rock stars
driftwood of the large tree type on Rialto Beach
Rialto Beach Sunset
Feeling glad that I don't live in Forks
headland trails
tide pools
Toleak sunset
kelp!
chillin' on the beach
Ferry ride back to Seattle
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Olympic Coast
I celebrated America's birthday on the Olympic Coast, camped at Toleak point with friends. We had sunny weather, campfires, amazing tide pools, sunsets, and coffee five times a day. Life was good.
rock stars
driftwood of the large tree type on Rialto Beach
Rialto Beach Sunset
Feeling glad that I don't live in Forks
headland trails
tide pools
Toleak sunset
kelp!
chillin' on the beach
Ferry ride back to Seattle
rock stars
driftwood of the large tree type on Rialto Beach
Rialto Beach Sunset
Feeling glad that I don't live in Forks
headland trails
tide pools
Toleak sunset
kelp!
chillin' on the beach
Ferry ride back to Seattle
Friday, June 24, 2011
Empirical confidence intervals, redux
Edit:
Evidently I've re-invented the wheel (yet again!).
There's nothing quite like spending an afternoon trying to get R to Plot What I Mean. In hopes of getting a paper off my desk and out the door, I got to revisit the overplotting conundrum previously presented. I wanted to plot this:
but allow the viewer some concept of the relative density of points near 0% error . There's way too much overplotting here to tell by eye. With only a little reflection, it was obvious solution I offered before was jingus, chiefly because of the sparsity the data (and their non-rectangular hull) prevented the 2D kernel estimate from working very well. You can see this in action if you a command that almost Plots What I Mean--smoothScatter, which uses a 2D kernel estimate to plot most of the data, then overplots outliers:
A kernel density estimator is too fancy for this problem. All that you really need to do is divide the abscissa into a grid that has enough points at each slice that taking the pth percentile of all the points in the slice gives you a decent estimate of the true value of the percentile there. This is easy to do with quantcut (make the slices with equal number of observations) or cut2 (make the slices with at least n observations). Then you can connect the pth percentile at each slice with linear or loess interpolation. I even cooked up a panel function that you can drop straight into your favorite lattice xyplot:
> xyplot(y~x, data=comp3, cex=.5, xlim=c(-5, 1e3), ylab="Percentage error", xlab=expression(lambda), ylim=c(-100, 100), panel=panel.confbars, npt=15, conf=.05)
Make npt larger to get a denser interpolation grid, or smaller to get smoother interpolation. conf gives the 100-2*conf % confidence interval you wish to bound, so the default is a 95% confidence interval.
panel.confbars = function(x, y, npt=25, conf=.025, ...){
require(gtools)
panel.xyplot(x, y, ...)
xcut = quantcut(x, q=seq(0, 1, length.out=npt))
xval = quantile(x, p=seq(0, 1, length.out=npt))
yval = matrix(unlist(tapply(y, xcut, quantile, p=c(conf, 1-conf))), nrow=2)
lconf = approxfun(xval[-1], yval[1,])
uconf = approxfun(xval[-1], yval[2,])
panel.loess(xval, lconf(xval), type="l", col="red", lwd=2)
panel.loess(xval, uconf(xval), type="l", col="red", lwd=2)
}
Evidently I've re-invented the wheel (yet again!).
There's nothing quite like spending an afternoon trying to get R to Plot What I Mean. In hopes of getting a paper off my desk and out the door, I got to revisit the overplotting conundrum previously presented. I wanted to plot this:
but allow the viewer some concept of the relative density of points near 0% error . There's way too much overplotting here to tell by eye. With only a little reflection, it was obvious solution I offered before was jingus, chiefly because of the sparsity the data (and their non-rectangular hull) prevented the 2D kernel estimate from working very well. You can see this in action if you a command that almost Plots What I Mean--smoothScatter, which uses a 2D kernel estimate to plot most of the data, then overplots outliers:
A kernel density estimator is too fancy for this problem. All that you really need to do is divide the abscissa into a grid that has enough points at each slice that taking the pth percentile of all the points in the slice gives you a decent estimate of the true value of the percentile there. This is easy to do with quantcut (make the slices with equal number of observations) or cut2 (make the slices with at least n observations). Then you can connect the pth percentile at each slice with linear or loess interpolation. I even cooked up a panel function that you can drop straight into your favorite lattice xyplot:
> xyplot(y~x, data=comp3, cex=.5, xlim=c(-5, 1e3), ylab="Percentage error", xlab=expression(lambda), ylim=c(-100, 100), panel=panel.confbars, npt=15, conf=.05)
Make npt larger to get a denser interpolation grid, or smaller to get smoother interpolation. conf gives the 100-2*conf % confidence interval you wish to bound, so the default is a 95% confidence interval.panel.confbars = function(x, y, npt=25, conf=.025, ...){
require(gtools)
panel.xyplot(x, y, ...)
