Supreme Court Justice Antonin ScaliaDaily Intel caught wind of a California Lawyer interview with US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia where he proclaims New York pizza “is infinitely better than Washington pizza, and infinitely better than Chicago pizza.”  I may be biased to New York pizza as well, but that is a debate I’ll save for another day.

It gets really interesting when he says, “You know these deep-dish pizzas—it’s not pizza. It’s very good, but … call it tomato pie or something.”  While an argument can certainly me made that deep-dish pizza is almost a casserole, I think the folks down in Trenton (where Scalia was born) have already claimed the name tomato pie, referring to a round pie with the sauce on top.

Hopefully Slice will chime in on this.

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Washington DC R Conferences and author of R for Everyone.

As many people are aware two nights ago was a total lunar eclipse that occured on the winter solstice, a pretty rare combination.  I won’t go into the math behind the eclipse or the solstice or discuss the rarity or physics of the event.  I just want to show off these great pictures.  Early Tuesday morning my friend John (who is not a professional photographer) and I climbed up to the roof of my building with his pro camera and gear armed only with many layers of Under Armour and North Face and hot chocolate.

We took probably a hundred pictures, but these are the two he sent me.  They were taken with a high end Canon DSLR with a powerful telephoto lens and a tripod.  I’m not certain of the specifics, but we used a middle-sized aperture setting and long exposures, ranging from 4 to 30 seconds.  Next up I want to mount this thing to a telescope.

He also took a bunch of pictures on a behind-the-scenes tour of Grand Central that I find breathtaking.

One more pic after the break. Continue reading

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Washington DC R Conferences and author of R for Everyone.

For the past few weeks Time Out New York‘s Dating columnist, Jamie Bufalino, has been fielding letters discussing the ratio of homosexual to heterosexual questions he answers.  The readers suggested that disproportionate attention is paid to Gay and Lesbian issues compared to the Gay and Lesbian proportion of the general population.      

Jamie rudely called his readers “ass-wipes” and repeatedly told them to “remove your head from your ass.”  He also professed to have “no idea what the percentage is of gay/bi versus straight issues that end up in the column.”  

One question and response:  

Q I see statistics that show NYC to be 6 percent gay, lesbian and bi, and yet in “Get Naked” you feature letters from them almost to the exclusion of heteros. Why the preoccupation with them in your column? It doesn’t seem right or logical. As one of the other 94 percent, I am disappointed and offended weekly.   

A All I can say is: You’ve got your head up your butt. Just in the past month or so, I’ve answered letters from a straight guy with a weird fetish that suddenly stopped delivering the jollies it used to, a straight guy who was juggling a woman from the Ukraine and a woman from Jersey, a woman who had an issue with sticking her finger up her boyfriend’s butt, a 19-year-old woman who was getting pressured to have sex with her boyfriend, and on and on. If, for some reason, you happen to be obsessing over the gay and bi questions and not acknowledging the straight ones, that’s your issue, not mine.  

And another:  

Q I always read your column to see if I can learn something and just for shits and giggles. The one thing that has always bothered me is your preoccupation with gay and bi problems. Gays and lesbians get their own special section of three to four pages!  

A First of all, dude, you sound like one of those total ass-wipes who believes that gay people somehow have all these special privileges that straight people aren’t entitled to. Honestly, I have no idea what the percentage is of gay/bi versus straight issues that end up in the column, because it doesn’t matter. If you removed your head from your ass, you’d realize that so many sexual issues are universal and that you can learn something from all sorts of people who don’t fit into your specific demographic.  

When confronted with the data he once again reffered to a “head lodged up [a] rectum” and suggested the reader was “paranoid.”  

Q As a statistician I am disappointed by your response to a question in the November 4 issue [TONY 788]. The reader wrote, “I see statistics that show NYC to be 6 percent gay, lesbian and bi, and yet in ‘Get Naked’ you feature letters from them almost to the exclusion of heteros. Why the preoccupation with them in your column? … As one of the other 94 percent, I am disappointed and offended weekly.” You responded by citing individual examples of heterosexual questions you’ve fielded, which is not a valid form of proof. I went through about ten months’ worth of “Get Naked” columns on the TONY website and found that approximately 19 percent of the questions were from gay (15 percent) or lesbian (4 percent) readers. Whether or not that percentage is representative of the general population is not my concern. I just feel that Jamie should have his data correct and not write, “You’ve got your head up your butt.”  

A I seriously cannot believe I am still getting letters about this. Okay, Mr. Disappointed Statistician: If you don’t want to come off as someone who has his head lodged up his rectum, it would be an awesome idea not to leap to the defense of some jackass who claims I cater to homo letters “almost to the exclusion of heteros” and then point out that straight issues actually make up a full 81 percent of the subject matter here in “Get Naked.” What I want to know is, why are you even keeping score? Are you really that insecure about the amount of attention heterosexual sex gets in the media? If so, that’s both laughable and sad. This is the last time I’m addressing this, so here’s my final bit of advice to you (and your like-minded brethren): Stop being so paranoid.  

Since Jamie is so rude to his readers and clearly doesn’t have any sense of the data, I thought I’d take a look at the numbers.  Results after the break.   

