The stats masters thread

[petrusbroder]

Well folks, I have had a lot to do with TAS' November project: four projects to keep tabs on, some dozen or so crunchers who switch on or off during the month, less than stable stats platforms in the wild, computers going down for seemingly no reason at all, kids wanting to go shopping for Christmas presents.

In December, we have the traditional Folding@home Holiday Season Race and the - soon to be [in a few years] - traditional New Year Challenge in World Community Grid.

This will be some very interesting times, and I thought of posting in this thread all the good and less good things that happen during such a month.

I am thinking of writing at least once a day - when I am at home or when I have a computer available. There will probably be some days when I will not post - but have some patience - I'll be back. I will not be doing very much of spellchecking, so enjoy the errors too - there may even be some fun ones.

Please feel free to comment, to post, to lament, to laugh, to cry and - I hope - to enjoy my posts.

Lets get started!

 

[petrusbroder]

December 1st, 2008:

Well, the race is started. The teams are posted, but there is not a good enough balance between them. OTOH, that does not matter: the recruitments, assimilations, borghing will start soon enough - and then any precious balancing act will just fall apart.

I am very grateful that my TeAm mates are such a generous kind - they don't seem to mind. They'll do their best to upset my plans for the stats by changing teams or such. And that is part of the fun. TurtleBlue turned in and I was glad to see him. I hope that e.g. Cupcak3 and some other folders will join too. And where is TAndy? He wanted to join, but I can not find him in the stats. Anyone knows his name in F@H?

The question is what stats to start on. The easiest part is of course to start them at the time point the crunchers join. OTOH it would be fun to go back to the start of the race, e.g. December 1st, and to reconstruct the production from e.g. the Extreme OC site. But that would kind of throw the whole race into confusion. Well I better grade some more tests ...

Friday I got 264 graduating exams to grade: all of them written by soon-to-become licensed MDs. The exam I am grading is about psychiatry of the basic kind: is the patient drunk or psychotic? Each paper takes some 15 - 20 minutes to grade. I have to admit that I wrote the questions and case descriptions, but I never imagined what kind of answers the soon-to-be doctors would come up with:

"If the patient is not pulling my leg and if he really thinks that he has the brain of his deceased kid brother in his freezer, then i suppose the patient lacks some solid foundation in reality and may be psychotic. On the other hand, he could be a psychopathic murderer who killed his kid brother and in really put his brain into the freezer ..."

The question is about differentiating between a delusional idea and a nightmare...
Sorry to say, the guy had no idea what he was doing so I had to fail him.
I have to admit, that some of the answers are hilariously funny (if you have a very black sense of humour). Most answers are very well thought out and correct, but some make my either ROFLMAO or cry.

So between the grading and getting the stats for the first day of crunching there is only limited time to sit down, have i nice cup of tea, listen to a sonata by Beethoven - where is my iTouch? Did Anna, my oldest, grab it again? I am going to put some ice cubes into her bed ...

23 more days to Christmas Eve.
24 more days to Christmas Day.
30 more days to New Years Eve.
31 more days to the end of the Folding@home Race.
31 more days to the end of the WCG New Year Challenge.

 

[Rudy Toody]

My kid brother's brain is getting freezer burn.

 

[Spacehead]

What i want to know is... what's the TAS project of the month? F@H? WCG? Both? Something else?
For my weekly stats thread...

 

[petrusbroder]

Originally posted by: Spacehead
What i want to know is... what's the TAS project of the month? F@H? WCG? Both? Something else?
For my weekly stats thread...

Both: for those who do not fold it is WCG New Year Challenge,
for all others the 3rd Annual Folding@Home Holiday Season Race.

