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Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

cs.cmu.edu

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Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#451

Post by thaumasiotes »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #407
repiret wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mice used to be expensive enough to troubleshoot.

For myself, I can't remember a time when a mouse cost more than an hour of an IT guy's time. I suppose a good office-computer mouse in 1990 would cost $100 ~ $200 (say $350 today). In that case, yes troubleshooting it for a day would make sense, especially if it's not an isolated problem.

> For myself, I can't remember a time when a mouse cost more than an hour of an IT guy's time.

This is not a sensible comparison to make. Support staff have a lot of free time. They have to, because they're support staff -- if they were always busy, then whenever a problem arose, it would be impossible to get support.

So to have the IT department playing with the mouse is unlikely to cost the company anything. If something comes in that's more important, the mouse problem will be put aside. If they have nothing better to do, they can play with the mouse.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#452

Post by TeMPOraL »

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #248
jonhohle wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it’s sunny, my wife’s car can’t open the garage door, and my car requires getting extremely close. Once the sun goes down, we can both open the door from the street. It turns out our solar panels (or the optimizers, or the inverter) emit radio frequencies that interfere with our garage door opener. When the sun is out and they are producing energy, the interference is stronger than the homelink garage door opene…

Some clip on ferrites on the inverter cables might help. If you have any amateur radio neighbours they'd probably love to help you with a project like this.

If they had a HAM in direct neighborhood, I imagine said HAM would already pay them a visit - the interference from the inverter is likely not constrained to the ISM band.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#453

Post by TeMPOraL »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #437
kawhah wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also ridiculously implausible is that the supermarket keeps vanilla ice cream in a completely different location in the store.

Aisle caps commonly feature a product that would ordinarily be found alongside a bunch of closely-related products somewhere else in the store. But I don't think I've ever seen a refrigerated aisle cap.

Obviously, they'd put the most popular flavor way at the back of the store, and the least popular flavors at the front. The store is not in the business of maximizing throughput of customers - quite the opposite, they want customers to spend more time walking and getting lost between shelves, as this maximizes the amount of wares moved.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#454

Post by hi41 »

teddyh wrote: post #444
hi41 wrote: post #442

Is this story trustworthy worthy? I see it is from cmu.edu which is great but it is under the humour directory. Just wanted to make sure.

Nope, it’s an urban legend: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cone-of-silence/ >

Thank you for your comment. Your comment should be the topmost as it offers a necessary correction. I liked the story so much that I favorited it and wanted the story to be true. It made me sad initially to know that the story is not true. But I am happier now since I that I know accurate information. Thanks much.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#455

Post by kawhah »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #437
kawhah wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also ridiculously implausible is that the supermarket keeps vanilla ice cream in a completely different location in the store.

Aisle caps commonly feature a product that would ordinarily be found alongside a bunch of closely-related products somewhere else in the store. But I don't think I've ever seen a refrigerated aisle cap.

..nor would the featured product simply be one flavor of ice cream, as opposed to, say, all the Ben & Jerry's.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#456

Post by thaumasiotes »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #453
thaumasiotes wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aisle caps commonly feature a product that would ordinarily be found alongside a bunch of closely-related products somewhere else in the store. But I don't think I've ever seen a refrigerated aisle cap.

Obviously, they'd put the most popular flavor way at the back of the store, and the least popular flavors at the front. The store is not in the business of maximizing throughput of customers - quite the opposite, they want customers to spend more time walking and getting lost between shelves, as this maximizes the amount of wares moved.

I believe the aisle caps are bid for, and then arranged by, the manufacturers. The store just sells them the space.

