I am concerned that the Facebook IPO will overshadow the news this weekend.
So in an effort to make nature cooler than Mark Zuckerberg, I just wanted to let everyone know that there will be a partial solar eclipse on Sunday – 5:30ish for us here in CA.
Solar eclipse = moon passes between the earth and the sun. It’s partial because you’ll get to see a “sun donut” around the outside. I plan on posting that ish to instagram. Hope I don’t forget!
More on CNN.
I guess it’s not really last minute, because I’m not going until mid-June…..but I just booked a {quick} trip to London!
A friend is headed there for work and wanted a buddy to play tourist. I’m in!
She also wants to squeeze in a 1 day trip to Paris. Thankfully, I’ve been to both places before, so I’m mostly along for the ride and the croissants.
Anything that shouldn’t be missed? I’ve been to both London and Paris, but she has not. I also don’t really care for museums that much. But can be entertained by 1, maybe 2. I liked the Louvre because I had just finished reading the Davinci Code.
Ideal 1-day in Paris? Things that shouldn’t be missed in London? A Pippa sighting would really make for a blog worthy trip!
I hate cancer.
A lot.
Every year I walk around a track and raise money for cancer research. And I’ll continue to do it until there’s a cure.
Relay for Life is a 24 hour event where team members take turns walking around a local high school track. There is a survivor’s walk to help kickoff the event and a luminaria ceremony to remember and honor those touched by cancer.
If I start listing everyone I know who has either had cancer (and beat it) or currently has cancer or lost their battle to cancer, I’ll get teary. So instead, I’ll just tell you about my friend Janice (she’s my dad’s cousin) and she past away a little over a month ago. She actually kicked cancer in the butt a number of times, but eventually lost her battle. She may have been the nicest, most energetic person I know. She’s an Ironman and a colonel in the US Army. And when you talked to her, she made you feel like the most important person in the room.
So this year I’ll be walking in her memory and the memory of others that have passed, in support of those still fighting and in celebration of those that have won the battle!
So, if you feel compelled to help a sista out, make a donation! It’s super easy and even $5 helps. Or, if you don’t care that much about cancer, but find my blog highly entertaining, you could also donate.
Odds of being struck by lightning: 1 in 576,000 (source)
Odds of winning an olympic gold medal: 1 in 662,000 (source)
Odds of getting a royal flush in poker on first five cards dealt: 1 in 649,740 (source)
Odds of getting a hole in one: 1 in 5,000 (source)
Odds of a single player hitting 4 home runs in a single game: 1 in 1,440,000 (source)
Odds of a perfect game: 1 in 49,656 (source)
After yesterday’s post I totally nerded out and started to talk about statistics at work.
I thought there might be a little more to it, but wasn’t quite sure how to go about calculating it. This still isn’t 100% correct, but I think it’s closer than yesterday.
Ok, here goes. (This is definitely one of my longer posts, and it’s about baseball….if you stick with me, you’ll feel a little smarter, I promise. If you don’t want to stick it through, I understand.)
First lets start with some basic statistics.
What’s the probability of flipping heads 5 times in a row?
(1/2)^5
Each time you flip the coin you have 1 out of 2 chances of getting heads. Each flip is independent. Trust me on this one, I’m right.
Now, let’s think about this in terms of baseball.
We need the probability of hitting a home run for a given player. Ichiro gets about 1 HR for every 80 AB, Chris Gimenez gets about 1 HR for every 53 AB, and Babe Ruth averaged 1 HR for every 11 AB (he’s ranked #2 behind juicer Mark Mcguire…and we don’t like the ‘roids). Let’s say 1 HR for every 60 AB.
For simplicity, the probability of a player hitting a homerun 4 times in a row is:
(1/60)^4 = 7.7×10^-8 (or 1 in 12,960,000)
BUT there are 9 players per game, so there are 9 chances you could see a given player hit 4 homeruns. Odds go up a smidge:
9 in 12,960,000
1 in 1,440,000
Now, how likely is it for a pitcher to get 27 outs in a row. This is a bit trickier. What you really need is the probability that a player WON’T get on base. Turns out that baseball likes stats and every player has an “on base percentage.” This takes into account:
Hits
Base on Balls
Hit By Pitch
Errors (sort of….if you reach on an error you get an AB without the credit of a hit)
Career averages for:
Ichiro 0.369
Ted Wiliams 0.482 (best ever)
Nick says low 300s, so we’ll say the average player has an OBP of 0.330 (source)
That means that the probability of a pitcher getting a player out is 1 minus the OBP. If OBP is the chance a player will get on base, 1 minus OBP is the chance the player will not get on base….also known as an out.
So the odds of a pitcher throwing 27 outs in a row is:
(1-0.33)^27 = 6.57×10^-5 (or 1 in 49,656)
So in any given game there is (on average) a 1 in 1,440,000 chance of seeing 4 homeruns by a single player and 1 in 50,000 chance of seeing a perfect game.
We established yesterday that there have been 200,519 games as of yesterday.
16 games with 4 HRs means 1 in 12,532 (statistically requiring an average of 10.58 at bats per home run – staggering!)
21 perfect games means 1 in 9548 (statistically, pitching against players with an average OBP of 0.287)
I’m about to blow your mind. So the last perfect game was pitched against the Mariners a few weeks ago (and it totally sucked as a Mariner’s fan). Guess the average OBP for the Mariners – 0.289! (this actually has nothing to do with stats, but it’s super ironic that it turned out this way).
