Got lucky despite bad wager

There were a couple of interesting things on Jeopardy last evening. The first was in the category of “Religions” (at least I think that was the category), and the answer was something like “In 3032, this Jewish holiday falls in January.” The correct question? “What is Chanukah?” I just looked it up, and sure enough there is no Chanukah in 3031, rather Chanukah (25 of the Hebrew month of Kislev) begins on the 1^st of January 3032. Of course, none of us will be around for that but it does qualify as a “fun fact.”

That leads to the next question: what is the latest civil date on which Chanukah begins? Oh, don’t you just love the internet, where you can quickly find such things? For the next 2,269 years, at least, the latest date is January 6^th; Chanukah begins on January 6^th for the first time in 4286. Beginning in 3450, starting dates in January occur more regularly: once every fifty years or so.

In 2013, the first day of Chanukah was on Thursday November 28^th, which was also Thanksgiving that year. This is apparently as early as Chanukah can fall.

The second interesting thing on Jeopardy last evening was that the winner won despite a foolish mistake. Kyle Becker from Nashville, TN, had won two games and was playing his third. Going into Final Jeopardy, Kyle had $13,200 and both of the other contestants had $6,600. What could have happened was a three-way tie. But what did happen is that the neither of the two other contestants, who both wagered their entire $6,600, knew the correct question. Kyle provided the correct question, so of course he won. But here’s what made no sense: he had wagered $1. Why did he do that? If either of the other contestants had known the final question and he had not, he would have lost the game by $1. He should have wagered nothing, because then at least he would have tied one or both players and returned to play them again. I guess his nerves got the better of him in that moment.

The Final Jeopardy answer?

This manual resulted from a military engineer’s attendance at an unruly 1860s church meeting

The question?

What is “Robert’s Rules of Order”?

I know there was far more serious news than the Jeopardy outcome yesterday. I refer, of course, to the news that America plans to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move its embassy to that city. I am just struggling to process it, praying that calm minds and negotiations can prevail, and that Israel will also get lucky despite what may or may not have been a bad wager.

Love,

Rebecca

Before and after

For the past month or so I have been having some trouble with Google mail. I was often receiving messages that read:

Delivery incomplete

There was a temporary problem delivering your message to xxx@yyy.zzz. Gmail will retry for 20 more hours. You'll be notified if the delivery fails permanently.

Not only would I receive hundreds of these messages, but I could see that the number of page views were much smaller than I had previously been receiving. Try as I did, I could simply not figure out what was causing the problem. The good news is that the problem may have fixed itself, and my most recent post clocked 93 page views yesterday. I am just happy to have everyone back!

After a number of weeks of listening to and watching almost endless political discussions, Barry and I decided we needed to take a break, so he went through an enormous pile of movies we have recorded on DVD over the years and pulled out ones included in the American Film Institute’s various lists. Among the top ten romantic comedies, we have seen (but may not remember too well) all of the ones released after 1971 but none of the earlier ones.

#	Film	Year
1	City Lights	1931
2	Annie Hall	1977
3	It Happened One Night	1934
4	Roman Holiday	1953
5	The Philadelphia Story	1940
6	When Harry Met Sally	1989
7	Adam’s Rib	1949
8	Moonstruck	1987
9	Harold and Maude	1971
10	Sleepless in Seattle	1993

One we happen to have on DVD is “Adam’s Rib,” starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Let’s just say that this film is seriously dated. You really have to put yourself back in the past – the 1940s, before I was even born - to appreciate this story of a married professional couple, both attorneys, who find themselves representing clients on opposite sides of a messy divorce. Of course, the acting is superb and there is much witty repartee. I do have to admit that it was a welcome relief from the usual MSNBC evening line-up!

Time does fly, doesn’t it? We seem to be having some problems with our Sub-Zero refrigerator. The refrigerated food is cold and the frozen food is frozen, but it is making some very strange noises. Our regular appliance repair person does not work on Sub-Zero products, so I had to search for repairs, and we now have someone coming later today. When I called, they asked the age of the refrigerator. I wasn’t sure but I didn’t think it was more than a few years old. But as I later pondered the question, I realized I was a bit off.

I can divide most of the events of the past ten years into “before” and “after,” where the dividing line is my CNS lymphoma diagnosis in 2012. I should have realized that this was a “before” event, and I finally managed to find the receipt and owner’s manual and discovered that in 2009 we replaced the Sub-Zero that was in the kitchen when we bought the house in 1999, and had probably been installed by the previous owner around 1991 during the gut renovation she had done. So that Sub-Zero lasted about 18 years, and I just hope whatever is going on with this one is just something relatively minor, because they charge a small fortune just to come out and diagnose the problem!

Looks like the cold weather is finally starting to settle in. Stay warm!