The manufacturer is unlikely to see a problem with putting a display of very popular products right at the front of the store where people can't help but see it.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#457

Post by mschuster91 »

liotier wrote: post #433
98codes wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar problem, but in the opposite direction. My cable internet speeds at home were fairly good (for the US, anyway), but sometimes would absolutely bottom out. Not dead, just glacially slow. After troubleshooting everything under the sun, I came to realize that the problems would happen not when it was raining per se, but when it was heavily foggy or misting. Normal to heavy rain was fine. Called the cable…

A customer's DSL connection dysfunctioned every evening during December - but worked fine the rest of the year... Culprit: interference from nearby Christmas decorations leaking EM all over the place. A customer's DSL connection dysfunction's frequency increased mornings and evenings. Culprit: the lift's electric motor leaking EM all over the place. A bunch of DSL connections degrade when traffic increase... Crosstal…

It's not like fiber doesn't have its own weird failure modes. Favourite one I heard was shoddy belowground work while crossing a street. No problem with ordinary car traffic, but heavy trash haul trucks could interrupt the link.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#458

Post by jacamera »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #314
jjbinx007 wrote: post #49

We had a similar problem at work in the late 90s. A member of staff reported that their mouse would stop working between certain hours of the day. It had apparently been okay in the morning, stopped working over lunchtime then started again later. On some days it would work perfectly all day long, but on others it would stop working between those hours. The biggest clue was it would always work perfectly on overcast…

I'm amazed an IT department would troubleshoot deeply enough to figure out it was the thin plastic letting in interfering light on sunny days. I would have guessed they'd shrug at the first sign of trouble, swap it out with a known-working mouse and mark the ticket resolved... unless all the replacement mice were thin plastic too, I suppose.

I'm assuming it was a trackball mouse from the description. The OP said it was cheap so I don't think cost was an issue but from my experience some employees are very particular about their peripherals (don't blame them one bit!). If they're important enough (or maybe just nice enough) I could absolutely imagine spending the time to make sure their preferred device is working properly.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#459

Post by xpe »

mkwarman wrote: post #345
xpe wrote: post #267

This story is a playful example of confounding: > In causal inference, a confounder (also confounding variable, confounding factor, extraneous determinant or lurking variable) is a variable that influences both the dependent variable and independent variable, causing a spurious association. Confounding is a causal concept, and as such, cannot be described in terms of correlations or associations. The existence of con…

This is an interesting explanation, but wouldn't `I` influence `T` rather than the other way around? Since the type of ice cream determines the amount of time taken in the store.

My comment did two things (but they were somewhat muddled). It: (a) laid a particular model; and (b) offered {explanations/claims} of causality. But unfortunately it said nothing about (c) experimental design.

I'll start with (c). Attempting to talk about a model in isolation from its experimental design can be misleading, as it ignores the context that gives the model its interpretive power and validity. In this case, a good experimental design must include a sufficiently diverse sample of people to account for variation.

Regarding (b), depending on the person, the influence could flow either way between `I` and `T`, to varying degrees.

- Example of `I->T`: One person might come into the store strongly preferring one type of ice cream (`I`) and be willing to take time to look for it (`T`)

- Example of `T->I`: Another person might come into the store in a hurry and be motivated to procure the closest ice cream flavor.

Regarding (a), no model is 'true' but some are better than others for particular purposes.

- To the extent that prediction is the key goal, confounding variables don't usually matter.

- But to the extent that _statistical inference_ is the key goal, there are many techniques for teasing apart influence.

Unfortunately, too often in machine learning contexts, the word "inference" refers to the process of using a trained model for _prediction_. Yikes. This contrasts sharply with the term's use in statistics. The field of statistics got this one right, even as ML techniques have taken off spectacularly.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#460

Post by Shorel »

dotancohen wrote: post #281
danaris wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that's not actually true: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spanis...

You know, I've heard that rebuttal, but I've been told this anecdote of the car's notoriety by family members from Columbia and more recently from a friend from Argentina. So perhaps "no va" and "Nova" are pronounced differently, and perhaps the car did sell well, but the Spanish-speaking peoples most certainly did find the term "no va" in the car's name. You should know what they say about the Mitsubishi Pajero, too…

It's the same difference as between papa and papá. We are trained to perceive different accented syllables as different words with different meanings.
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