Brian Clegg's Blog, page 49

Smart queues, dumb queues and Metro queues

A shop - contains checkout queuesI've done a fair amount of work on queuing in my time, which is why I was very doubtful to see a Metro headline 'Why you're better queuing behind one person with a full trolley than people with baskets.' And I had good reason to be doubtful, because the argument was, well, total rubbish.

'Do you queue behind the person with a trolley filled to the brim, or do you wait behind the line of people in the "10 items or fewer" queue?' the article asked. Then it introduced Dan Meyer 'a former high school maths teacher' (a queuing expert, then), whose research tells us that transactions have a fixed time of 41 seconds, plus 3 seconds per item scanned.

'This means,' says the article, 'that queuing behind a line of people who have fewer things will take longer than a couple of people with full trolleys'. Again, I'm afraid, this is total garbage.

The article points out that one person buying 100 items will take 5 minutes 41 seconds, while four people with 20 items each will take 6 minutes 44 seconds to go through the till. This is true but irrelevant.

There are two big problems with this argument. Because of that 41 second overhead time, you can get through more items in the same time from a single trolley than lots of baskets. But I have never been in a basket queue with more than three or four people in front of me. And clearly they aren't going to have '20 items each', if it's a 10 items or fewer queue. Doh! Those four people with 10 items each (in practice some will have fewer than 10) will, according to Meyer's own numbers, only take 4 minutes 44 seconds to get through - so queue behind them, not the bloke with the full trolley.

The other problem with Meyer's analysis is that I can't think when I last went into a supermarket without self-checkout for baskets. These operate on the much more sophisticated single queue, multiple server system. So there may be five or six people in front of me in the queue - but we are waiting for 6 or 20 checkouts at my nearest supermarket (6 one end of the store, 20 the other*). Which means in practice you will be unlikely to have to wait for more than a few seconds to start scanning.

Three lessons then. The media, even the Metro, should think more about a maths or science based story before they publish it. Secondly, just because someone's an ex-maths teacher doesn't make him a queuing guru. And finally don't queue behind people with big trolleyfulls unless there's something seriously wrong with the basket checkouts.

* This is a much more interesting problem of which end to go to, as it is often quicker to go through the 6 checkout end, as far fewer people use it.

Shock, horror, BBC News in Star Trek ignorance probe

I generally ignore people who moan about how the quality of BBC News reporting is going downhill, but now they've reached a new low. They quote actor Robert Picardo on how Star Trek inspired scientists, naming him as the ship's doctor in the original series - there's even a picture of Dr McCoy... who unfortunately was played by DeForrest Kelley, who died in 1999. Ricardo was in the much later (and lesser) Voyager series.

You can listen to Picardo's words of wisdom by clicking through here, or even better you can take a look at my book Ten Billion Tomorrows on the relationship between science and science fiction which explores just how various works of science fiction - with Star Trek one of the big hitters - has influenced scientists, just as much as SF is, of course, influenced by scientific discoveries.

In defence of Victoria

Image from Wikipedia I would like to defend Victoria. This is not the railway station, nor the monarch, but the ITV drama of that name. There have been moans about the accuracy of the series. Now some of these are based on historical supposition, where a degree of drama has been added for the sake of being, well, interesting. So, for instance, Victoria certainly hung on Melbourne's every word... but probably didn't have a crush on him (he didn't look a lot like Rufus Sewell). You can take this kind of thing either way - I'm sure even Wolf Hall took the occasional liberty with historical accuracy to make the drama work better.

No, what really gets my goat are the two allegations: Victoria is too tall and she's too pretty. Or to be precise, former Dr Who sidekick Jenna Coleman is. I find these moans both irritating and frankly sexist. At 5 foot 2, she's all of three inches taller than Victoria. Big deal - she's still quite short, and that's enough. She's an actress, not a stand-in. Why sexist? When Michael Sheen played Tony Blair in the film The Queen, I don't remember anyone saying, 'But Michael Sheen is too short' - yet he's more than three inches shorter than Blair.

