tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253259632024-03-13T17:53:29.251+00:00Random MentationAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-72430935710556438372012-07-03T11:34:00.000+00:002012-07-03T11:35:55.602+00:00Why Referendums?UK Prime Minister David Cameron has raised again the possibility of a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union (EU), but this begs the question: should we ever have a referendum on anything? Britain, in common with most western governements, is a representive democracy, that is people get the right to vote for people to run the country on their behalf - we are not a direct democracy, nor should we be.<br />
<br />
Britain leaving the EU could have disastrous effects on our economy - or it might even be beneficial. I do not know, and I am sure that 99.9% of the population do not know either. Asking the general population their views on complex issues like this is madness, not least because voters will expect our elected officers to sort out the mess if it goes wrong. Whatever people think of govenment decisions, the people making them have to justify and implement them, and then deal with the consequences of their actions.<br />
<br />
Thankfully referendums in Britain are rare - the last one we we had was on whether to adopt the Alternative Vote (AV) in general elections. The whole process was a shambles, not least because there is no rational argument against the adoption of AV, if you you accept that voting systems should be fair. The No Campaign was led by the Conservative Party, who knew full well that the current system was ludicrously unfair, but that crucially it favoured them. (Why some people in the Labour Part supported the No Campaign remains a mystery.)<br />
<br />
In a general election we elect people to run the country for us - the goverment has an army of civil servants and others, to provide then with expert advice to guide them in their decisions. They should get on with the job and not ask the rest of us to make decisions for them.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com62tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-22753441302103731312012-06-29T21:11:00.000+00:002012-07-01T18:35:45.929+00:00Photographic Reality<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN"></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN">When people see a post-processed picture after using software such as Adobe
Photoshop, or an HDR picture where tone mapping<sup> </sup>[1] has been used, a
frequent comment is that they do not think the picture looks realistic - this
begs the question of what people mean by realistic in this context. I believe
that when people see a heavily post-processed picture they consider to be
unrealistic, what they really mean is it does not look like a normal
photograph.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN">Before the invention of photography, the only time people would see representations
of scenes was in paintings and drawings. Landscape paintings by artists such as
Constable do not look much like modern photographs of similar scenes.
Interestingly when people see a tone-mapped high dynamic range picture they
often say that it looks more like a painting than a photograph.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN">Superficially the human eye is similar to a camera in that it has a lens
that focuses on a sensor, and it has aperture control and automatic focusing.
However there are major differences: essentially a camera takes a snapshot with
one focus setting and one aperture, and is a freeze of the picture taken in a fraction
of a second. Conversely the brain/eye combination is more like a movie camera
in that the eye is continuously scanning the image and the brain is composing a
picture, so over a short period the aperture and focus are changing. Another
significant difference is that we have two eyes, so depth perception is much
better because of 3-D vision. Although 3-D cameras are available they are
unlikely to become mainstream any time soon because a special viewer is need to
see 3-D pictures.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN">When people have taken photographs in bright light conditions with dark
shadows, they are often disappointed with the results, as often they do not
think they represents what they actually saw at the time. The main reason for
this is that human vision has a much greater dynamic range that that available
on most modern cameras.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN">Dynamic range (or contrast ratio) is often measured by ratios such as
1:100,000. That is the brightest part of the picture is 100,000 times brighter
than the darkest part of the picture. The darkest part is defined as the
darkest colour above pure black that can be represented. These ratios can be
difficult to understand, and I think it's better to use EV (Exposure Value)
terminology, which is commonly used in photography. An increase of one EV is a
doubling of the light received. Modern cameras can capture up to about 8 EVs if
the picture is stored as a JPEG. In raw mode (usually only available on SLRs) more can theoretically be captured, but in practice most cameras cannot do
more than about 12 EVs. Note that the dynamic range is more a function of the sensor than the bit depth. How human vision actually works is not well understood, but
it is believed that the eye can capture at least 14 EVs. The fact that modern
consumer technology cannot achieve the dynamic range of the eye is one of the
reasons for many disappointing photographs. A modern display screen/display adapter
can represent about 8 EVs, although in practice it is usually lower than that
on LCD displays because of the backlight, which tends to turn black into dark
grey. It is possible to get displays that represent about 17 EVs, but they are
extremely expensive (around $50,000), so these are only really used in
specialist applications like medical imaging. The situation is even worse when
you try to print pictures, as it is very difficult to get printed material that
contains much more than about 6 EVs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN">Even if you take high dynamic range pictures using techniques such as
overlaying multiple pictures taken at different EV levels (HDR), you still need
to represent these on paper or an ordinary display. The standard way of doing
this is to use tone-mapping, which essentially is a non-linear transformation
of the large dynamic range back down to around 8 EVs. Generally when people
refer to an HDR picture, what they are really are looking at is a tone-mapped
version of the picture.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN">When JPEG (but not Raw) is the saved format, all cameras do some
post-processing of the picture to produce a more balanced image. A gamma curve<sup>
</sup>[5] is typically applied to produce a picture which is closer to normal
human perception. Some cameras have optional facilities to lighten dark areas [6]<sup>
</sup>and increasingly cameras are becoming available with simple built-in HDR
processing [7].</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN">I believe that tone-mapping is essentially what the eye/brain combination
is doing, and also what landscape painters are doing naturally. I would contend
that a realistic [2] tone-mapped version of a picture is probably a more accurate
representation of a scene than a straight photograph. Note that not all scenes
need a high dynamic range – on an overcast day a conventional picture is fine.
But in bright sunshine I suspect that users will increasingly expect their
camera to be able to provide an accurate representation of the scene as they
perceived it at the time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN">Example</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN">The second picture here is a tone-mapped HDR from 5 original photos taken
at -2, -1, 0, +1, +2 EVs, and post-processed using special software
(PhotomatixPro). The first picture is the middle picture of the sequence, and
is what you would get with a straight photograph. Because of the very dark
areas and the bright sunlight in this shot, it is not possible to capture the
full dynamic range with one shot on a conventional camera. Most of the first
picture is either under or over-exposed. The use of tone mapping enabled me to
produce an image that was much closer to what I observed at the time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNhqfCyOJlKOH8sC5bJb8ixy18YJ2jezBp9jt9HgQ1t2QKvWaar1G2-Sg_V5bTAouJjE23_HAfeRRFu9tBZcmE0rzDQLXPAXlnE7-zMiK77DVbcET41SSTCdP6kbysmh8QWv_6yQ/s1600/DSC04427.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="427" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNhqfCyOJlKOH8sC5bJb8ixy18YJ2jezBp9jt9HgQ1t2QKvWaar1G2-Sg_V5bTAouJjE23_HAfeRRFu9tBZcmE0rzDQLXPAXlnE7-zMiK77DVbcET41SSTCdP6kbysmh8QWv_6yQ/s640/DSC04427.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLMzua0HDuiTVpmUBcPSKYksQGhkyQ5tU1xsKAeo2qde3o_kH1j_P8QUsnqvFZeOoIJZBQw8tp9sqmmwEOY-rIRgnHscsRIg9Zo461W08oxZ1ayPGi6RDVbnRyu8K8zZLUTFiSVw/s1600/The+Cloisters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="436" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLMzua0HDuiTVpmUBcPSKYksQGhkyQ5tU1xsKAeo2qde3o_kH1j_P8QUsnqvFZeOoIJZBQw8tp9sqmmwEOY-rIRgnHscsRIg9Zo461W08oxZ1ayPGi6RDVbnRyu8K8zZLUTFiSVw/s640/The+Cloisters.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN">Additional Notes</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN">For more information on
HDR and tone-mapping see:<br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging"><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: black;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging</span></span></a></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN">A realistic tone-mapped
image is where tone-mapping software is used to try and create a representation
of the picture as the photographer saw it at the time. Examples can be
seen in this Flickr group:<br />
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/realhdr/pool/79968332@N00/"><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: black;">http://www.flickr.com/groups/realhdr/pool/79968332@N00/</span></span></a></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN">Tone-mapping can also
be used to produce exaggerated effects similar to surrealist or
impressionist painters. This is moving into the realms of photography as
art, and away from realism. As with all art, some people like the results
and some people do not – but it is possible to produce some dramatic
pictures from what would have been a dull single photograph. Pictures of
dilapidated buildings or old vehicles are popular topics for this treatment.