 

[petrusbroder]

December 2nd, 2008, just after midnight:

Just some minutes ago one of the three main fuses blew - 35 A. OK, it has probably not been changed for ages and I had one at home ... all stuff in the computer room went down except the computers themselves and one monitor, the switches, the router and the Ethernet-Fibre-converter. The UPS-solution works OK.
I did not really need that. It takes only 5 minutes to fix, but I had to reset all the clocks (VCR, home cinema, satelite reciever, a number of clocks - and that was the PITA.
More stats tomorrow! Good night ...


22 more days to Christmas Eve.
23 more days to Christmas Day.
29 more days to New Years Eve.
30 more days to the end of the Folding@home Race.
30 more days to the end of the WCG New Year Challenge.

 

[caferace]

Originally posted by: Rudy Toody
My kid brother's brain is getting freezer burn.

If you cook it up now, it should be OK.

-jim

 

[Rudy Toody]

Originally posted by: caferace

Originally posted by: Rudy Toody
My kid brother's brain is getting freezer burn.

If you cook it up now, it should be OK.

-jim

He is still using it. I keep telling him that for the winters in Washington State he needs a warmer hat. At least he could put a knit cap over the tinfoil.

He says he's not worried. Since he became a Republican he hasn't been using much of his brain, anyway.

 

[petrusbroder]

December 2, 2008:

The first set of stats are done. It was much less of a problem than I thought because I found last year's Excel spreadsheet. It certainly helps ...

TAS is ahead by some 62 K, which is not that much considering that 448K were crunched. The difference is thus less than 13.3% of all the points crunched. Some crunchers have not yet delivered results - [TA]Assimilator1 will have his two WUs done soon and PCTC2 has problems with his servers ...

My comps are crunching WCG, but I think I will save some for later when TAS needs it. I also have to get some powerful GPU ... and that will be fun to configure and to install.

The day was not too bad:
I had lectures (for 4½ hours) for some 120 nurses, doctors, social workers about the nature of the addicted brain. They were curious, asked a lot of questions (which I really enjoy) and the moderator had to step in and shut them up when time was up.
Then we had a couple of interesting meetings - and I did not fall asleep, which sometimes happens, usually late in the afternoon, especially when the meetings are boring, which happens way too often.

Some days ago, one of my more senior collaborators died. She was a really good nurse, less than 55 years young, had a sudden and very large heart attack while she slept. We had a memorial service today and all of us in my unit will attend her funeral in 10 days. All of the collaborators (including me) were sad. We miss her - she was a very warm, kind, but thoroughly professional person. The patients miss her too, some 250 notes of condoleances were on a table in her old office. It will be painful to clean it out on Friday. She left behind her a 26 year old son and a 29 years old daughter. :brokenheart:


22 more days to Christmas Eve.
23 more days to Christmas Day.
29 more days to New Years Eve.
30 more days to the end of the Folding@home Race.
30 more days to the end of the WCG New Year Challenge.

 

[Insidious]

Sorry to hear about the loss of your collegue Peter.

She sounds like a special lady who made the world better while she was here.

-Sid

(Thanks for the race update!)

 

[rabrittain]

Sorry for your loss, Peter.

I'm 56, and it is often hard for me to understand why some people live to be older than 85, while someone with a similar diet and exercise history dies in their 50s.

My thoughts are with you.

 

[petrusbroder]

December 4, 2008:

Urrrk, 114 more papers to grade ... OK it is a lot down from 269, but still ... it is so booooooooooooooooring. There are only so many variations of correct answers to a given medical question: "What is the preliminary diagnosis? Give at least two more reasonable diagnoses and discuss your choice." The first 25 answers are OK, and then the repeat session starts. The problem is not only the correct answers, but the wrong ones. When you read the 30th time the same wrong reasoning, expressed almost in the same words you get really sick and tired of that.

I tried to track that answer down and found an "unauthorised" set of notes, which are quite wide spread on the internet. In those notes there were the errors I was looking for, and it is so obvious that the medical students and interns took the easy way out: Google and some non-critical reading. When I mailed the author I got a very impolite answer back and he would not remove the errors: "If my readers are so stupid, ignorant and lazy, if they take what is so obviously wrong for true, then they do not deserve a passing grade and they should not work as physicians either".

