's Got Talent".
I can't wait for the final.

Lines of Best Fit

When finding a "best fit" straight line I use a cunningly simple method that I have not seen used elsewhere. It gives, to my mind, a better "best fit" than the famous "Least Squares" method that assumes no errors in the independent variable.
My method is this:
Plot all your points, as normal.
Work out the mean x value (x_m) and the mean y value (y_m)
From all your points, work out the standard deviation in the x values (s_x) and the standard deviation in the y values (s_y).
The best "best fit" straight line goes through the points [x_m,y_m] and [x_m+s_x, y_m+s_y]. The gradient of the line is s_y/s_x (but watch for the sign of the gradient).
Easy or what!
Remember where you saw it first.

Symmetry

I recall musing recently on the duplication of snowflakes. Those thoughts have come back to haunt me. Quite clearly, there are huge differences in snowflakes. The bit that has me utterly stumped is why they exhibit six-fold symmetry.
I fully understand how crystals form. A course in crystallography at university took care of that. What I don't understand is how the growing tips of snowflake crystals all know how to be exactly alike. The molecules joining the crystal seem to know exactly where to go and are supported in this, like synchronised swimmers, by five other molecules doing exactly the same thing. That I don't understand or even begin to understand.
It is not like growing salt crystals. Whereas every snowflake is different, every salt crystal is absolutely identical. The only thing different is the size of the crystal. Snow is a completely different deal. So, while each snowflake may be different, I think it should also be true that each "branch" of the snowflake should also be different.
But it isn't!

Have you noticed...

Remember those "threatverts" on the telly?

BENEFIT FRAUD
WE'RE CLOSING IN...

Don't see them that much at the mo.
Wonder why?

A Benchmark for Fraud

There is a lot of hand-wringing about how we will decide who should and shouldn't resign from Parliament. My brother has come up with a startlingly simple method.
Derek Conway (see a few blogs ago) was dumped out of his job for quasi-fraudulently claiming about eight grand, if memory serves me well enough. So all we need do is divide any particular robber-baron MPs fraudulently obtained loot by 8000 to give us their value in "conways".
Any MP with a conway-value of over 1.0 should be sacked (like poor old Derek). Over 2.0 conways, they should be imprisoned. Some of our MPs are rated, by my reckoning, at about 23.7 conways. Off with their bloody heads.
Actually "conways" is rather a bulky unit title. Just like "newtons" becomes N is physics, I would propose that "conways" becomes Con as a benchmark for MP crookedness. So we could say: "anyone under 1.0 Con is probably safe." There. Much neater.
It works on many levels, does "Con".
Even French.

O-Order, O-Order

So.
Mr Speaker resigns.
First time since 1695.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha he he ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha he he ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha he he he ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ho ho ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
He he.

Fattening Pigs

For the n^th time (where n is a large integer) in my 30 years in education I am facing an inspection.
I have box files full of paperwork, meetings to attend, feedback sessions and all the usual pandemonium generated by such events. The cost in man-hours is gigantic. The cost is equally massive in paper.
Now here comes the bit I don't get.
No lessons are being observed.
It is an old aphorism that you can't fatten a pig by weighing it.
Oink!