Various HDR groups on Flickr show examples of this, such as this one:<br />
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr_photos/pool/"><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: black;">http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr_photos/pool/</span></span></a></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN">New display technologies
currently being developed hold out the prospect of affordable displays
with improved dynamic range. However there are many technical difficulties
and progress is slow. In particular OLED displays do not have a backlight
and so, in theory, should be able to display pure black, and a much better
dynamic range:<br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oled"><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: black;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oled</span></span></a></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN">More information on
Gamma Correction can be found here:</span><span lang="EN"> </span><span lang="EN"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_correction"><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: black;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wi<span style="color: black;">ki/Gamma_correction</span></span></span></a></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN">The Dynamic Range (DR)
facility on Sony Alpha cameras is on example of this. This allows for the
lightening of dark shadow areas to bring out more detail. For JPEGs this
is done in camera, but if Raw format is used additional control is
available using Sony’s supplied software. One advantage with this is that
it is done with a single shot and so can be used when there is movement in
the subject.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN">Manufacturers are now
building-in simple HDR facilities to some of their cameras. Pentax and
Sony have several models that support HDR, but most manufacturers have at
least one camera that supports HDR/tone-mapping. The iPhone 4S has an HDR
facility. Generally with the in-camera facility you have little or no
control over the final appearance, but it is much easier than creating
several images and post-processing them.<br />
<br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></li>
</ol>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN">Photographs are of the Cloister at Iford Manor, Wiltshire, UK.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-33040855489637537742011-08-27T17:59:00.002+00:002011-08-27T20:17:17.070+00:00UK ImmigrationThe latest report from the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) shows immigration figures for 2010 at much the same as 2009, but a 21% increase in net immigration because of a significant reduction in emigration. All the national papers covered this story, but the ones I looked at all misrepresented the data to a greater or lesser extent. This is the norm for newspapers I find, so I usually try to go back to the original data. Surprisingly, and despite the fact that it is a major story in all the newspapers, the data is difficult to find on the ONS web site. When you do find it, the figures show that immigration for the last seven years shows no overall trend. The actual figures in thousands are 589, 567, 596, 574, 590, 567, 575; the last two show an increase in 2010 over 2009 of 1.4%.<div>
<br /></div><div>Unfortunately coverage of immigration in some newspapers is coloured by an unattractive xenophobic agenda, which invariably leads to widespread misrepresentation of the data. The Daily Express, for example, claimed the 21% increase was on immigration rather than net immigration. To be fair both the Express and the Mail quoted the correct figures in the bodies of their articles, but how many of their readers would have noticed this?</div><div>
<br /></div><div>The Coalition may be regretting targetting a reduction in net immigration as they have no real control over emigration. I believe that in practice it will be difficult to make significant reductions in immigration levels because so many people have legitimate cases. The Government cannot do anything about EU immigration, so it is concentrating on capping non-EU immigration. Despite what many tabloid newspapers claim, immigration controls are very tight in the UK, and potential immigrants, who are not coming to study or for family reasons (for example marriage visas), have to show they have a job or can otherwise support themselves. It is likely that capping non-EU numbers will simply result in increased immigration from the EU.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-61945668439416897132011-01-05T16:27:00.003+00:002011-01-05T16:34:35.447+00:00Adopting Modern Communication<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: medium; "><span id="internal-source-marker_0.6958615386392921" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">With the growth of social networking, we now have a large and diverse range of tools for communication: at one end there are traditional methods such as face-to-face meetings, telephone calls, letters and memos, and at the other there is instant messaging, micro-blogging, and e-mail. Unfortunately the natural conservatism of most people means that it is hard to get buy-in to use modern social networking methods. A problem here is that if you propose to a group of, say, 10 people, a meeting using some form of online discussion, then one or two are likely to refuse to take part and suggest a conventional meeting instead. Even if a conventional meeting is agreed, an online calendar could be used to arrange it and distribute any papers, but I go to some meetings where our calendar system is not used; the reason usually given is that one or two attendees refuse to use it. This sort of minority rule is holding back the adoption of modern methods of communication in many organisations, although in some places it works because management make executive decisions that certain technologies have to be used.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><span class="Apple-style-span" >The one (relatively) modern communication method with widespread acceptance is e-mail, and this can sometimes be a compromise solution, but </span><a href="http://random-mentation.blogspot.com/2010/02/computer-tools-for-improved.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" >as I have written elsewhere</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" > it is, in my opinion, an unsuitable tool for discussion.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">The reason frequently given for refusing to take part in on-line discussions is that the person prefers to talk to others, either directly or by telephone. The implication here is that they feel that methods such as instant messaging are always inferior, however it is voice communication that is often unsatisfactory. Consider, for example, a simple telephone call where one person rings another with a question, or to make a proposal. Sometimes the recipient can respond adequately without needing any time to think, but all too often the receiver would like a minute or two to consider their reply, or even look something up. The social dynamics of a voice conversation, however, demand the the responder replies immediately, even if only to say “I’ll call you back”. Also if the intended recipient is not by the telephone, the conversation cannot even start, and if they are, it may not be convenient for them to stop what they are doing to enter into a conversation. Conventional meetings can have similar problems: unless there is a strong chairperson who can control the discussion (rare in my experience), it is usually necessary to jump in quickly if you want to respond to something, to have any chance of being heard.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">Tools such as Skype allow a combination of text messaging, voice and even live video. The addition of voice to text messaging adds an immediacy to the discussion, but may not enhance its quality. Instant messaging does not imply instant replying, and I believe in general you get a higher quality of discussion when people are given the chance to think before they respond.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-51044653421053962242010-08-05T12:08:00.007+00:002011-01-05T16:38:12.001+00:00Google Wave and Group Communication<span class="Apple-style-span" >I believe that a good social networking tool to facilitate group discussion could be very successful, but now that <span style="font-weight: bold;">Google Wave</span> has been abandoned we still seem to be some off having anything that meets this need. There are probably many reasons for the failure of Wave, but the first was the inept way it was launched. Group discussion tools have many applications, but the most obvious in the workplace is as an online alternative to the conventional office meeting. To be usable however, it is necessary for everyone to have access to the facility, as well as some familiarity with using it. Launching Wave by issuing invites to a few people who had expressed an interest, pretty much guaranteed that most early users would assess it and then put it on the back burner until such time as it could be used for real discussions. Early users did not correspond, for the most part, to any groups that actually wanted to talk to each other, and in particular this made it almost impossible to assess it for use in the workplace where the chances are that most people in a work group would not have access to the service. Eventually more invites became available but by then many of the early adopters had lost interest and had stopped monitoring the site.