And if you looked at Josh Hamilton’s stats before his 4 HR night, he had 11 HR and 110 AB or 1 HR for every 10 AB.
What this doesn’t take into account is the extra stuff in baseball….the reason we all love it 
I doubt the 4 HR games were hit against Cy Young winners and I doubt any team losing to a perfect pitcher went on to win the World Series (sorry M’s).
Did anyone stick with me? Happy math day! AKA, Friday
We’re sitting at the dinner table and Nick says to me:
N: B, did you hear that Josh Hamilton hit…
B: 4 home runs? Yeah, that was big news yesterday.
Then I asked:
B: Didn’t Mike Cameron do the same thing?
N: Yeah, it’s really rare.
B: Oh.
I guess I just figured that if a Mariner had done it, it wasn’t horribly difficult (I jest, but I’d really love for them to have a winning season one of these years).
In the car, the radio people started discussing perfect games vs 4 HR games and which was more rare or special.
Nick (and the announcers) inform me that there have ONLY been 16 games when a single player hit 4 home runs (including Mike Cameron) while there have been 21 perfect games. The radio announcers were arguing that a 4 HR game is much more impressive because it is “so rare.” (PS Willie Mays also holds the title)
Ok peeps, let’s look at this from a math standpoint.
This site says there have been 200,519 games since 1876.
Percentage wise:
0.00798% of games have seen 1 player hit 4 home runs
0.0105% of games have been perfect
If we round to 1 sig fig, they are both 0.01%.
I’d say both are pretty rare peeps.
But I’d rather attend a perfect game. Nick says the announcers were just arguing for the sake of arguing. And he’s probably right.
Anyone know when they started using fences? 2 of the 4-HR games were in the late 1800s. Did they just let them roll forever?
Know what’s more rare than 4 home-runs-by-a-single-player-in-one-game? An unassisted triple play. There have been 15. That would be amazing. I’d love to see an unassisted triple play. But chances are I won’t be paying attention. I people watch A LOT at games.
So, I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve been on pinterest since they were beta testing. I feel part of this elite group of people that knew about it before it was popular.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to incorporate pinterest with shoes (Nick’s daytime gig) and finally figured it out.
Nick added a personal shopper option to his website, shoesniper.com.
This all started when one of my friends wanted a little help looking for bridesmaid shoes. So I made her a pinterest board and linked back to Nick’s site for the best prices!
So if anyone is in the market for a new pair of shoes, try out the personal shopper option! It’ll give me something fun to do in the evening!
So you read yesterday about most of my weekend.
Then Sunday afternoon I got this bright idea to make an iPhone app. No idea what it would do specifically. But I read an article about a 12 year old kid making an iPhone app, so my competitive inner nerd started bursting out. And I was feeling like I needed a new hobby.
Downloaded the developer software and was quickly reminded of my sophomore year of college and the hours I spent debugging code…
Thankfully, the internet is a wonderful place and I was able to find some tutorials. I didn’t shop around. I let google do the picking and wound up creating the “Scary Bug” app. This app lets you rate how scary a bug is. Yeah, instagram I am not.
I got through 2 of the 3 tutorials on Sunday. I didn’t get any of it right on my first try, and I still don’t really understand everything going on in the code….but I ended up with some cool screen shots….an something to blog about. So I guess that’s a win!
That looks fun, huh?
Ha, this makes it look like I actually know what I’m doing (I don’t).
And if you click on the Lady Bug, this appears:
I decided ladybugs weren’t that scary and gave it just 1 screamy face.
Any ideas for an app? Something simple? Have you ever tried making one? I could use all the help I can get!
It was one of those weekends where nothing was really planned, but it seemed to just fly by.
Mochi got his toy stuck to his collar and wandered around the house for hours without being bothered by it. He doesn’t get that from me!
Nick finally gave pity on him and removed it before our walk.
Did I mention how nice it was outside? Yeah, we still like California weather.
At some point we met up with one of the neighbor girls. She’s grown quite a bit since we first met them.
Notice she’s on her tip-toes but decided to take off the wedge sandals.
We hung out with friends….a lot! One evening we roasted marshmallows in their backyard. Nutella s’mores. Enough said.
I’m slowly (or not-so-slowly) learning that most people don’t love roasting marshmallows as much as I do. What’s up with that?
We went to a cinco de Mayo party. Complete with tacos, chips, homemade salsa and guac and even some beer tasting!
Nick and I brought a roasted corn salad to add tot he festivities. Pretty tasty if I do say so myself.
And while Nick was off riding roller coasters, I spent Sunday morning catching the Avengers People always think I’m weird for going to movies alone…but let’s be honest, how much talking really gets done during a movie?
How was your weekend?
I take dance classes and my grandma was asking if I ever have recitals. Here’s how the conversation went down:
G: Do you ever have recitals?
B: Well, we call them shows.
G: What’s a show?
B: Basically a recital.
G: I wish I could come see you.
B: Well, they usually tape it, so I could send you a video of.
G: Oh, on one of those silver disks?
B: Yes, on one of those silver disks.
G: I have a tv, but it won’t play those silver disks. What are those called again?
B: DVDs
G: hmmm, no, that’s not what I was thinking of.
B: Ok
G: They have a TV here that plays them. But I don’t know how to use it.
B: I’m sure someone there can help you.
Silver disks. She cracks me up.
And if you need more entertainment, here she is playing angry birds. She’s great.
And PS, happy birthday, Kellie!
