An actual life update, for once. My much-discussed CTE Tester (CTE stands for Coefficient of Thermal Expansion, for those who care) officially came online yesterday, and I finished analyzing the first set of data today. The theoretical prediction for the value I was measuring was just a touch under 0.29, and the measured value was between 0.295 and 0.298, an error of 2.7%, which is well within the expected statistical noise of the measurement.
Needless to say, this is pretty good news. If Einstein could have gotten within 2.7% of his Grand Unified Theory, we'd lionize him as a pretty smart dude, not the abject failure that we remember him as now.
How does this affect you, Faithful Reader? Well, in the short run, it probably means I'll have to be taking data, which might reduce the working-hours frequency of my posts here. Not that I should be posting here at all during working hours, but I won't say anything if you don't. In the long run, after the system is automated, I will be doing a lot of button-pressing and walking away while my lovely computer runs the datataking and analysis process. More leisure time for me (click here for Ezra Klein's take on leisure time in the U.S.) Also, the fact that I am now the only one who knows how the hell this thing works ensures that I will keep my job for a little while longer now. The unofficial rule here is you have to go two years without accomplishing anything to actually get fired, so I guess my 2-year clock just got reset.
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1 comment:
OD,
As much as I'd like to share your enthusiasm about the CTE numbers, I fear your candid reporting of your research results struck another chord with me. It is the same one that gets triggered when you buy a refill card for your prepaid cell phone, to find out that only $9.75 out of the ten bucks is listed as 'available credit'. Or when you first plug in your brand new iPod and find out that the 2 gigs you paid for allow you only 1.95 Gb of storage. Both a little over 2% wrong, if you feel where I'm going...
Looking at your numbers, I notice that same bias (to use the technical term) which, although certainly within measurement precision, does not bode well for your machine's accuracy. Since you have only reported two observations here the 'statistical noise' might go down with time until you can clearly see the signal come out of the noise. All that requires is for you to repeat your measurement about N times over the summer, N of course being something not too far from infinity.
Anyway, if I buy my first Nintendo Wii in 2010 featuring a revolutionary new storage device that holds up to 10 Exabytes of games, and I get shorthanded by let's guess... 270 Gb... I know your number(s)!
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