In a way I agree, but it is not only those who get hit ... but a lot of innocent readers who can not differentiate between right and wrong because they never went to medical school... They get their hope up and will be frustrated. I could rant on and on and on and I am quite upset and angry.

The stats are the pleasure of my day. Things that work out (at least now), and which are more or less predictable. Similarly to the weather: cold, cloudy, snowing, dark (we have light between 10 am and 2 pm). It will the same way today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow .

To all of you, gentle readers, I wish a really good day, with joy and happiness, peace and love, good food and enough sleep.

20 more days to Christmas Eve.
21 more days to Christmas Day.
27 more days to New Years Eve.
28 more days to the end of the Folding@home Race.
28 more days to the end of the WCG New Year Challenge.

 

[BlackMountainCow]

I know where you're coming from, Peter. Had to grade an English exam over the weekend, too. Not nearly as many as yours, but still enough to keep me busy for 20 hours. At first you laugh about wrong answers - if they have some wit - but after while I was all like: "Who the heck taught these guys and why the heck do I have to grade these exams?" But hey, that's just part of the job, isn't it?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: petrusbroder
December 4, 2008:

To all of you, gentle readers, I wish a really good day, with joy and happiness, peace and love, good food and enough sleep.

I wish... Not sleeping is the bane of my existence.

It is interesting to read how someone else's day goes by, event by event. I don't know why; it just seems so--interesting. Definitely a great idea Peter.

 

[biodoc]

Originally posted by: Insidious
Sorry to hear about the loss of your collegue Peter.

She sounds like a special lady who made the world better while she was here.

-Sid

(Thanks for the race update!)

 

[petrusbroder]

December 5, 2008:

Thank God it's Friday! Thank God I have no on-call-duty this week end! I only have to finish grading the exams - and should not take more than 10 - 12 more hours ... Boring hours though. A good cup of tea, some calming music in my earphones, that should do it.

We have had lousy weather during the past two days: at night it is freezing cold, during the day just warm enough to melt some of the snow. The result: in the morning the roads are ice canes and all the skill is needed to keep the car on the tarmac. I have - this morning - seen more than 15 cars "off-road"; i.e. I stopped counting after 15. The distance i drove was 6.5 km (=4 miles), that is one car in the ditch every 470 yards ... Now the streets are very wet and slushy and there is no way you can get across a street without getting wet and dirty. The weather forecast predicts cold weather for the week end (-15 - -25ºC). I really prefer that ...

The crunching is going well. As I have noted in some post ages ago, two of my comps are down: one C2D and one AMD 64 X2. I have decided to repalce them with two quad core comps (Q6600), but have to wait until the prices are more normal: the exchange rate has made the computer parts some 20 - 25% more expensive, and just now I can not - in good conscience - buy those parts (mobo, CPU, PSU, 2 of each). Christmas, you know ...

Speaking about Christmas ... no, I'll speak about that later.

19 more days to Christmas Eve.
20 more days to Christmas Day.
26 more days to New Years Eve.
27 more days to the end of the Folding@home Race.
27 more days to the end of the WCG New Year Challenge.

 

[Insidious]

:beer:

-Sid

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: petrusbroder
Some days ago, one of my more senior collaborators died. She was a really good nurse, less than 55 years young, had a sudden and very large heart attack while she slept. We had a memorial service today and all of us in my unit will attend her funeral in 10 days. All of the collaborators (including me) were sad. We miss her - she was a very warm, kind, but thoroughly professional person. The patients miss her too, some 250 notes of condoleances were on a table in her old office. It will be painful to clean it out on Friday. She left behind her a 26 year old son and a 29 years old daughter. :brokenheart:

Sorry for your loss

 

[petrusbroder]

December 5, 2008, Part 2:

Speaking about Christmas ... I kind of fear those three days: there will be a lot of travelling for some of the kids: they will be celebrating with us, and then with their father, and then with their paternal grandparents. Some of the kids don't have any grandparents anymore and they really feel it. They would like to have an extended family and don't. The others are kind of sick of having to travel around ...
Well, we will do our best to get the logistics in order. It will involve at least 150 miles of driving on small roads in winter and darkness.