Similarly with the 'pretty' remark (not that Sheen/Blair are pretty). Some have said that the comparison is unfair, because we're thinking of the old Victoria - at this age (the character was 18/19 in the first two episodes) she was quite pretty. Now it's perfectly true that Coleman is prettier than Victoria was, and specifically it is true that Victoria had a rounded face, where Coleman's is quite pointy. But again, Coleman an actress playing someone, not a look-alike. I mean, good grief, if Robert Redford could play Bill Bryson who I'm sure would agree about himself that he isn't exactly a matinee idol, anything goes. It's a ludicrous complaint.

Victoria isn't great literary drama - it's a Downton Abbey replacement as warm Sunday evening fluff. So it may not always be historically spot-on. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with the casting. And it's far better than the alternative on BBC1.

Warlords of Llantatis review

I was puzzled to receive an offer of a review copy of Warlords of Llantatis as I'm not a fan of swords and sorcery fantasy, but I was reassured that it was in reality science fiction - which it is, despite being virtually a fantasy.

The keyword here is 'virtually'. The majority of the book is set in the (fictional) total immersion fantasy adventure game that the book is named after. Like Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash , what we get is a mix of the main characters' experiences in the real world and in the game, which is far more detailed than is currently possible - so this genuinely is science fiction. In parts this works brilliantly, in parts there are issues.

The book starts with page after page of fictional non-fiction, describing the writing of the virtual world system and the setting up of Warlords. This background is quite interesting (especially if, like me, you have an IT background) but not as engaging as fiction should be, making it a risky opening. Then, however, Warlords segues into an intriguing story, though you have to cope with the main characters starting off as unpleasant slobs before becoming good guys.

At the centre of the plot is a mysterious nameless younger character who appears in the game - although his identity is obvious to the reader after a page or two, the central quest to find out who he is and where he is located in the real world before he dies in the virtual world is very clever and genuinely engaging. In fact, the writing generally works well, but the verbal interchanges are far too long and can get tedious - at least a quarter of the book could probably be trimmed.

Part of the problem here is that this is a humorous thriller - and the humour, sometimes ladled on very thickly, reuses the basics weaknesses of derivative adventure gaming over and over. Oddly, the game in the book doesn't make much of the Welsh name and associations (which extends to Dylan Thomas classics like the place name Llareggub). Instead, it relies more on intentionally heavy-handed cod-Tolkien combined with various other fantasy clichés (Amazonian female warriors, and a sparkly magical kingdom with dubious evil furry creatures, for instance). There are some great humorous lines - for example, I loved 'As your company's legal representative I advise against fun.' But a lot of the humour is decidedly basic and reliant on (mostly female) bodily parts.

The other issue is that Dominic Green, a Hugo-nominated SF author for his short story Clockwork Atom Bomb, piles in far too many plot lines. We have two sets of main characters who are thrown together, plus the differing intentions and special interests of the game's writers, the company that runs the game, a gang of rogue moderators, a North Korean despot, a Chinese company that sells in-game gold, Singaporean criminals, a police force, the FBI... just as the book is too long, there are too many threads for sanity and it's easy to get lost or to lose interest occasionally.

This is a shame, as the central storyline about finding the mysterious character is excellent, as is the trickster AI character Kayoki, who really comes into his own towards the end of the book. With some strong editing this could become a top-notch piece of science fiction. As it stands, you either have to be tolerant, or to be prepared to skip through some of the more excessive parts. The best of it was good enough that I've given it four stars - but without that edit, it only really deserved three.

Warlords of Llantatis is available from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com (only on Kindle).

Science writing at its best

I suspect both of my blog readers know about the Popular Science book review site that I run www.popularscience.co.uk ... but just in case you don't, it has been running for around 14 years now and - as the name suggests - contains reviews of popular science books.

If you're looking for some interesting/inspiring reading about science from black holes to the nature of life it's well worth a visit.

What's more, sign up for the free mailing list during September and (along with existing subscribers) you can enter a competition to win one of three free books from my catalogue - you even get to choose your own title. What's not to love?

What are the chances?

Randomness is something that most of us struggle to understand - it's one of the main reasons I wrote my book Dice World to explore the influence of randomness and probability on our lives. I try to make randomness something that's better understood by the reader.

However, not everyone has read the book (yet) and confusion caused by randomness often comes up in the media. So, for example, in a recent article on jury service entitled What Are You Chances of Being Called up Again and Again we were regaled with the statement

Plenty of people go through their lives never being summoned; others are called repeatedly. Is selection really, as the government says, entirely random, or is something else at work here?