xcut = quantcut(x, q=seq(0, 1, length.out=npt))
xval = quantile(x, p=seq(0, 1, length.out=npt))
yval = matrix(unlist(tapply(y, xcut, quantile, p=c(conf, 1-conf))), nrow=2)
lconf = approxfun(xval[-1], yval[1,])
uconf = approxfun(xval[-1], yval[2,])
panel.loess(xval, lconf(xval), type="l", col="red", lwd=2)
panel.loess(xval, uconf(xval), type="l", col="red", lwd=2)
}
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Amadou and Ami do Senegal
For this post, we will be known as Amadou and Ami...Andrew and Erin being a bit hard to pronounce if you are Senegalese.
The last few weeks of our trip were spent in Senegal visiting our friend Emily and seeing the country. Emily has been working in Ngaraff as a Peace Corps Volunteer for the past 14 months and graciously hosted our trip. And by graciously, I mean it...walking more slowly so that our sand-challenged legs could keep up, put up with our attempts at French while teaching us some basic Wolof, and didn't even get upset when our camel trip was ruined by a bout of violent gastroenteritis (Ami 2: Amadou 0).
Our first day was spent in Dakar, with a trip to Ile De Goree, important historically in the Atlantic slave trade. Although most references show that a very small percentage of slaves from Africa went through Goree, there are still signs of a disturbing past. The most dramatic being the intact holding chambers: boat houses and the Maison de Esclaves.
Boat Houses - Where captured men were kept in conditions similar to what they would encounter on boats to the new world while working on the island. The colonialists did not want to waste money on shipping the weak, so this was done to weed them out.
Dubbed the "Door to nowhere", boats would park on the outside of the Maison de Esclaves in order to load up slaves to take across the Atlantic.
Captured and recaptured several times by the French, Portuguese, Dutch, and British, signs of religious, cultural and architectural differences are seen on the island. Ile de Goree is now a haven for artists, who come to make and sell their paintings, carvings, and jewelry.
View of Dakar from Ile de Goree
cafe Touba stand
Resident Artist's housing on Goree
Next, we headed out down the coast of Senegal, amoung the delta and salt flats, to Palmarin. Joined by another volunteer who had lived in Palmarin for the last three years, we instantly felt at home in the village where we spent time playing in the ocean, building sand castles, taking a pirogue out camping, kayaking, and eating delicious freshly caught fish.
Taking the village kids swimming.
Crossing the lagoon to the beach.
Pirogues (brightly colored wooden boats) stopped to bring in fish outside of Palmarin.
Couldn't this be a Grant's ad? Convieniently comes in a triangular bottle that won't roll around when boating.
Oops...migratory bird island with a dog...birds are not too happy.
Campsite on a sandbar.
Kayaking in the mangroves.
Side trip to check out some Baobobs (which are, by the way, one of my most favorite trees).
Inside the Baobob.
After a great time on the coast we started the day-long journey inland to the Linguere region, to Emily's village. Emily, by the way, is a Wolof speaking badass, who negotiated her way through garages with style and fierce determination. A few sept place and minicar rides later, we landed in Ngaraff.
The people of Ngaraff greeted us with open arms, and lots of greetings:) Ever the gracious hosts, they tolerated my amateur millet pounding skills with a smile, allowed us to share dinner from their bowls in the evenings (even slaughtered a chicken), and were full of encouragement even if we couldn't communicate more than a hello and names in Wolof.
Ngaraff was also getting ready for a huge baptism party. This was to be the party of the year, with crazy amounts of food, women dressed to the nines, and even a generator to power the tunes. We spent the day making greeting rounds, watching the ladies dance-spar, holding cute children, and helping slice things to be cooked. And, I have to say, we brought the house down with our Toubab dancing skills. The crowd went wild when Amadou started his crazy-eyed booty shaking.
The ladies cooking up a huge Baptism feast. It is amazing how much food is generated in a few hours on wood burning fires.
Dressed to the nines, slicing some onions.
kidnapping...
Goat + Chicken + Cat = World Peace
We took a stroll into the bush after the Baptism party. The desert always strikes me as such harsh, hot, and challenging place to live that I often find myself wondering why people call it home, but sometimes it can catch you off guard with its beauty...especially around sunset.
Sunsets in the Djolof
Acacia thorns.
More pretty clouds at sunset.
