It’s a short story and it involves a very famous statistician, Abraham Wald, who worked for the British Airforce during World War II. The basic idea was simple. Being a mathematician, they asked Wald to look at the aircraft, catalog all the bullet holes after they returned from a mission,and calculate where the best place to put armour. They couldn’t put very much armour on because it would weigh the plane down reducing it’s speed and range.

Wald diligently did as he was told and came up with the following diagram showing that the planes were basically riddled with bullet holes (the grey area in the image on the right) except in two places (the two white ovals):

So where would you put the armour? The whole plane is being riddled with bullets!

Wald, in a move that confused his superiors, suggested putting armour covering both those white ovals on the plane to which the obvious reply was no doubt: why put armour in the only places the planes weren’t being shot?

What was special about those two areas on the plane wasn’t that they weren’t being shot but that they’re so important to the functioning of the plane (one is where the pilot sits and the oval at the back is the vertical stabilizer) that planes hit in those areas crashed and never returned to base.

Basically, every bullet hole Wald saw was the product of two processes: getting shot by the enemy, obviously, and being located in a place that wouldn’t prevent the plane from returning to base.

Think about it another way. Imagine interviewing soldiers who were shot and asking them the location of their bullet wounds. Now imagine cataloging all the bullet wounds of soldiers killed in action. The simple fact that a soldier is still alive implies that he got shot in a different place than the soldiers who were dead. Which information is more crucial to deciding where to locate body armour?

Most participants do not run a marathon to win.
- Wikipedia

On Sunday I will be honouring Wikipedia’s knowledge by trying not to win my first marathon. When I mention I’m running the marathon, the first question I get is: “Crazy. How long is a marathon?” The answer, 42.2km, usually prompts this question: “Weird. Why such an arbitrary distance?” The answer is stranger than the number itself.

According to a few sources, the reason the race is such a bizarre length has to do with an ancient Greek hero, the British Monarchy and an American shot-putter. The first marathons were 40km, approximately the distance the Greek hero Pheidippides (right) ran from the Battle of Marathon, where the Greeks defeated the Persians, to Athens to announce the battle had been won before falling over dead. Wikipedia claims the other 2.2km came from a peculiar event at the 1908 London Olympics:

The distance from the start of the Marathon to the finish at the stadium was established at these games. The original distance of 25 miles was changed to 26 miles so the marathon could start at Windsor Castle and then changed again at the request of Princess Mary so the start would be beneath the windows of the Royal Nursery. To ensure that the race would finish in the front of the King, the finish line was moved by British officials who, in response to shot putter and American flag carrier Ralph Rose’s refusal to dip the American flag before the Royal Box during the opening ceremony, “felt compelled to restore the importance of the monarchy.”

Meaning that during the last 2.2km all I’ll be thinking is that I’m getting screwed by an American shot-putter and King Edward VII.

If you want to cheer me on–or watch me suffer, you can click on the map here. To figure out when I’ll be going by, approximately, multiplying the km number where you’ll be by 5 (I plan on running about 5:00 a km). I might be there ten minutes before or after, depending on how I’m feeling.

Also, because our Western culture has no traditions of its own, I’ve decided to resurrect the tradition of relaying a message to all those who will listen at the finish line. I don’t want to divulge the message ahead of time but I have a feeling that it might be profound if I’m feeling good and profane if not.

From their Facebook page:

Come join us for Santropol’s first ever Iron Chef cook-off! The event will take place on Thursday September 2nd from 5 – 10 in our garden space on McGill campus. Six teams representing local restaurants, such as Fuchsia, Crudessence, Lola Rosa and Serafim, will be given 1 hour to select food freshly from our garden. Then, with the help of only very basic materials: knife, cutting board, oil, salt and pepper, one grain, and one special ingredient– each group will cook up a menu on the spot for our panel of illustrious judges.