Now, to be fair to the writer of the article, Patrick Collinson, he does go on to explain that, yes, it is entirely random. But there is definitely a strong implication in that statement that the selection process can't be random if some people get repeated calls and others none.

This is an indirect example of the process known as clustering. We tend to assume that randomness means that the results are well spread out, but actually something that occurs at random tends to crop up in groups, with gaps. When a series of events happen one after the other (clustered in time) or at the same location (clustered in space) we tend to assume that there is a linking cause, that this can't be a totally random occurrence. Historically this effect might have resulted in, say, a cluster of illnesses being blamed on a witch - these days (in many countries, at least) it's more likely to be a phone mast, power lines or a nuclear plant that gets the blame. This doesn't mean, of course, that clusters can't have a cause - however, just because there is a cluster doesn't mean that it has a cause.

So, if selection is truly random, we should expect some people to be called for jury service many times and many never. (Me included, so far.) A useful analogy is to think of taking a tin of ball bearings and dropping them on the floor. You would be really surprised if the balls were all neatly, evenly spread out across the floor. It seems perfectly reasonable that in reality some will be clustered together and there will be gaps with nothing. That's because we don't expect causality here. But in any circumstance with a little more room for causality, such as jury selection, our brains lose their grip on randomness, look for conspiracy and get it very wrong.

Grace Paley - The Collected Stories - review

Traditional holiday reading involves the huge, wrist-bending saga, but my favourite books to take away on a break are collections of short stories. There's something about the ephemeral nature of short stories that fits perfectly with that strangely detached-from-reality feeling of being on holiday. This year I'm opting for three very different collections: Sandlands by Cambridge academic and novelist Rosy Thornton, Rogues - a mostly fantasy collection edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, and here  The Collected Stories of Grace Paley .

A while ago on Facebook some of my friends with far more experience in good fiction than me were enthusing over the short story writing of Grace Paley, so I determined to give her writing a go. I'm glad I did - but, if I'm honest, the stories just don't work for me and I gave up about two thirds of the way through. I had two problems with these mostly short short stories set in a seedy period New York (contemporary when written) - the style and the content.

The style problems were a mix of language and Paley trying a bit too hard to be 'literary'. As far as language goes, the experience of reading this was a little like reading Shakespeare - it takes a while to tune into the style - the use of words here just isn't quite normal. All too often I'd have to read a phrase two or three times and would still think 'I haven't a clue what that means.' Because I was having to concentrate on every word, the reading experience was less enjoyable than usual and it also meant that I found myself going into editing mode: 'That's a comma splice - how could she do that! There shouldn't be a capital letter after that colon!' Perhaps worst of all, I hate the affectation that Paley regularly exhibits of writing speech without inverted commas. Sometimes the writing verged on the arch with statements such as 'Nighttime came and communication was revived at last by our doorbell, which is full of initiative.' No it's not.

As for content, I'll be honest I'm not particularly interested in what it was like to live in the poor parts of New York back in the day, but more critically it's the type of content that doesn't do it for me. I'd draw a parallel with a run-in I had with BBC Radio 4's series The Listening Project. Some while ago I was on Radio 4's Feedback programme moaning about The Listening Project, which I find deadly dull. I called it Big Brother for the chattering classes, as it replaces well-written material with the wonders of 'reality', but in a very middle class way. The content of Paley's stories provides soap opera for the same kind of audience. And that's just not something that engages me.

I don't deny that these are well-crafted stories, or that some will find them wonderful. I hope you will. They just don't work for me.
The Collected Stories is available from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

Can language trump logic?

In his book Professor Stewart's Horde of Mathematical Treasures , Ian Stewart describes a number of incidents of mathematicians struggling with ordinary life. In one we find Abraham Fraenkel, a mathematics professor 'of German origin' getting on a bus in Tel Aviv that was still in the bus station 5 minutes after it should have left. According to Stewart, Fraenkel waved a timetable at the driver, who replied 'What are you - a German or a professor?' to which, he tells us Fraenkel replied 'Do you mean the inclusive or, or the exclusive or?'