Our last day in Linguere, we rose early and headed out into the bush on bikes to meet up with other PCVs. What was to be a hour bike ride turned into a 4 hour debacle as we were tested with flat tire after flat tire. Good thing Amadou and Bigue are pros at changing tires. The other volunteers patiently waited on us, and we had a great day in the village, watching a teaching lesson on making mosquito repellant lotion from local plants, and hanging out with a Senegalese-American-Canadian ex-pat who is setting up a homestead in the village of his birth.
Flat tire episode #1.
Somebody's been eating garbage...
Chariot ride back to the bikable trail
Waylaid by Ami's intestines, we spent a day lounging about before heading to St Louis for some beach time, jazz festival time, and debauchery. Our last few hours back in the capitol were spent shopping for and cooking a decidedly delicious meal of lasagna, broccoli, and ice cream.
Not wanting to leave, we trudged back to the airport. I felt extremely happy that I had been able to share this experience with such great people. We had the trip of a lifetime, and have Emily to thank for showing us the country, helping us communicate, and sharing her beautiful personality. I have already started to plan a trip back.
The last few weeks of our trip were spent in Senegal visiting our friend Emily and seeing the country. Emily has been working in Ngaraff as a Peace Corps Volunteer for the past 14 months and graciously hosted our trip. And by graciously, I mean it...walking more slowly so that our sand-challenged legs could keep up, put up with our attempts at French while teaching us some basic Wolof, and didn't even get upset when our camel trip was ruined by a bout of violent gastroenteritis (Ami 2: Amadou 0).
Our first day was spent in Dakar, with a trip to Ile De Goree, important historically in the Atlantic slave trade. Although most references show that a very small percentage of slaves from Africa went through Goree, there are still signs of a disturbing past. The most dramatic being the intact holding chambers: boat houses and the Maison de Esclaves.
Boat Houses - Where captured men were kept in conditions similar to what they would encounter on boats to the new world while working on the island. The colonialists did not want to waste money on shipping the weak, so this was done to weed them out.
Dubbed the "Door to nowhere", boats would park on the outside of the Maison de Esclaves in order to load up slaves to take across the Atlantic.
Captured and recaptured several times by the French, Portuguese, Dutch, and British, signs of religious, cultural and architectural differences are seen on the island. Ile de Goree is now a haven for artists, who come to make and sell their paintings, carvings, and jewelry.
View of Dakar from Ile de Goree
cafe Touba stand
Resident Artist's housing on Goree
Next, we headed out down the coast of Senegal, amoung the delta and salt flats, to Palmarin. Joined by another volunteer who had lived in Palmarin for the last three years, we instantly felt at home in the village where we spent time playing in the ocean, building sand castles, taking a pirogue out camping, kayaking, and eating delicious freshly caught fish.
Taking the village kids swimming.
Crossing the lagoon to the beach.
Pirogues (brightly colored wooden boats) stopped to bring in fish outside of Palmarin.
Couldn't this be a Grant's ad? Convieniently comes in a triangular bottle that won't roll around when boating.
Oops...migratory bird island with a dog...birds are not too happy.
Campsite on a sandbar.
Kayaking in the mangroves.
Side trip to check out some Baobobs (which are, by the way, one of my most favorite trees).
Inside the Baobob.
After a great time on the coast we started the day-long journey inland to the Linguere region, to Emily's village. Emily, by the way, is a Wolof speaking badass, who negotiated her way through garages with style and fierce determination. A few sept place and minicar rides later, we landed in Ngaraff.
The people of Ngaraff greeted us with open arms, and lots of greetings:) Ever the gracious hosts, they tolerated my amateur millet pounding skills with a smile, allowed us to share dinner from their bowls in the evenings (even slaughtered a chicken), and were full of encouragement even if we couldn't communicate more than a hello and names in Wolof.
Ngaraff was also getting ready for a huge baptism party. This was to be the party of the year, with crazy amounts of food, women dressed to the nines, and even a generator to power the tunes. We spent the day making greeting rounds, watching the ladies dance-spar, holding cute children, and helping slice things to be cooked. And, I have to say, we brought the house down with our Toubab dancing skills. The crowd went wild when Amadou started his crazy-eyed booty shaking.
The ladies cooking up a huge Baptism feast. It is amazing how much food is generated in a few hours on wood burning fires.
Dressed to the nines, slicing some onions.
kidnapping...
Goat + Chicken + Cat = World Peace
We took a stroll into the bush after the Baptism party. The desert always strikes me as such harsh, hot, and challenging place to live that I often find myself wondering why people call it home, but sometimes it can catch you off guard with its beauty...especially around sunset.
Sunsets in the Djolof
Acacia thorns.