<br /><br />Even if they had handled the launch better, Wave may not have succeeded as it probably had too many radical ideas to get widespread acceptance. The only system I have used which I think successfully addresses the closed group communication market is Yammer. It is specifically targetted at organisations, and access is controlled by membership (and an email account) of a domain. Although you can use it for free, to get administrator control of the domain you need to pay a fixed amount per user. Yammer is much less ambitious than Wave but what it does do works very well. A major limitation is that more general groupings (for example groups of people from several different organisations) would be very difficult, if not impossible, to set up in Yammer - Wave was better in this respect. There are other commercial systems (<a href="http://basecamphq.com/">Basecamp</a> for example), but in general they have trouble dealing with arbitrary groups of people across different organisations.<br /><br />What would it take to produce a successful group communication tool? I would suggest the following:<br /></span><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" >It needs to come from somebody with a clear idea of the target market</span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" >That almost certainly means not Google - they are good at coming up with ideas but seem uninterested in listening to user feedback. If you do not buy into their vision they lose interest.</span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" >It needs to be free to use at least the basic facilities - Yammer's pricing model rules it out for most educational establishments and public bodies.</span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" >A way needs to be found to overcome the natural conservatism of some users: many non-IT people are reluctant to adopt new computer-based ways of working. The use of a computer-based discussion tool for group discussion typically requires 100% take up. If, for example, you have a project involving 10 people and 2 refuse to take part in the new technology, then it will not get used. In effect a conservative minority can often mean that new communication technology will not be used. Yammer appears to have been successful in companies where the management decided to both install it, and require their staff to use it: this is difficult or impossible for many organisations.</span></li></ul><span class="Apple-style-span" >I have previously written about the <a href="http://random-mentation.blogspot.com/2010/02/computer-tools-for-improved.html">inadequacies of email for discussions</a>, and conventional office meetings have obvious limitations, but with the demise of Wave we seem to be no closer to getting a viable alternative.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-11049658310691900852010-05-08T15:07:00.009+00:002010-05-09T19:44:30.775+00:00Voting ReformIn my last blog I said that in the UK only the votes of about 10% of the electorate actually matter as a result of our voting system. Now the election has happened we have no party with an overall majority, and the the subject of voting reform has come to the fore as the basic unfairness of the system has become clear to everyone. All the smaller parties know that without proportional representation they will always be grossly under-represented in parliament, and conversely the two largest parties know that the current system can deliver them absolute power with only minority support from the voters.<br /><br />This election dramatically illustrates how unfair the current system is with the Liberal Democrats getting only 8.7% of the seats with 23.0% of the vote, whereas the Conservatives got 47.1% of the seats with only 36.1% of the vote. With these figures I find it hard to accept that our first-past-the-post system can even be counted as democratic. The Conservative share of the vote means that 63.9% of the voters voted against them, so their claim to have the right to rule is tenuous at best. The other parties have even less claim to rule alone: the voters have in effect voted for coalition.<br /><br />Our voting system has two main faults: you can only vote for one candidate and this encourages tactical voting, or voting for a major party even though one of the minor parties may be the first preference (the "wasted vote" argument). Secondly the number of votes received nationally has a non-linear relationship to the number of seats won. A small percentage, such as UKIP's 3.1%, delivers no seats when it should have resulted in 20. The first problem can be fixed easily, without a radical change to the current system, by introducing single transferable voting (usually called the <span style="font-style: italic;">Alternative Vote System</span> when applied to single member elections) to the existing constituencies. By allowing voters to place their preferences in order, the need for tactical voting would go and everyone could vote naturally without feeling that their vote was wasted if they did not put one of the two major parties as first choice. There is no real argument against the single transferable vote, and it should have been introduced a long time ago, but unfortunately it does not really address the non-linearity problem: only a proportional representation system can do that.<br /><br />The Jenkins Commission produced a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkins_Commission_%28UK%29">report</a> in 1998 which recommended the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_vote_top-up">Alternative Vote Plus (AV+)</a> system which, although it is not fully proportional, still looks like a good compromise. It does seem that an increasing number of people accept the voting reform will happen - let us hope that it comes sooner rather than later.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-14569866355538677462010-04-13T13:18:00.003+00:002010-04-13T16:04:58.102+00:00UK General Election 2010<span class="swcCTaskViewTitleFont" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(106, 168, 79);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">It is general election time again and we have the usual blanket media coverage. The media, and in particular the political commentators, love elections and seem convinced that everyone else shares their enthusiasm. All the partys are busily trying to push what they hope will be vote winning policies, but sadly I don't think many voters trust any of the partys to deliver! Blair promised a referendum on electoral reform but it never happened (although the Lib Dems would definitely deliver on that one). The Conservatives are promising to reverse the planned increase in national insurance contributions, but I suspect that if elected they will say that economic situation is worse than they thought and they will not be able to do it after all.<br /><br />The UK media is saturated with election coverage, all presumably to inform voters as to how they might use their vote. However I find it hard to get interested as I am one of the 60% effectively disenfranchised by our ludicrously unfair voting system, and am in a constituency which always returns the same party candidate. In the other constituencies only 60% will vote anyway, many of whom will have decided how they are going to vote before the election was called. </span></span></span><span class="TSrHSb"><span class="ze">Basically around 10% of the electorate will decide who forms the next government.</span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-54769355931516325362010-02-28T17:55:00.011+00:002010-02-28T22:52:15.292+00:00Computer Tools for Improved CommunicationSocial networking tools may be the answer to intra-group communication, but do you have a clear understanding of the question? <p>The use of social networking tools across wide-area networks is revolutionising the way some people communicate. There is now is a choice of e-mail, forums, social networks (Facebook, etc.), news feeds (RSS/Atom), microblogging (twitter, etc.), Internet Relay Chat (IRC), and instant messaging (IM). The use of social networks has grown rapidly for non-office based communication, and an attraction for many people is that there are no boundaries – the world is your audience. Some of us have investigated using the same, or similar, tools in closed group environments: in the office or in education for example. However in the office one form of communication dominates: e-mail, even though it is far from the best choice for many purposes.</p> <p>To facilitate discussions information has to be two-way: e-mail is two-way but is not, in my view, ideal for discussions. Micro-blogging and blogging are essentially one-way, although most blog software nowadays allow comments. IM is two-way and Yammer, which can be considered to be a combination of IM and micro-blogging, is suitable for discussions. Examples of one-way communications are news feeds, which usually use RSS and/or Atom.