Now some more good news: TA_andy is back on line, he will be crunching for The Folders. I am glad to see him back again.
The folders have recruited an other cruncher and thus may soon catch up with TAS. Lets hope for a good race ...

Today?s numbers look better for the Folders ?


19 more days to Christmas Eve.
20 more days to Christmas Day.
26 more days to New Years Eve.
27 more days to the end of the Folding@home Race.
27 more days to the end of the WCG New Year Challenge.

 

[petrusbroder]

December 7, 2008:

At last the exams are graded. FeEx has picked up the box ( 14.8 kg = 32.63 lb). All done. 32 hours of extra work.
Wednesday or Thursday they'll all get their letters - some will be very happy, some others very disappinted.
I'll do the stats later today - I got to sleep ---

Some time later - se the "edited"-time-stamp ...

The stats are done. It was a lot of fun, especially considering the development in production: 3 yeras ago we crunched in the whole race some 2 million points ... that will soon be done in this race. That is - I assume - by the GPU-clients and PS3-clients. That is an awesome development.

The week end is almost over. It has been a busy two days, a lot of work and some fun too. The stats, I mean. The most important part did not get done yet - resting and sleeping. That is on the agenda now ...

Good night!

I'll be around tomorrow!

17 more days to Christmas Eve.
18 more days to Christmas Day.
24 more days to New Years Eve.
25 more days to the end of the Folding@home Race.
25 more days to the end of the WCG New Year Challenge.

 

[petrusbroder]

:beer: Cheers! :beer:

 

[petrusbroder]

December 9, 2008:

Back again after a full day ... in the morning driving some 175 miles, then attending a parlamentary hearing for 5 hours and then driving 175 miles back ...
We started when it was dark, and came back when it was dark. While driving we all realised that the sun would not rise more than a width of the hand over the horizon ... we are in the north of Sweden: the city of Luleå is less than 50 miles south of the arctic circle ...
The colors were just wonderful: the pink sun cast the light on the underside of the few clouds, shone on the dark green pines and on the white snow - the colors were mild, gentle and just beautiful. It gave us a very peaceful feeling.

The way home was all in darkness. No colors at all. Just a lonely moose standing large and majestic a few yards from the road: the king of the neverending northern woods.

Tomorrow I'll have to travel to Stockholm; the pick up is at 05:20 local time. Way too early for my taste. I'll probably post on Thursday. Take care and crunch or fold or both!

Oh, BTW: the stats are posted.

15 more days to Christmas Eve.
16 more days to Christmas Day.
22 more days to New Years Eve.
23 more days to the end of the Folding@home Race.
23 more days to the end of the WCG New Year Challenge.

 

[Insidious]

I actually think I might have enjoyed that ride.

I'm glad you have the wisdom to notice the sunrise and that lonely moose.

-Sid

 

[petrusbroder]

Originally posted by: Insidious
I actually think I might have enjoyed that ride.

I'm glad you have the wisdom to notice the sunrise and that lonely moose.

-Sid

Well, I did enjoy the ride.
It was still a very long day.
And the moose was so large, and so close to the road it scared the passengers in the car - they were talking and - of course - not paying attention. I saw the lighter underside of the animal some 40 - 50 m in advance, and then he turned his head and the eye lighted up ...

 

[Drsignguy]

That was very interesting Peter, Kind of puts thing in perspective. Peaceful, majestic..Ah the life in the northern parts of our world....

Btw, don't piss off the moose, they're mean! My sister-in-law knows this and she told me some interesting stories of her days living in Alaska...and here in Minnasota...


Anyway great reading, Thanks!