Love,

Rebecca

A difficult topic

There has been so much news these past weeks, and I have tried hard to stay away from politics on this blog. But aside from politics both here and abroad, the other major news stories over the past couple of months have related to abusive behavior towards women by their male counterparts in the entertainment industry.

In synagogues around the world there is a regular schedule of readings from the Torah (five books of Moses) that begins every fall after the holiday of Simchat Torah. The portions are known by names that are usually the first word or two in the portion. This past week, in synagogues around the world we read  Genesis 32:4–36:43, וישלח Vayishlach, “and he sent.” This is a reference to the message that Yaakov (Jacob) sent to his brother Esav (Esau) to mend the rift that we read about two weeks ago in Genesis 25:19-28:9 תולדות Toldot, “generations,” when, with the help of his mother Rivka, Yaakov used subterfuge to receive the blessing from their father that had been intended for Esav, the older of the twin sons.

Included in the portion of Vayishlach is the story of Dina, the daughter of Yaakov, who is attacked by a man named Shechem. Yaakov strikes a deal with Shechem’s father that, if all their males are willing to undergo circumcision, their offspring can marry Yaakov’s offspring. The men agree to undergo the ritual to become Jewish but while they are recuperating from the procedure, two of Dina’s older brothers murder all of them.

I suspect that this story was the topic of sermons in many synagogues around the country this past Shabbat. The whole story is deeply troubling from many different perspectives. Rabbi Steven Exler spoke movingly and has graciously allowed me to share his words here.

Rabbi Exler Drasha

On Sunday we saw a new documentary called “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story.” To be honest, I do not think I have ever seen any of her films, but the name is certainly familiar. Born in 1914, her career began with a 1933 film called “Ecstacy” which included some rather explicit footage. She made numerous films, the most famous of which was 1949’s “Samson and Delilah.” She was a strikingly beautiful woman but, based on seeing some of those film clips, her acting ability was not especially impressive. What made her particularly interesting was that she was quite intelligent, and has been given credit for a number of interesting technological inventions: she has been called a pioneer in the field of wireless communications. Despite her talents, she was a troubled person who was married six times and spent years addicted to amphetamines. In an effort to maintain her youthful beauty she had numerous plastic surgeries that left her looking rather unattractive; there were limited photographs of her from her later years. It was certainly an interesting documentary about a celebrity whose name was familiar but about whom we had known very little.

 

It is not difficult to see a connection between the biblical events, the Hedy Lamarr story, and the recent news, all of which relate to the way that women have been regarded at various times throughout history. Apparently, we are still not quite getting it right. But I remain hopeful. Perhaps the current events will finally allow us to get past the negative aspects of our characters and better learn to treat all people with the respect and dignity that every human being deserves.

Love,

Rebecca

A shout out to my statistician friends

Over the past couple of years, I have been regularly watching “The Price is Right” while eating my lunch. For reasons I cannot logically explain, I find this show highly entertaining. We have set up to record the show each day and I watch whenever I have a chance.

Yesterday I was eating a yummy lunch, a flour tortilla filled with broccoli and a delicious cheddar cheese with beer that Barry had bought, while watching the show. The first unusual thing that happened was that all six of the contestants in the initial rounds won their prizes: this does not seem to happen very often. But the really amazing thing happened when the three in the second round spun the wheel at the end of their round. All three – yes, all three – spun a total of 100 in their two spins of the wheel (the middle one landed on 100 in her first spin). Ordinarily, the prize for spinning 100 is $1000, but because the show is celebrating its 45^th anniversary, the prize was $10,000!

When there is a tie, the players get a second spin of the wheel, just one spin, with the highest number going on to the final round. The first two landed on 100, winning $25,000 each! The third came very close, only 2 numbers away from landing on 100. Those first then each spun once more to determine the player who would enter the final round. I have attached a video clip here.

When Barry got home I had to make him watch it, it was just so unbelievable. So that got me to thinking, what exactly is the probability of spinning 100 on the first spin and then of hitting 100 again in the second spin?

It has been a very long time, not to mention cancer in my brain, since I have thought about such questions, so I am counting on some of my former statistical colleagues who may be reading this to weigh in and correct me, but here goes.

First, in the two spins of the wheel, there are twenty ways to obtain a total of 100:

First Spin	Second Spin
5	95
10	90
15	85
20	80
25	75
30	70
35	65
40	60
45	55
50	50
55	45
60	40
65	35
70	30
75	25
80	20
85	15
90	10
95	5
100

That means that on any given day, there is a 20% chance that a player spinning the wheel will have a total of 100. That sounds about right, that does seem to happen about 20% of the time.

After spinning a total of 100, the player then has one additional spin and must land on 100 to win, which should happen 5% of the time.

So, the probability that one player will have a total of 100 on his or her first one or two spins AND THEN land on 100 on the second spin is 1%, in other words, of every 100 players who spin the wheel, approximately one will win both prizes.

