c4countdown

Well, I think Graeme definitely answered his critics yesterday. A blindlingly superb performance has seen him soar to the #1 spot on the leaderboard and just 173 points off entering the 800 club too. Will he make it a magnificent 7 today

I'll be around with the Robinson Recap later.

TALAPOIN was a nice equaller in the PALATINE round, and HIATUS in the TIGHTS round. EDACIOUS as a beater in the WIDES round

I like having John Culshaw in the corner, impressionists are always good guests. Well played again Graeme.

DAGOES in the DOSAGE round

Second numbers was painful to watch. I can imagine doing something similar if I was on.

Ben Hunter wrote:Second numbers was painful to watch. I can imagine doing something similar if I was on.

He delivered his solution so confidently that for a moment I thought I was the one who'd cocked up.

Graeme Cole wrote:

Ben Hunter wrote:Second numbers was painful to watch. I can imagine doing something similar if I was on.

He delivered his solution so confidently that for a moment I thought I was the one who'd cocked up.

If he had paused after the 7 times 9 and was quick witted he could saved it by taking the 2, 3 and 4 away before doing the times 10.

Ben Hunter wrote:Second numbers was painful to watch. I can imagine doing something similar if I was on.

That's exactly what I thought. The amount of times I think "Yup, 9x8 is 63" or similar, before slapping myself on the head 10 seconds later, not uncommon - and that's on Apterous when I have a chance to correct myself, let alone under the bright lights and pressure!

Dan Abrey wrote:

Ben Hunter wrote:Second numbers was painful to watch. I can imagine doing something similar if I was on.

That's exactly what I thought. The amount of times I think "Yup, 9x8 is 63" or similar, before slapping myself on the head 10 seconds later, not uncommon - and that's on Apterous when I have a chance to correct myself, let alone under the bright lights and pressure!

The thing to do is not be smug. Use all the time. Double-check, triple-check. Make sure you've got the numbers down right, make sure you've got the target down right. Check your workings again, see if you can find a quicker or different way. And then it won't happen. Or at least if you do make a mistake, it'll be as part of a much more complicated solution.

Also: don't forget to buzz on the conundrum. Horribly easy to forget this.

Jon Corby wrote:Also: don't forget to buzz on the conundrum. Horribly easy to forget this.

Also don't forget that you are supposed to know the answer if you do buzz. Horribly easy to forget this. Especially if you sound like Zippy.

I didn't really mean that Justin was smug either actually, I liked him. I just think it gains nothing not to use all the time.

Jon Corby wrote:I didn't really mean that Justin was smug either actually, I liked him. I just think it gains nothing not to use all the time.

And if you have more than one solution it saves all that embarasing passing papers across for checking. The only time I didn't check carefully, because it was only one of several possible sixes, I was DUMPEd (only one D in selection).

I thought Justin's disallowed ^RESAMPLE is another case of the Oxford corpus being well out of step with usage. Over 3,000,000 Google hits, and in common usage in computer graphics and sound processing, and apparently in statistics too.

RESAMPLE not being good is a travesty, unless it's only hyphenated, and even then most statisticians call it resampling, without the hyphen. It basically means what it sounds -- when you have a small data set, you can "resample" in order to get a better idea of the distribution.

Steve Balog wrote:RESAMPLE not being good is a travesty, unless it's only hyphenated, and even then most statisticians call it resampling, without the hyphen. It basically means what it sounds -- when you have a small data set, you can "resample" in order to get a better idea of the distribution.

It isn't in the ODE3, not even with a hyphen. As soon as Justin said it I thought "yes, that'll be in". I was lucky I missed it, as I'd probably have offered it too had I seen it.

Well in that case whoeever updated the ODE would fail out of any graduate level stats program. Resampling, while made much easier with computerised stats programs, isn't exactly a new concept, at all (it's also good if you use the CSW).

Steve Balog wrote:Well in that case whoeever updated the ODE would fail out of any graduate level stats program.

Pfft. They can just stick with "sampling with replacement" (which I think is what I usually say, come to think of it).

Only just got round to this. I thought the same about RESAMPLE, but a big danger area is always words from your own specialist area. Just because a word is in common usage in your life doesn't make it generally so. Kevin Thurlow was always trying to persuade us about SULFUR and OXYGENS.