And a description from Maisonneuve:

The Iron Chef Cook-Off is a fundraiser that pits several great local restaurants against each other in good-humoured competition.[...]The event is free (it will take place right in the McGill campus garden), beer and food is cheap, and the mighty Pat Jordache will supply late-summer jams. Please do come and watch me eat.

Check out their myspace page for more of their music.

My favourite story, one I’ll never forget and one I think of often when I’m complaining about the heat or the rain, goes like this. My grandmother, who was seven or eight years old at the time, was asked by her parents to go and check on the cattle which were a few miles away. She got on her horse and, after riding a bit, noticed there was a coyote following her. Knowing that the coyote was hoping for my grandmother to fall of the horse so he could have a quick, easy meal, she got scared and hightailed it back to the farm house. Here’s the good part. She had to lie to her parents about why she came back (she told them she had a stomach ache) because if she told them the truth they would tell her she was being ridiculous and to go back out there. Apparently, being stalked as prey by a coyote didn’t count as a good excuse for an eight year old to not do her chores. Those were different times.

When I look around now at people who are dying without air-conditioning, I like to think about what it would be like if we were all transported back to Paynton, Saskatchewan in 1918. In some ways we’ve come a long way since 1910, the year my grandmother was born, but in other ways, we’ve gone back a long way.

Happy Birthday Grandma. (I’ll tell you in person because I know you don’t use the internet. If only I could get on the parliamentary channel…)

Here’s a song that my Grandmother used to have on her player piano back in Saskatchewan–and can still play on the piano. (click here for the player piano version)

For over 50 years the man inside this brain was simply known as HM. After his death (one year ago today) at the age of 82, the name of the patient who revolutionized our understanding of memory was revealed to the world: Henry Molaison.

Molaison was seven years old when he was hit by a bicycle which was the most likely cause of the severe seizures he experienced years afterwards. By the time he was 27, even heavy doses of anti-convulsants weren’t able to help him lead a normal life. As a last resort, he decided to participate in an experimental procedure to remove a portion of the medial temporal lobes of his brain hoping this would stop his seizures. The surgery was a success but it also left him with anterograde amnesia–the inability to form long-term memories.

Despite the fact that he lived his life from second to second–or as he described it, “like walking from a dream…everyday is alone in itself…”–Molaison was always described as a kind and gentle person. Brenda Milner, who worked with HM for decades, even said that though he never recognized her, he did seem to understand that he was part of an important research project and loved to help out anyway he could.

One of the most fascinating parts of the research on Molaison was his ability to learn new motor skills. Molaison was asked to trace the outline of a star by looking at his hand in a mirror–not a very easy thing to do. Every time he was asked to do this he would explain that it looked like a difficult task but he would do the best he could. Despite never remembering having done the mirror-tracing task before, he got better and better at it every day.

Every 30th slice of Molaison’s brain will be stained and mapped  in order to produce a three-dimensional model of his brain. All other slices will be available for research.

I encourage everyone to take a quick peek at what is an important event in neuroscience.

Link to the video feed.

You can keep the dirty-stacher from Ancaster train rolling with donations by clicking here, here or here–no wait–here.

“Hi Montreal! It’s beautiful to be here, in digital form. This is our first time visiting another country as a band, we hope you will listen with warm welcome.

That’s Ryan from the band Candy Claw saluting the Montreal internauts during the band’s Montreal “stop” of their virtual tour. They’ve searched out local blogs to host their “gigs” and are now nine days into their tour having already hit Boston and Seattle. Afte tonight’s Midnight Poutine hosted show, they set out for tomorrow’s Vancouver show and onto Europe for December. Every “show” includes a video of the band acoustically performing  a song from their album In the Dream of the Sea Life. Midnight Poutine compares them to M83 but, at least from what I’ve heard, they remind more of a the softer and throatier Icelandic group Seabear. Worth a listen, if only for the novelty of what might become a more thrifty way to tour.

(Hat tip to Jer at Midnight Poutine)