</p> <p><strong>E-mail</strong></p> <p>E-mail is the only tool that has reached critical mass, and in the office environment you can usually assume everyone has an account, and that almost everyone checks their mail at least once a day. The ubiquity of e-mail encourages most people to use it not only for simple messages, but also for file transfers and multi-person discussions. Discussions by e-mail have many problems: in particular the sender of a message decides who is to be part of the discussion and, if others want to join in (assuming they even know that a discussion is going on), it can be difficult to catch up with the messages already sent. E-mail discussions frequently, and often inadvertently, result in information silos and poor intra-group communication.<br /></p><p style="font-weight: bold;">Forums</p><p>On-line forums are designed specifically for multi-person discussions, but they seem to be unpopular with many people.</p> <p><strong>Microblogging</strong></p> <p>Microblogging (microsharing), and in particular Twitter, is a very different way of communicating. Twitter is in many ways a remarkable concept in that it is frequently hard to explain to a non-user why they would ever want to use it. The basic idea of reporting what you are currently doing (in no more than 140 characters) at any given time seems to many rather pointless, but once you start using it it can become addictive – although some people remain unconvinced even after using it. Because messages have to be short and plain text, it is easy to deliver them to portable devices such as smartphones, and as a result many applications (Twibble, et al) have been released, feeding off the Twitter concept. The only way to transmit longer messages or images, is to upload a file and reference it in the text, and this has resulted in sites such as twitpic.com. Twitter is increasingly being used by service providers (bus and train companies, computing services, etc.) to provide service information such as cancelled or delayed trains. Google have recently released Buzz which competes with twitter to some extent, but has many more facilities. It seems to have attracted a significant following, particularly former users of the social networking site Friendfeed. (Friendfeed's future is uncertain after its purchase by Facebook.)<br /></p> <p>Twitter is not really suitable for use within an organisation (although users of <a href="http://cotweet.com/">CoTweet</a> or <a href="http://hootsuite.com/">Hootsuite</a> may disagree), but other microblogging tools such as <a href="https://www.yammer.com/home">Yammer</a> are designed for this market. Yammer provides a communication service for a closed group defined by a mail domain. Users register with their e-mail address, and confirm that they are a valid user by replying to the generated message. Although superficially similar to Twitter, there is no 140 character limit, and messages can be sent to pre-defined groups (similar to chat rooms in IRC systems), or to everyone. Sub-groups within the domain can be private or public , and messages can be sent to IM systems, by SMS, and by e-mail. Although the basic service is free, an organisation would need to pay to get control of the network, and if you do claim your network charging is based on the number of users. Other similar systems include <a href="http://www.communote.com/">Communote</a>, <a href="http://presentlyapp.com/">Present.ly</a>, <a href="http://nurphy.com/channels">Nurphy</a>, and <a href="http://www.socialtext.com/">Socialtext</a>. All these tools extend naturally to remote working: not only working from home but keeping in contact when away at meetings or conferences for example.</p> <p>Using a system like Yammer does not by itself provide an effective intra-organisation communication system: it is important to understand the varying ways that people deal with information flow. I would expect most commercial organisations to mandate the use by staff of any system once introduced, but in other organisations this may not be considered acceptable. It would seem inevitable that any closed-group communication system will be less effective if its use remains optional. Either way it is better if staff want to use the system because they feel it is of direct benefit to them.</p> <p><strong>User Acceptance</strong></p> <p>People sem to vary greatly in their attitude to IT based communication systems: some avoid using them at all if they have this freedom, arguing that they have not got time to use such systems even if it only takes few minutes each day. Noise (the receipt of messages not considered relevant to the individual) is seen as a major problem by some people, but just a minor irritation by others. It is an example of the glass <em>half-full</em> or <em>half-empty</em> metaphor – some people see the noise and some the signal (useful content). So for a system to be effective I believe it is necessary to encourage people to accept that some noise is the price you pay for being better informed, and for the opportunity to take part in discussions.</p> <p>Although poor intra-group communication is often recognised as a problem it seems that all too often solutions are adopted in an ad-hoc way with no clear idea of what the problem is that needs solving. This happened with e-mail which was adopted by almost all organisations, and the use of which evolved as people got used to the new tool. Evolution is often a good way to develop, but for communication within closed groups it would probably be better to eventually adopt an agreed strategy.</p> <p><strong>Conclusions</strong></p> <p>In conclusion I believe different tools are needed to handle effectively different type of communications. However it seems unlikely that they will be fully effective in the workplace without some agreement to standardise on one or more tools. Yammer meets many requirements but is let down by poor or missing clients (nothing for Nokia or Windows Mobile phones), no plugin for Internet Explorer; although most of these issues are being addressed and the site has just had significant enhancements. Google Wave, which is currently on beta release for invited users, may well be the answers to everyone’s problems. However in my opinion it was released on beta before it was ready, and releasing it initially to just a few users meant it was difficult to try it out for group discussions (you can only have meetings with people who have received invites from Google). It is based on the XMPP protocol and even if Google Wave is not successful I believe that XMPP is the way forward.<br /></p><p>Google Wave when fully released and Yammer both seem to address problems with poor intra-group communication; providing, of course, we understand the problem!</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">An <a href="http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/bucs-and-computer-tools-for-communication/">earlier version of this</a> appeared as an invited contribution to <span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/">Ramblings of a Remote Worker</a> </span>- the UKOLN blog site edited by Marieke Guy</span><br /></p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-11573963044902554012010-02-24T22:42:00.006+00:002010-02-26T09:51:12.856+00:00Google and Family Planning!The following question is reputedly one of many that Google may ask prospective job candidates:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Imagine a country in which every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child, and continue until they have a boy, then they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country? You should assume that there is an equal probability of having a boy or a girl.</span><br /><br />The question has been discussed at length on the Internet and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/answers-to-15-google-interview-questions-that-will-make-you-feel-stupid-2009-11#in-a-country-in-which-people-only-want-boys-3">this site</a> is one of many that provide an answer. The answer is correct (approximately the same number of boys and girls) but I doubt whether the way it is derived would help to get you a job with Google. There are numerous other similar posts, most of which give the correct answer, but all but a few miss what I believe is the point of the question. It is an example of misdirection; the question describes a strategy for ensuring that all families have exactly one boy and zero or more girls, but what it asks for is the overall distribution of boys and girls in the country as a whole. The way the question is stated leads you to believe that the strategy will affect the overall distribution - but does it? Anyone with some knowledge of probability should then realise that no strategy that involves stopping after a certain number of children can affect the overall proportion, because all births are independent events. In the population as a whole the probability that the next child, born anywhere in the country, will be a boy is 0.5, regardless of how many boys or girls have already been born, so the proportion will be 50:50. Of course the proportion will rarely be exactly equal because the gender of the children are random events, in fact they form a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution">binomial distribution</a>, but for large populations it will be very close to 50:50.