Now the question is, what is the probability that these events will happen for multiple players on the same day? On the first spin of the wheel, when each of the three players have a 20% chance of winning, the probability that all three will do so is 0.8% (0.008).

On the second spin of the wheel, there are 8 possible and equally likely configurations of players who can land on 100:

Number of players who land on 100	Possible configurations	Details of configurations
0	1	No players
1	3	Player 1, player 2, or player 3
2	3	Players 1 & 2, players 2 & 3, or players 1 & 3
3	1	All 3 players

The probability that just two of the three players will land on 100 is based on the binomial probability

In our case, N = 3, x = 2, and π = 0.05, so this comes to 0.007125.

I think we then need to multiply these two numbers, 0.008 (first spin) and 0.007125 (second spin), to get the overall probability of the outcome of the game in question, and that is then 0.000057 (0.0057%). Seems like a very long shot to me!

Help me out here, guys – am I even close to the right answer?

I really do need to get a life!

Love,

Rebecca

Wonder

We drove up to Sharon early Wednesday morning, the day before Thanksgiving. We had planned to go that afternoon and look at a couple of used pianos at a place about an hour past Sharon, but the heavy rain had made the driving exhausting and we had to table those plans. Ella is anxious to begin lessons and now that the work they have been doing in their house is nearly complete, they have a spot cleared and just waiting for the piano! So we hope over the coming weeks to have a chance to fill that space.

Meanwhile, we were able to take the three older girls to a movie on Thanksgiving Day while the other adults were preparing for dinner. We saw “Wonder,” a movie based on the R.J. Palacio book of the same name. The movie tells the story of a ten-year-old boy named Auggie Pullman, who was born with a condition known as Treacher Collins Syndrome that causes facial abnormalities that even after many surgeries are still quite apparent. Because of this, and having spent much of his young life in and out of hospitals during 27 surgical procedures, he has been home schooled through the fourth grade. As the movie begins Auggie is entering the fifth grade at a local school in a trendy, though unspecified, New York City neighborhood. The movie, which received a glowing review in the New York Times, tells his story through focusing on the various people in his life, which I believe is how the book is structured as well. Our granddaughter Maya has read the book, and was quick to point out that there was quite a bit in the book that was not included in the movie.

The phrase “sugar coated” is what comes to mind in thinking about this film. Despite the best efforts of a warm and caring principal (played by Mandy Patinkin), most of his classmates treat Auggie, played by the young actor Jacob Tremblay, distressingly poorly. But his parents, played by Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson (need I say more?), are over-the-top perfect. Even his older sister Via (Izabela Vidovic), who struggles with having a brother who demands so much of their parents’ attention, is an amazingly mature teenager. It is no surprise that the story has a happy ending.

This was a movie that Eliana, Ella, and Maya all wanted to see, so we took the three of them. But Eliana and Ella, now 12 and 11, wanted to go to the movie themselves. So. we drove the three of them but then Barry, Maya, and I sat separate from the two older girls.

After the movie we all gathered at Simmie and Ronen’s house for our Thanksgiving dinner. Barry did his usual task of carving the turkey while some of us worked on getting the other food to the table, and here is the how it all looked before we sat down to feast.

On Friday we went with Julia and Noah, along with their mom and big sister, to the Providence Children’s Museum. We had not been there in some time, because it is primarily a place for young children. Julia, at 3½,  is the perfect age at this point. Noah was a bit overwhelmed at first but he eventually became more comfortable with the crowds and the noise and had a great time as well. The highlight is the large water play area. The large plastic aprons that the museum provides for the children to wear do not keep them from getting very wet, which just adds to the fun.

We had Shabbat dinner on Friday night with Simmie and family and spent Shabbat afternoon with Dina and the two younger children: Joshua and Aaron had travelled to Jacksonville, FL to celebrate a Bar Mitzvah (friends who used to live in Sharon and still come up quite often to visit family) and Ella spent Shabbat with a friend in Rhode Island. It was a really nice opportunity to have some quiet time with the two little ones. After Shabbat Barry and I drove down to Providence to escort Ella back to Sharon, and an excursion reminiscent of many such trips twenty-five years ago.

On Sunday we took Maya and Ella to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The two girls, who are two years apart, really get along so well: they have the affection of sisters who are close in age without all the drama that sisters close in age usually experience. They also share a lot of interests, including reading, art, and music. We enjoyed the special exhibit, “Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics,  A Collaboration with Nobuo Tsuji and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.”

After the museum we headed to Café Eilat (kosher pizza) in Brookline for lunch, and then stopped at Kolbo, the Judaica store where we had taken Eliana last month, to buy Maya a new mezuzah to replace the Winnie the Pooh one she had on her door and had long since outgrown. The trip was completed with a stop at Kupels Bakery for treats to take home. It was a terrific day.

We headed back to New York on Monday morning. It is just so quiet here!

Have a great week.

Love,

Rebecca