More pretty clouds at sunset.
Our last day in Linguere, we rose early and headed out into the bush on bikes to meet up with other PCVs. What was to be a hour bike ride turned into a 4 hour debacle as we were tested with flat tire after flat tire. Good thing Amadou and Bigue are pros at changing tires. The other volunteers patiently waited on us, and we had a great day in the village, watching a teaching lesson on making mosquito repellant lotion from local plants, and hanging out with a Senegalese-American-Canadian ex-pat who is setting up a homestead in the village of his birth.
Flat tire episode #1.
Somebody's been eating garbage...
Chariot ride back to the bikable trail
Waylaid by Ami's intestines, we spent a day lounging about before heading to St Louis for some beach time, jazz festival time, and debauchery. Our last few hours back in the capitol were spent shopping for and cooking a decidedly delicious meal of lasagna, broccoli, and ice cream.
Not wanting to leave, we trudged back to the airport. I felt extremely happy that I had been able to share this experience with such great people. We had the trip of a lifetime, and have Emily to thank for showing us the country, helping us communicate, and sharing her beautiful personality. I have already started to plan a trip back.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Just one touch
After spending about 20 hours close to facilities (Gastroenteritis: 1, Erin: 0), I needed to get out for some fresh air. We were in Essaouira, a fortressed city on Morocco's Atlantic coast, complete with beach and wind (more of the second).
view from the Essaouira ramparts
We headed out along the beach, walking to where the river empties into the waves to the south. After saying no to many men selling type II spice cake, and avoiding being beheaded by beginner kite surfers coming to shore, we hit the area of the beach where Moroccans peddle camel rides.
Hello, Madame? French? English? German? You want to ride my camel?
No, thank you.
Yes, you want to ride my camel.
La, shukran.
He is a special camel, nicest to ride. I will not push....but, just touch my camel. Touch the head. Just a little touch. It is the nicest camel to touch the head of. Touching my camel will make you have a nice time, and if you touch you will want to ride.
(Now my interest, especially in the words of this conversation, are peaked.)
I promise, my camel is nice and is the best camel to touch. Just touch the head. Please. Just Touch. Touching is the most fun thing that you can do here in Morocco. Just one touch.
Shake my head and smile.
Okay. But you would like to touch. I know this without any doubts. You will enjoy it more than you know.
He said these words with the most determination in his certainty than anyone I have seen over the age of 4. And, even though I had no interest in touching camels at the time, my mind started an argument with the invisible camel man on my shoulder. Maybe I would like just one touch, who knows.
Touch my camel's head. Like this (demonstrating). Just one touch. I promise it will change your life...
I think what impressed me the most was his belief in his product. He would've won the 110% award in salesmanship school. If he didn't really believe that just a touch of his camel would want me to take a ride over the sand dunes into the sunset, then he was the best imposter I've met. I didn't touch the head of a camel (no matter how delightfully dirty that sounds), but his certainty was impressive. It has been a long time since I have been as certain as this man was about the head of his camel than I have been about...well, anything.
view from the Essaouira ramparts
We headed out along the beach, walking to where the river empties into the waves to the south. After saying no to many men selling type II spice cake, and avoiding being beheaded by beginner kite surfers coming to shore, we hit the area of the beach where Moroccans peddle camel rides.
Hello, Madame? French? English? German? You want to ride my camel?
No, thank you.
Yes, you want to ride my camel.
La, shukran.
He is a special camel, nicest to ride. I will not push....but, just touch my camel. Touch the head. Just a little touch. It is the nicest camel to touch the head of. Touching my camel will make you have a nice time, and if you touch you will want to ride.
(Now my interest, especially in the words of this conversation, are peaked.)
I promise, my camel is nice and is the best camel to touch. Just touch the head. Please. Just Touch. Touching is the most fun thing that you can do here in Morocco. Just one touch.
Shake my head and smile.
Okay. But you would like to touch. I know this without any doubts. You will enjoy it more than you know.
He said these words with the most determination in his certainty than anyone I have seen over the age of 4. And, even though I had no interest in touching camels at the time, my mind started an argument with the invisible camel man on my shoulder. Maybe I would like just one touch, who knows.
Touch my camel's head. Like this (demonstrating). Just one touch. I promise it will change your life...
I think what impressed me the most was his belief in his product. He would've won the 110% award in salesmanship school. If he didn't really believe that just a touch of his camel would want me to take a ride over the sand dunes into the sunset, then he was the best imposter I've met. I didn't touch the head of a camel (no matter how delightfully dirty that sounds), but his certainty was impressive. It has been a long time since I have been as certain as this man was about the head of his camel than I have been about...well, anything.
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