<br /><br />To many people this is counter intuitive - probably because the strategy clearly does affect the make up of every individual family. Consider another country where they adopt the strategy of stopping after having exactly two girls. The only family distribution you would find on both countries would be two girls and one boy (but in a different order); the overall distribution however would still be 50:50.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-59686308607640670002009-12-23T17:39:00.013+00:002010-01-30T17:03:46.364+00:00Unlikely EventsIn his book <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rR9XPnaqvCMC&pg=PA141&lpg=PA141&dq=rafting+monkeys&source=bl&ots=4PE9qdiulj&sig=6GMdQyxra2DkMIy9ZywMfi1lNUA&hl=en&ei=jeL5SomRJ82d4QbqgMGrCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCYQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=rafting%20monkeys&f=false">The Ancestor's Tale</a>, Richard Dawkins discusses how New World monkeys, who it is believed are descended from Old World monkeys, managed to get to South America. At the time this must have happened, South America had detached itself from Africa and was not yet joined to North America, so was effectively a large island. It is conjectured that rafting may have been how they got there: one or more monkeys ending up washed out to sea on floating trees for example. (If it were one it would have to have been a pregnant female.) Some people object to this hypothesis because they believe that this event is so unlikely it could not have happened, but the truth is that unlikely events happen all the time. Evolution Theory relies on the fact that extremely rare events (favourable mutations) do occur if you wait a long time - and evolution works over many millions of years.<br /><br />After reading Dawkin's account I decided to see if I could come up with a mathematical example that illustrated this point. If the chance of a viable breeding group of monkeys getting to South America in any one year is, say, 1 in a million then we could calculate the chance of this happening if we wait, say, a million years. (This event would have occurred somewhere between 25 and 40 million years ago so waiting a million years is reasonable.) It is actually easier to calculate the chance of failure to get across and subtracting that from 1 to get the answer. I did the calculation for a probability of 1/n of success in one year, which gives <span style="font-style: italic;">(1 - 1/n)</span> as the probability for failure. Because the events are independent, the probability of failure after 2 years is that multiplied by itself or <span style="white-space: nowrap; -moz-box-orient: vertical; display: inline-block; vertical-align: bottom; margin-bottom: -0.4em; min-height: 1em; line-height: 1em; text-align: left;font-size:8px;" ><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">(1-</span><sup style="font-style: italic;">1</sup><span style="font-style: italic;">⁄</span><sub style="font-style: italic;">n</sub><span style="font-style: italic;">)</span><sup style="font-style: italic;"><sup>2</sup></sup><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>. For n years this is <span style="white-space: nowrap; -moz-box-orient: vertical; display: inline-block; vertical-align: bottom; margin-bottom: -0.4em; min-height: 1em; line-height: 1em; text-align: left;font-size:8px;" ><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">(1-</span><sup style="font-style: italic;">1</sup><span style="font-style: italic;">⁄</span><sub style="font-style: italic;">n</sub><span style="font-style: italic;">)</span><sup style="font-style: italic;"><sup>n</sup></sup><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>, which for n=1 million gives 0.368 to 3 significant figures, or 0.632 as the probability of success. If you tried with the same probability for 2 million years then the chance of success would be 0.865, and if you kept on trying for 10 million years it would be 0.9999, or anything but unlikely.<br /><br />The formula can be generalised by adding another variable, so <span style="white-space: nowrap; -moz-box-orient: vertical; display: inline-block; vertical-align: bottom; margin-bottom: -0.4em; min-height: 1em; line-height: 1em; text-align: left;font-size:8px;" ><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">1</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> -</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;">(1-</span><sup style="font-style: italic;">1</sup><span style="font-style: italic;">⁄</span><sub style="font-style: italic;">n</sub><span style="font-style: italic;">)</span><sup style="font-style: italic;"><sup>rn</sup></sup><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>would give the probability of success for 2 million years if r=2 and n=1 million. For values of n greater than 1 million the probability is the same to 3 significant figures so it is tempting to take the limit of the formula as n goes to infinity: <span style="white-space: nowrap; -moz-box-orient: vertical; display: inline-block; vertical-align: bottom; margin-bottom: -0.4em; min-height: 1em; line-height: 1em; text-align: left;font-size:8px;" ><br /><span style="display: block; min-height: 1em; margin-bottom: -0.5em; font-style: italic;">Lim</span><br /><span style="display: block; min-height: 1em; margin-top: -0.2em; float: left; font-style: italic;">n→∞</span><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">1</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> -</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> (</span><span style="font-style: italic;">1-</span><sup style="font-style: italic;">1</sup><span style="font-style: italic;">⁄</span><sub style="font-style: italic;">n</sub><span style="font-style: italic;">)</span><sup style="font-style: italic;"><sup>rn</sup></sup><span style="font-style: italic;"> = 1</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;">- </span><span style="font-style: italic;">e</span><sup style="font-style: italic;"><sup>-r</sup></sup><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>where e is approximately 2.71828. Note that this implies that an event with zero probability will still happen if you try it an infinite number of times!<br /><br />Of course this should not be taken too seriously: the probability of one in a million is pure conjecture, and it would not be the same for every year. Over millions of years as the continents drifted further apart, the chances of a successful crossing would go down.<br /><br />Leaving aside this particular example there are, in general, an infinite number of unlikely events that may happen. If you take a million possible unlikely (and unrelated) events, each with a chance of one in a million of happening in a given time period, then the maths shows that there is a good chance that one of these events will actually happen. People tend to notice only the seemingly unlikely events that do happen, and some times start to look for mystical explanations when usually no special explanation is required.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-83944445380259374002009-09-12T14:16:00.003+00:002009-09-12T17:45:27.558+00:00Redemption for "The Wire"<span style="font-style: italic;">The Shawshank Redemption</span> is now at number one on the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/chart/top">IMDB Top 250</a> films of all time, and regularly appears in the top ten of other lists. What makes this remarkable to me is that it was not a big success on its cinema release, its reputation and popularity have grown largely by word of mouth. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Wire</span> seems to be following the same line - even though it was critically acclaimed almost from the outset, it never attracted a large audience, nor did it win any major awards. Although the fifth and last series was shown in 2008, its popularity continues to grow, and it is now regularly rated as the best TV drama ever. At the time of writing an incredible 85% of users on IMDB have awarded it 10 out of 10.<br /><br />Word of mouth popularity seems to becoming word of Internet, so in principle reputations can now spread much faster. Just in the last week Stephen Fry send a Twitter message with a strong recommendation for David Eagleman's book <span style="font-style: italic;">Sum</span>, and within a day or so it shot up the charts to second place on the Amazon web site. This is an interesting and somewhat alarming development, not least to <a href="http://www.stephenfry.com/2009/09/11/dont-quote-me/">Stephen Fry</a> who is now presumably being bombarded with books from publishers and authors.