Continue reading

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Washington DC R Conferences and author of R for Everyone.

Ed Tufte
Ed Tufte

The other week I finally made it to the Ed Tufte exhibit in Chelsea.  The gallery is a collection of his art and not about data, though as he tells it data is not important, but information is and that his art conveys information of all kinds.  Going on a Saturday means you’ll get a tour from the artist himself.  Getting to hear him describe his art and the way the eye and mind see it is really fascinating.

We had a chance to briefly chat about data (how could I resist) and he reinforced the notion that the medium, or the code or graphics, don’t matter.  He “would use sock puppets to get his point across” if that was necessary.  Something that al data visualists should keep in mind.

The day was even more exciting for me because he autographed my copy of Envisioning Information and I became mayor of the gallery on Foursquare.

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Washington DC R Conferences and author of R for Everyone.

Data Mafia Shirt

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Washington DC R Conferences and author of R for Everyone.

Last Wednesday I made a trip to Di Fara in Midwood, Brooklyn.  Since that place is well covered and lauded I won’t talk about the pizza, as amazing as it is. 

I gave Dom a copy of my thesis (pdf) on NYC pizza and he loved that his place was one of the few pizzerias mentioned by name (along with Lombardi’s and Otto Enoteca, two of my favorites) in the paper.  My friend captured these great photos and I’m extremely thankful to Dom for letting me in his kitchen. 

And to make the trip all the more surreal, Avenue J was lined with lulav and etrog vendors trying to clear out stock before Sukkot started.  The juxtaposition of Di Fara and the surrounding Orthodox neighborhood was striking and really shows the beauty of New York City. 

Gallery of photos below.

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Washington DC R Conferences and author of R for Everyone.

After years of waiting a new Artichoke Basilles our dreams have been answered.  The new spot, which hasn’t even been updated on the website yet, is at 17th and 10th opened this weekend.  Unlike the original location this one has seats and wait service and only sells pies, albeit smaller than the originals.  There is a side shop where they sell slices, but I didn’t venture in there.

The pie, seen below in the blurry iPhone shot, is just a smaller version of the pies at the original shop and were just as tasty.  One pie was too much food for a friend and me, so figure one pie ($17) for 2.5 to 3 people.

Additionally, they have a larger selection of pies and non-pizza food, such as salad and the sorts.  They don’t have beer or liquor yet, but should soon.

Updated (September 29th, 6:27 PM):  Slice Review.

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Washington DC R Conferences and author of R for Everyone.

I’m a few days behind on my posts, so please excuse my tardiness and the slew of posts that should be forthcoming.

A-Rod finally reached 600 homeruns a couple weeks ago.  While that may have relieved pressure on him, now people are looking toward Jeter’s 3,000th hit.  The Wall Street Journal ran a piece predictingthat Jeter should hit the 3,000 mark around June 6th next year.

They looked at his historical numbers and took into account the 27 other players to hit that number and determined that Jeter should get a hit every 3.66 at-bats next season.  I’m not sure what method they used to calculate 3.66, but I would guess some sort of simple average.  Then, based on how many hits he needs (128 at the time of the article), his average number of at-bats per game, the average number of games he plays a season and the Yankees typical schedule, they determined the June 6th date.

I don’t really have much to add other than that this seems like a solid method.  What do the sabermetricians think?  By the way, that looks like an awesome cast.

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Washington DC R Conferences and author of R for Everyone.

Eye Heart New York has a post with a graph showing the distribution of health code violations and the letter grades they received.  Kaiser at Junk Charts takes the original data and makes a few graphs of his own.  Based on those visualizations it seems that there is not much difference by borough or by cuisine.

This is similar to a system in LA and Singapore, though something tells me an ‘A’ in NY is still only a ‘B’ in Singapore.  The picture below is from an ‘A’ restaurant in Singapore which was so clean that I had no problem eating off a banana leaf.

New Yorkers, known for being tough, might not be deterred even by ‘C’ grades.  Commenters on Serious Eats seemed to relish eating in a ‘C’ joint as it lends greasy, authentic goodness to a place.

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Washington DC R Conferences and author of R for Everyone.

Both the Journal and the Times reported on a studyabout New York City traffic which someone has called the “most statistically ambitious ever undertaken by a U.S. city.”  That just sounds awesome to me, both as a statistican and a pedestrian.  According to the report, New York is one of the safest cities in America to travel in but trails a number of major European and Asian cities.

One takeaway from the report is, that contrary to common belief, taxis are responsible for very few accidents.  This was always my feeling since cabbies are the experts of New York City streets and are under heavy scrutiny from the police and T&LC.  They have more incentive to be alert and cautious than private drivers.

It also found that Manhattan is more dangerous than the other boroughs.  I hope that doesn’t encourage congestion pricing though.  That’s an idea I still can’t get behind.

The Bloomberg administration is likely to use the report to further its (popular) street reforms.  As a biker, I like the dedicated bike lanes that use a column of parked cars–and sometimes a concrete median–to separate cyclists from moving traffic.  As a pedestrian it’s the countdown cross signals that are already in place near Union Square and Greenwich Avenue.  Hopefully Union Square will also be getting its own pedestrian plaza.

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Washington DC R Conferences and author of R for Everyone.