Interestingly, in English at least (this may not apply in other languages), the professor's snippy logic was beaten by linguistics, as his question was not necessary.

Fraenkel's question distinguished the exclusive or (where something has to be one thing or the other but can't be both) from the inclusive (where it can be either or both). And had he received the question from the bus driver in writing, with a slightly different wording, he would have been justified in asking the question. 'Are you a German or a professor?' written down could be inclusive or exclusive. However there was that opening word. It would have been clearer had the driver said 'Which are you' - this would force the exclusive. But even 'What are you' implies the exclusive.

However, the question wasn't written down - and interestingly, in spoken English we distinguish the inclusive and exclusive or by inflection. So had the driver said 'Are you a German or a professor?' and meant it to be inclusive he would have kept the word 'professor' at a fairly balanced or a rising pitch. If he had meant it to be exclusive, he would have said 'professor' with a falling pitch.

It's not really language trumping logic, as I asked in the title, but rather the interesting point that a phrase, particularly a spoken phrase, can contain more information than that of the basic interpretation applied by Abraham Fraenkel.

Rogues - Review

Traditional holiday reading involves the huge, wrist-bending saga, but my favourite books to take away on a break are collections of short stories. There's something about the ephemeral nature of short stories that fits perfectly with that strangely detached-from-reality feeling of being on holiday. This year I'm opting for three very different collections: Sandlands by Cambridge academic and novelist Rosy Thornton, The Collected Stories of Grace Paley, and here Rogues - a mostly fantasy collection edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.

Given the respective genres the editors write in, I assumed that Rogues , a fat collection of short stories edited by George R. R. Martin and  Gardner Dozois, would be a mix of fantasy and SF stories, but in fact the 21 stories (mostly fairly long, in the 30-50 page range) are predominantly fantasy with a couple of crime stories and only one solidly science fiction piece.

All but a couple of the stories are good, but I was surprised to find that the ones that captivated me most were the 'straight' stories, particularly a highly entertaining tale by Bradley Denton involving the theft of a high school sousaphone and a dodgy teacher's attempts to muscle in on the action. As is the case with all the stories, the main character is something of a rogue - but also like most of them, a likeable one.

Although I'm not a great fan of swords and sorcery fantasy books, I found the short stories (which are mostly in this style), perhaps because of the tongue-in-cheek rogue main characters, highly entertaining, and in a couple of cases I noted down an author for further reading. I'm wondering if this sampler effect is why the book is such amazingly good value - a 900+ page paperback for just £2. Whatever the reason it's a great read.

Interestingly, of the three big names in the book, only one came across well - this was Gillian Flynn, whose books I've never read, but who provides a thoughtful non-fantasy tale. The story I was most looking forward to was by Neil Gaiman - and this was a significant disappointment. I love urban fantasies, and Gaiman's Neverwhere is one of my favourite books. This story is situated in the same world and features that amiable rogue the Marquis de Carabas, but it very much felt like a piece that was written because it had been commissioned - it just didn't work as a good short story.

The absolute low point for me was the George R. R. Martin 'story' that finishes the book. Even if you are a Game of Thrones fan (which I'm not), you might like to read this first to get it out of the way, as it is dire as a short story. It is to his books what the Silmarillion is to Lord of the Rings - essentially a set of background historical information but containing far too much 'history' and very little story. What it reminded me of most was that part in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when everyone is wet from the pool of tears and the mouse recites an extract from a truly dull history book as 'the driest thing I know.' It's exactly that kind of writing.

Don't let that put you off though - losing the Martin contribution still leaves over 850 pages of excellent, entertaining stories. Avoid this collection if you can't stand fantasy, but if you tolerate it, this is a fantastic (in every way) book.
Rogues is available from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

Wonderful things

Although most of my work remains in the non-fiction arena, I'm an enthusiastic writer of both crime and science fiction, and as far as SF goes, I have a number of short stories published. The journal Nature, which carried my story Wonderful Things, put together an interesting podcast, intertwining input based on my story and reflections on an opinion piece from Nature proper, both of which concern the very long-term future handling of nuclear waste.

You can read the short story here, and you can listen to the podcast here - the segment is only a few minutes long, accessed from the 'One million years from now' play button on the left hand side of the page once you've clicked through (see illustration to right).