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-23900459263058227722008-09-24T22:45:00.006+00:002010-01-18T17:55:11.227+00:00Gnu PronunciationI have been testing a GNU/Linux server recently which has GNOME (pronounced ger-nome) installed. This pronunciation is undoubtedly correct, as is the sounding of the G in Gnu/Linux, because the originators of these systems specified that the G should be sounded. My dictionary has 19 words starting gn, and apparently they should all be pronounced with a silent G, including gnu when referring to the African animal. This reminded me of the song "The Gnu Song" written in the 1950s by Flanders and Swann: the song is a clever satire which very gently pokes fun at those people who did not know that the G is silent. In the song they religeously pronounce all the silent letters in lines such as: <span style="font-style: italic;">You really ought to ker-now w-ho's w-ho's</span>. The also add G's to all the other words beginning with N, as in the first two lines of the song:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I'm a Gnu, I'm a Gnu</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The ger-nicest work of ger-nature in the zoo</span><br /><br />The song was very popular in the 50's and 60's but I suspect the satire backfired however, as many people now sound the G when referring to the animal. Mind you, in the nearly 50 years since I first heard the song, the only times I can recall needing to use the word is when referencing the song!<br /><br />I am told that if you go back far enough, the initial letters in words such as gnaw and knife were sounded but gradually over the years the initial letters were dropped in speech, but kept in the spelling. Maybe we should follow Flanders and Swann and start pronouncing all these silent letters; it would cause some ger-nashing of teeth in some circles but you never ker-now - it could catch on.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-41682316635074424342008-09-11T12:25:00.003+00:002008-09-11T13:35:09.615+00:00"Rabbit Hutch" BritainAn <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/sep/11/housing">article in today's Guardian</a> reports that houses built in the UK are the smallest in western Europe. I am not surprised: the high cost of land in the UK results in builders having to develop at high density to keep costs down, and this is also a major contributory factor to the fact that we never seem to be able to build enough houses to satisfy demand. Another contributory factor to the <span style="font-style: italic;">rabbit hutch phenomenon</span> is the frequent requirement on developers to build a certain number of affordable homes in any new development. Affordable generally means small and cheaply made, but as today's report indicates we already have enough small starter homes.<br /><br />Although I am not generally in favour of allowing market forces to decide everything, in this case we should just let builders build the houses they think are most likely to sell. The majority of people in the UK only own one house, so if builders build more of a certain type of house then prices will come down. People often stay in their first house for a long time (though many of them would like a bigger house), because they cannot find the extra money needed to trade up to a significantly better house. House prices in Britain are far too high: the solution is to build more houses so that supply equals demand, and it does not really matter what sort of house you build. Currently the number of houses being built is going down, but maybe builders would come back into the market if we removed the need to build affordable (that is, low profit) homes, and preferably simplified the frequently long drawn out planning procedures in which everyone from the local council to utility services try and get improvements to their infrastructure from the builder.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-14271445897249135672008-07-30T12:18:00.003+00:002008-07-30T12:30:42.065+00:00BBC FinedThe BBC has been fined £400,000 by <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Ofcom</span> because of the TV phone-in scandal, but does anyone know what fining the BBC achieves? It is not the staff who knew about the dodgy competitions that will pay - but the corporation as a whole. Presumably this means less money is available for programs, so viewers and listeners, some of whom suffered because of the fraudulent phone-ins, suffer further because of the fine imposed on the BBC. Am I missing something here?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-67006698592888447982008-06-29T18:54:00.001+00:002008-06-29T18:57:01.524+00:00Tennis in the UKIt's mid-June so the UK papers are talking about tennis again. The stories are much the same every year just before Wimbledon: the poor state of the game in Britain, and what does the LTA do with all the money it gets from Wimbledon. And the current picture is bleak, as after years of promises from the LTA that things were getting better, Britain has the lowest number of men in the singles draw in the 131 year history of the championships, with two wild cards, one qualifier, and Andy Murray.<br /> <br /> The LTA gets much of the blame from journalists, and although I have done my fair share of criticising them, it is naive to think that if only they used the millions they get from Wimbledon more effectively everything would be all right. Despite frequent comments to the contrary, very little money is spent on tennis development in the UK, and the £25M that the LTA gets from Wimbledon does not go very far when just one relatively small indoor tennis centre is likely to cost over £1M. It is estimated that to build the 5,000 indoor courts we would need to catch with where France are now would take £1.2 Billion. France has seven times as many indoor courts as we have in Britain, but Britain's need is greater because France has better weather so playing outside all the year round is a more practicable proposition, particularly in the south. In France and Germany local government apparently pay for some, if not most, local facilities, but in my experience local authorities in the UK have very little money for new facilities and, in fact, mostly struggle even to maintain the facilities they do have.<br /> <br /> So what are the reasons for the moribund state of tennis in Britain and the failure to produce top 100 players? Having in the recent past been chairman of a tennis club as well as serving on a county committee, there is no doubt in my mind that the root of Britain's problems with tennis lie in the private clubs. Most people who play regularly are members of private clubs, but the predominate culture of these clubs is one of social tennis (invariably doubles) played by middle-aged if not elderly members. Coaching, juniors, and singles play are tolerated at best, if not actively discouraged, and the typical tennis club environment is not conducive to tennis development. There is, of course, nothing wrong with social tennis (it is what I play myself) and the fact that tennis is a game you really can play from 8 to 80 years old should be a selling point when encouraging people to take up the game. The problem is that this form of tennis dominates everything else: the smaller clubs (4 courts or less) which are the most common in Britain, do not have enough courts to offer different tennis activities concurrently, so the prime playing times tend to be for social doubles, league matches (also doubles) and maybe some casual play.<br /><br />Clubs typically have a range of members from under 10s playing mini-tennis, older juniors, juniors who are strong enough to play with adults, strong players up to county standard who are too good to play in club sessions, and the social doubles players who form the mainstream. The committees of tennis clubs are generally dominated by social players (juniors and their parents typically have no votes at all), and it is the committee that generally does most the work in a club, so it is not surprising that they generally want the club run to suit their needs. All to often young players graduating from the junior sessions just stop playing when the only tennis on offer is doubles play, frequently with players much older than themselves. Also once players are too old for junior tournaments most clubs have very little too offer. The stronger players are usually too strong to play in club sessions, even if they want to play doubles, and there are relatively few adult tournaments. I would estimate that more than 95% of players stop playing between the ages of 13 and 21; many more would stay in the game if clubs could offer tennis sessions targetted for this age group.<br /><br />Tennis (and other sports) can be thought of as a pyramid with a broad base of beginner/improvers and younger juniors at the base, and nationally ranked players at the peak. You need to be in the top 100 of world ranked players to get entry to the top division of tournaments, and currently Britain has one player in each of the men's and women's top 100s. Because of this tennis gets poor coverage in the press and on TV except, of course, for Wimbledon fortnight. Britain desperately needs more people to be playing tennis and more competing in tournaments at all levels. Having spent many years helping to run junior sessions at my club, as well as organising an LTA ratings tournament, I know it is not difficult to get juniors to start playing tennis. The problem is keeping them playing and getting them to enter tournaments. There are around 15,000 juniors playing competitively at present, which is very low compared to the leading tennis nations. To get more juniors playing tournaments we need a more accessible tournament structure. A typical junior ratings tournament is played over a week, during the school holidays. However this usually involves parents taking time off work without necessarily knowing their child will play on any given day. I spent a lot of time encouraging juniors to enter tournaments with little success - when I asked why they had not entered local tournaments the overwhelming reason was that parents simply could get them to the event because they could not take the time off work.