17th biggest drop in history!

Brownie points for Tom. According to that same article, the drop was the 17th biggest drop on a percentage basis. Imagine that headline: "17th biggest drop in history!!!!" Not as panic inducing eh? Back in the depression the Dow has dropped by more than 20% (and by the way we survived that as a country didn't we?).

This goes with the principle of making sure one understands what's relevant: absolute or relative. In this case, what's relevant is how much money an individual person gains or loses. OK the Dow drops 777 points. Do I lose 777 dollars? No. Dow drops 5%? Does that mean I lose 5% if I own the Dow? YES!

Here's another illustration, this time where absolute matters but relative should not. If you were hungry and wanted to buy a candy bar, which sells in the vending machine for $1. You go up there, and they've raised the prices to $10. Would you still buy the candy bar? Heck no, you'd go to another vending machine or you'd just go without it. But let's say you wanted to buy a 42 inch LCD TV. You go to Best Buy, and it's selling for $1,523. You're about to buy it, but then a customer there says "Wait, don't buy it... I know for a fact they're selling it for $1,513 at Circuit City." Would you be inclined to go to Circuit City? Probably not. But yet it's the same $10.

Biggest drop ever!!!!!

One of my pet peeves is the use of statistics for shock than for an actual measure of the real world. The sub-line on Yahoo today was "Dow fall 777; biggest drop ever."

Class, can someone tell me why that's deceptive?

BREWERS WIN BREWERS WIN BREWERS WIN

NOW I can talk about it! Brewers are in the playoffs for the first time in my memory! The Brewers ride CC Sabathia for a big win today, Ryan Braun hits the game winner in the 9th inning, the Mets lose, and the Brewers are playing in game 1 on Wednesday!

Williesblog

So I'm celebrating the new NFL season at Willie's Sports Bar in Mason... Pretty neat place to hang out to watch a game, with wireless access and everything. I always wondered what a place would look like if you designed it from the ground up to be for fantasy leaguers and sports fans. It's getting there here at Willie's, but the tables aren't set up at an angle where I can see the TV, so I've improvised.

Dave's been reading a book that I recommended, The Innovator's Solution. It talks about how we should design products for "jobs to be done" instead of "how many features can I add to this thing." So if we were to think of what the "job to be done" for someone like me is, how would you design Willie's different? My jobs to be done: I need a place to watch my football teams, who I can't see at home bc I don't live in Wisconsin (or Dallas).

One miscellaneous thing... on Yahoo fantasy baseball, they have profiles for each player. This is my favorite profile picture, it's a player named Adam Jones of Baltimore:

Trying to hang on to the dream...

I just read Karen's blog entry with pics from her vacation in Toronto, and it was really neat to see them! So that inspired me to post some from my trip to St. Thomas. It also is a neat way to relive the good times...

Here's my sister and I just after the wedding, which was done between rain showers on a terrace with a beautiful view of the ocean:

Here's me playing the violin during the last night we had dinner together as a large group (Mom wanted to make the most out of my violin lessons):


Here's the tuna I caught when we went deep sea fishing:

And here's the tuna plus another fish someone else caught, after it was prepared by the hotel chef. Man it looks so good right now, but that night it came out after we had already had dinner so I was stuffed.


Another wonderful trip...

Last night in St. Thomas

It's the last night in paradise... it's dark here, except for one streetlight. In front of me is sand and the darkness of the ocean, and the great sound of waves crashing into shore. It is this environment that I end the 2nd of my 2 beach vacations!

We've been really lucky... there are 3-4 hurricanes and storms swirling around this area, but the worst weather we've gotten was today, when it rained for 3 hours. It was a little different here than Hawaii, as there are like 25 people here (half belong to my family, including a grandma from LA and a cousin/aunt from Taiwan).

Other unique things I didn't mention:

Brady chose his dad as his best man. (Can you see how this wedding became a tear jerker really quick?)
Linda and Brady took pictures in their wedding attire in the ocean the next day. It sounded really off the wall, but as they were taking them, it made a ton of sense!

So this is it! Maybe I'll get to blog a bit more as I have a couple of decently long layovers. See you stateside.