Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Mixed Opinions on Snow

I was kind of hoping to catch some of the lunar eclipse last night. I had thought maybe I could since I was scheduled to get off work right about the time the eclipse was supposed to start. It was snowing in Green Bay, though. Which in turn meant I was delivering pizza in the snow again. At least for the last hour or two.

However, the snow was so beautiful, I really couldn't bring myself to be disappointed. Huge, fluffy, slow falling flakes. Standing outside felt just like watching a snow globe. From the inside. There was almost no wind, almost no one outside. Just gentle, peaceful snow drifing down through the street lights.

And of course, when it snows, the temperature warms up. Something to do with cloud cover trapping in heat, if I understand correctly. Kind of like a local quilt in the sky. I mean, it wasn't actually warm, but the temperature rose from right around zero degrees to the mid 20s. Which felt very nice.

Then this morning while I shovelled the driveway, Tabby played in the snow. She had a great time throwing snow onto where I had just scraped it off. And making a snowman. It was difficult convincing her to come inside. But after a good cry about it we shared some hot cocoa, looked at pictures of her playing in the snow and she's happy again.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Pizza Delivery and the Law of Large Numbers

Random pizza delivery thoughts because that's what I'm thinking today.

Being the "on call" driver hasn't been a big deal most nights because mostly it hasn't been busy enough for the "on call" driver to come in. Both last night and tonight, though, I was called in. Which is a good thing. I like the hours. Tonight was a lot of work. I was on call from 6-9pm. At about 5pm, while Jackson and I were helping an older lady from church carrying her Christmas decorations from her basement upstairs, the manager calls me in. So I hurry up and finish, skipped dinner and got in about 5:45. Tonight was the first major snowstorm of the year. Roads were awful, drivers were sliding all over, it was cold and we were very, very busy. I finally got home about 10:45.

Keeping track of some things while delivering has been a wonderful confirmation of the Law of Large Numbers. That's the law in probability theory that states that if you perform a number of trials, say n trials, for example, the average result as n approaches infinite will approach the calculated expected value. Which basically means things average out over time. The classic example is tossing coins. If you flip a coin 3 times, you may get 3 heads in a row, i.e. 100% heads, 0% tails. In fact, it's likely enough that if you try a bunch of tests of 3 coin flips each, it will eventually happen. However, the longer you flip the coin, the closer you will get to 50% heads and 50% tails. If you could flip the coin forever, you would get exactly 50% heads and 50% tails.

I average 3 deliveries per hour. $2.50 tip per delivery. Just under 4 miles per delivery. I understand how averages work, so I expect that some days vary from those numbers. But over time, that's what I get. And I'm very impressed with how close I get to those numbers pretty much every day. Today for example, in my five hours at work I took 15 deliveries and drove 55 miles. I would have expected to get $35-$40 dollars, but today of all days, weather and driving conditions notwithstanding, I was stiffed five times. I only got $29 in tips. That's what a $.50 drop in the tip average means. It means I got paid about $1.50 per hour less than normal. That's a big deal on low income wages.

Do a little math because, you know, math is fun and all. Assume the other 10 deliveries were normal, which they seemed to be. Recognize that the resulting $2.90 per delivery average occurs only if you exclude all tips of $0. We can calculate that, normally, I could expect to not get tipped about 2 deliveries out of 15. We just need a theorem defining some number, X > 2 that is considered to suck. If 5 > X, we can claim to have mathematically proven that tonight, indeed, did suck. I don't have such a theorem, though, so you're just going to have to take my word for it.

On the upside, it was a beautiful night. The air literally seemed to glow. I assume it has to do with the city lights reflecting off the new fallen snow, or off dense, low hanging clouds, maybe some combination of the two. Or I don't know. Something like that. In any case, it was so bright out that I could see address numbers even when porch lights were left off. That was just kind of a corollary benefit, though. What was really impressive was driving through the city with that new fallen snow radiance. It was very, very pretty.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The Probability Exam

Apparently I have fans. So I'd better write something. I appreciate the kick in the butt. Even if it was anonymous.

I had quite the time signing up for the probability actuarial exam. The exam in in January, so I figured I'd register for it a couple months ahead of time. So I searched, and searched for ways to sign up online. On soa.org I found a page for online registration, but it only listed registration for the November exam. Which was closed. I found the registration deadline was December 9th, but as much as I looked, I couldn't find any way to register for it.

As we got closer to the end of November I actually tried to contact people. I sent e-mails to the "contact us" link on soa.org. Found an e-mail for the president of the Wisconsin Actuarial group and asked him how to sign up. No responses. So I just found myself hoping that onine registration for January's exam would open up once November's exam was done, i.e. after 11/30.

Sure enough, 12/1, online registration opened up. 12/1 - 12/9 seems like kind of a small window to me, but who asked?

In any case, I'm signed up now. Class finishes up next week. Now I just have to find some sample exams.