<br /> <br /> If these are the problems what is the solution? Solving the problems of tennis in Britain is not easy, in fact I do not think we have any real chance of getting to the level that France and Spain are now - we are simply too far behind. I believe that the LTA should give up hoping that the large majority of clubs in Britain will ever play a significant role in tennis development. What is needed are some new clubs formed with a different ethos: clubs which cater for those wanting to learn or improve, to play singles in preference to doubles, and who want to compete. In short we need tennis sports clubs as an alternative to tennis social clubs. We also need a completely re-vamped tournament structure based on one or half day tournaments, at least for the beginner and entry level juniors. I would suggest short tournaments based on one set matches, initially on a round-robin basis, and with everyone starting and finishing at the same time. My experience of running such tournaments at my own club was a dramatic increase in participation levels. I believe it would be possible to get 50,000 or more juniors competing regularly simply with a more accessible tournament structure.<br /> <br /> In summary we need some singles-orientated sports tennis clubs with an emphasis on coaching and competing, and an accessible tournament structure to attract many more players to compete regularly.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-33197805189845453472008-05-17T09:46:00.008+00:002008-05-17T17:11:13.405+00:00Blowin' In The WindToday's Guardian newspaper includes a supplement with the words and music to five classic Bob Dylan songs, including <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ced8o50G9kg">Blowin' In The Wind</a>. I was a teenager during the sixties, and it is difficult for anyway who did not live through that period to appreciate the impact that Dylan and other singers made, and how they helped to kick start the cultural and political revolution that followed. The election of John F Kennedy as US President helped to create the environment for change; and it seemed to me that the speeches of Kennedy, and the words and music of Dylan, were where the sixties started.<br /><br />Blowin' In The Wind was the song that brought Dylan to a wider audience. It is essentially a serious of simplistic questions without any answers, but probably because of this it has become a timeless classic. Over forty years after it was written it seems that in the wider world little has changed: wars still rage with genocides and ethnic cleansing still commonplace.<br /><br />"how many times must the cannon balls fly<br />before they're forever banned?"<br /><br />Tragic events in Darfur carry on, with the United Nations seemingly impotent:<br /><br />"how many ears must one man have<br />Before he can hear people cry?<br />Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows<br />That too many people have died"<br /><br />The cyclone in Burma may have killed more than 100,000 people but 1000s more will die because the country is ruled by a totalitarian military junta that is mostly concerned with its own survival, and cares little for its own people:<br /><br />"... how many years can some people exist<br />Before they're allowed to be free?<br />Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,<br />And pretend that he just doesn't see?<br /><br />The questions, naive though they are, remain the same - and the answers, then as now, are blowin' in the wind.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-63091207588931651712008-04-20T22:17:00.003+00:002008-05-17T16:09:38.709+00:00House PricesIn the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is interviewed on TV about the <span style="font-style: italic;">bad news</span> that reports show that house prices are falling. In the same news broadcast people are interviewed in the street about about how they will be affected by having less money to spend because of the recession. Not for the first time the media seems to have decided what is good and what is bad, but I would query their assessment of the current situation. The government has just announced the lowest unemployment figures for thirty years, inflation is between 2 and 3%, and average salaries are a little ahead of inflation; so why exactly should the average person feel they have less to spend? When prices fluctuate then there are always winners and losers: falling house prices are good for first time buyers and bad for those sellers who are not also buying another property. House owners who want to sell so they can buy a better house are also better off if house prices fall, as the house they want to buy should come down by proportionally more than the house they are selling. For those of us not planning to sell, the value of their house is largely irrelevant. I would contend that falling house prices is either good news, or of no real consequence for most people.<br /><br />More importantly, house prices have to come down if Britain is ever going to solve its housing shortage. Prices are governed by supply and demand, and the reason that Britain has some of the highest house prices in the world is that demand invariably exceeds supply. This government (and previous governments) have announced their intention to build more houses, and if we ever achieve equality of supply and demand then prices will inevitably come down. The news media generally view things from the consumers point of view, so in general prices increases on the high street are considered bad news, so why do they think house price increases are a good thing?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-21833675360398970912008-02-17T23:24:00.008+00:002008-05-17T17:07:09.908+00:00The Observer Effect!The <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/17/health.nhs1">Observer newspaper today</a> leads on an article reporting the "scandal" (their term, not mine) of patients waiting in ambulances outside hospital accident and emergency (A & E) departments, in an effort to meet a government directive that all patients should be treated within four hours of admission. This is yet another example of the <span style="font-style: italic;">observer effect </span>where observing or measuring something changes what is being observed. Failure to take into account the <span style="font-style: italic;">observer effect</span> seems to be a common fault of organisations (and the British Government in particular) and is, I suspect, due to an unthinking adherence to the aphorism: "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it".<br /><br />There is a similar situation in British schools where children now have a regular regime of testing at various ages. All schools know that they are judged on their test scores so will change the way they teach to try and improve their test scores. Anything that is not tested is likely to be given low priority or dropped altogether, and the net effect of this is that we are training kids to pass tests rather than educating them. The main measure for GCSEs (the school exam for 16-year olds in the UK) is the number of passes at grades A to C. One strategy to improve this is to target children predicted to get C or D grades, because the children in the top streams will get C or better without any extra help, and those in the bottom streams won't get a C whatever you do. This is a classic case of the observer effect and it does not lead to good education.<br /><br />In the case of the A & E patients the four hour response pledge seems to have made the situation worse as the measures taken are just to produce better figures not a better service, and tying up ambulances as waiting rooms stops them from attending new emergency calls.<br /><br />Managing and planning is clearly more effective if you have reliable data but unless the <span style="font-style: italic;">observer effect </span>is taken into account the collection or checking of the data can have seriously undesirable consequences.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-1154695563191984882006-08-04T10:23:00.001+00:002008-02-28T12:05:49.840+00:00IT Recruitment in the UKA recent <a href="http://www.amicustheunion.org/PDF/Work%20Permits%20Amicus.pdf">report</a> by the trade union <span style="font-style: italic;">Amicus </span>claims that the work permit system may be being abused as regards to IT recruitment. The figures certainly point to a big increase in permits for IT staff: an increase from 1,800 to 30,000 per annum over a ten year period. It was also reported recently that one in five companies claim difficulties in appointing suitable IT staff, and there seems to be a widespread view that there is an IT skills shortage in the UK. My own experience is different, I work in a University where salaries are not competitive with the best jobs in industry, but in the last couple of years we have had between 40 and 120 applicants for each job we have advertised, and the general standard of candidate has been good.<br /><br />Why is our experience apparently so different? It is because for most entry level jobs I do not ask for a minimum level of experience. Many companies restrict themselves to looking for high quality staff who have experience. Such people usually command higher salaries and the companies that employ them are (quite sensibly) likely to do everything they can to ensure staff retention, so relatively few of them are likely to be looking for jobs. Some employers baulk at paying the high salary usually needed to attract such staff so they look to importing people who frequently are prepared to work for less money. There are, however, in my experience a large number of talented individuals who do not qualify for many of the jobs advertised because they do not have formal experience. Everyone has to have a first job but companies who refuse to consider staff without experience are abrogating their responsibilties to take part in the training of people new to the workplace. In my view employers are hurting themselves by taking this view and missing out on some of the best staff. If you have to choose between talent and experience for an entry level job then go for talent.<br /><br />I do not believe there is a shortage of IT staff in the UK - it is an artefact of the conservative attititude of many employers.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-1146517020594087522006-05-01T18:31:00.001+00:002008-02-28T12:06:50.431+00:00J K GalbraithJ K Galbraith's death at 97 is a loss of the greatest liberal economist. He wrote many books in his life and held many high powered jobs, but it was his 1958 book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Affluent Society</span> that made him famous. In it he pointed out the paradox of an extremely rich country with a large minority living in poverty, and the failure of right-wing economics to address this problem. As a liberal I have never really understood why right-wing parties get as much support as they do, as it involves many people voting against their own interests. Whether it is the Republicans in the US or the Conservatives in the UK, right-wing parties are basically pushing economic policies based on selfishness and greed. Of course overtly arguing for selfishness and greed is not a vote winner, so they have to be dressed up as loony economic theories that argue, for example, that the lowest paid workers should not be helped because the low pay is an incentive to work harder. High paid workers however apparently need more money as an incentive for them to increase their performance. Trickle-down theories which argued that tax cuts for the rich were the best way to help the poor were also vigourously opposed by Galbraith.<br /><br />In a recent episode of <span style="font-style: italic;">The West Wing </span>shown in the UK (<span style="font-style: italic;">The Debate, </span>an episode which was shown live in the US), the fictional Republican candidate Arnold Vinick said at one point that he and the Democratic candidate wanted the same things - they just disagreed about the way to achieve those aims. I have heard this sentiment before from politicians, and it may be true in the fictional world of <span style="font-style: italic;">The West Wing</span>, but mostly it is not true. I believe most right-wingers want policies that support their prejudices: they do not want a fairer society so do not support economic theories that purport to achieve it.<br /><br />Galbraith lived and died in the richest country in the world, a country with a Republican president and in which 37 million people (over 12% of the population) live in poverty.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-1145191649110342992006-04-16T11:54:00.001+00:002008-02-28T12:07:37.507+00:00West Wing FantasyI rarely read fiction as after reading the newspaper there seems so little time to read books. When I do have time have time it is always non-fiction I turn to. Curiously the same does not apply to the films or TV I choose to watch. We are half way through the final series of <span style="font-style: italic;">The West Wing </span>in the UK, and the presidential election campaign theme is working well although initially I thought it was a mistake to move so much of the action away from the White House. The West Wing is fiction (although apparently some of the stories have been based on real incidents) but in some respects it is more fantasy than fiction, with an election campaign featuring two charismatic, intelligent, principled and committed politicians: Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) and Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) as the central theme. (My guess is that if this was reality Vinick, as a liberal-leaning Republican, would win comfortably because he would also appeal to many Democrats.) Sadly such candidates only seem to exist in the imagination of Hollywood scriptwriters, such as the brilliant Aaron Sorkin who left at the end of the fourth series but whose influence remains. The series has lost something since Sorkin left but even second best West Wing is better than almost anything else on TV. Apparently the last ever episode of this series has just been shown in the US and so ends, in my opinion, the best TV drama ever to come out of America.<br /><br />Back in the real world we have George W Bush as president - on this occasion I prefer the fiction.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-1144606966804029002006-04-09T15:38:00.001+00:002008-02-28T12:08:29.186+00:00Pronunciation of Foreign NamesWhen I was at school (a long time ago!) I was taught that the correct pronunciation for Majorca was <span style="font-style: italic;">Ma-jaw-ka</span>, and not something approximating to the Spanish pronunciation <span style="font-style: italic;">Ma-yor-ka</span>. I imagine the Spanish pronunciation became common in the UK because it is a very popular holiday destinantion for people in Britain and they heard the way it was pronounced by locals. We do not, however, do the same for most other Anglicised names: Germany and Spain for example, where we have universally used English spelling and pronunciation. In Spanish and Catalan the island is called Mallorca, and that is increasingly becoming the accepted spelling in English, which at least makes it consistent with the common pronunciation. The rule (if it is a rule) that if you anglicise a foreign name you should pronounce it as if were English, does not really help for places such as Paris. This is spelt the same way in both languages, but no English speaker says <span style="font-style: italic;">Pa-ree</span>.<br /><br />Most people I know would try and pronounce someone's name as the person would themselves, but this is done inconsistently even on the BBC which used to have high standards in this area. Sports commentators seem to be the worst offenders, and they often have a lot of foreign names to to get their heads round. I am reliably informed by my tennis doubles partner (a Russion born and brought up in Moscow) that Maria Sharapova's family name should be pronounced <span style="font-style: italic;">SHA-RAP-ova </span>and not<span style="font-style: italic;"> Sharra-pova, </span>as it commonly is in the UK. The footballer Thierry Henry's name however is always pronounced as it would be in French, or as close to French as most English native speakers can manage. I now say <span style="font-style: italic;">Ma-yor-ka</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Sharaa-pova </span>because otherwise people think I don't know the correct pronunciation!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25325963.post-1144106333735587342006-04-03T22:38:00.001+00:002008-02-28T12:09:17.055+00:00FlickrI have been taking photographs off an on for about 35 years, but like many people I tend to look at them once or twice, maybe show them to a few friends or relatives, and then put them away. The social computing site <span style="font-style: italic;">Flickr</span> has re-awakened my interest, and encouraged me to sort through <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/slybacon/">my photos</a> and start uploading them to the Web. It is satisfying when people mark some of my photos as "Favorites" but the site is also a good way to learn from others about how to take a good photograph.<br />Recently one of my colleagues <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pip/116529089/in/photostream/">uploaded a photo</a> stiched together from several shots taken with the camera on his cell phone. Given the limitations of the equipment it is a surprisingly effective shot, and prompted me to try stitching together a sequence of three photos I took last year from a cruise ship off <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/slybacon/121989861/">Taormina</a> in Sicily. I was aware of photostitching before, but had not realised the possibilities until I saw some of the examples on <span style="font-style: italic;">Flickr. </span>At the university where I work we are investigating the posibilities of using social networking techniques (such as those used most effectively on <span style="font-style: italic;">Flickr</span>) in learning and teaching - I think the potential is enormous.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06217303844512693021noreply@blogger.com0