Some of you may be familiar with the work of William Gosset, though not his name.  Gosset was working for the Guiness Brewery about 100 years ago when he came up with the t-distribution.  However, he could not publish under his own name, so instead he used the name “A Student.”  Unfortunately for Gosset, the name stuck, and we now know that result as Student’s t-distribution.

Ok, great.  But are you familiar with the story of M. A. Poubelle?  A Google Scholar search shows that Marie-Antoinette Poubelle is the first-listed author of a number of papers, with an especially prolific period in the mid 1980s.  However, Mme. Poubelle does not exist.

It’s a story that seems to have been floating around grad student circles while remaining surprisingly absent from the web: the other authors of those papers were acknowledging the contribution of… their trash can.  Yes, “ma poubelle” is French for “my trash can.”

I propose a challenge to you publish-or-perish types out there: do something equally clever in a paper that you write.  Bonus points if it gets people to read your paper all the way through.  Super mega bonus points if it gets people to at least glance at your dissertation!

Let’s say you have high cholesterol, but you don’t have atherosclerosis.  Your doctor recommends you pop a pill, probably a statin, likely Lipitor.  Will that be beneficial for you?

Probably not.  On top of that, it represents an enormous expense for you and your insurance company.

Wait… what?  Yes, it turns out that taking a statin is unlikely to prevent you from having a stroke or heart attack.  The advertisements say as much, albeit in small print, but that hasn’t stopped numerous doctors from prescribing them to people whose cholesterol numbers are “too high.”  In fact, according to a survey of statin clinical trials undertaken by the Therapeutics Initiative at the University of British Columbia,

“If cardiovascular serious adverse events are viewed in isolation, 71 primary prevention patients with cardiovascular risk factors have to be treated with a statin for 3 to 5 years to prevent one myocardial infarction or stroke.”

Doesn’t seem like a very good return on investment to me.  What’s more, it seems that many of the people in these studies have poor diets and get little exercise; to my knowledge, a proper study comparing statins to improved diet and exercise has not been undertaken.

One other evidence-based pearl: treatment with stimulants (e.g., Ritalin)  of children diagnosed with ADHD appears to do little except make the children shorter and weigh less.

Of course, people continue to demand antibiotics to treat viral infections, so maybe they just don’t care about actual science.  (Ironic that I’d finish with an apocryphal statement, eh?)

Pop quiz: You’re observing a once-in-a-lifetime event.  There is plenty of professional media around, and their photos will be readily available afterward. What do you do?

1. Take a photo
2. Enjoy the moment
3. Miss it because the jerk in front of you spilled his drink on your shirt

All too often, people choose the first option.  Instead of enjoying the moment, they make a misplaced effort to take a snapshot.

I noticed this while watching the Obama inauguration today.  Throngs of people, cell phones and compact cameras held high, looking at LCD screens instead of what was right in front of their eyes.  Did they really think that they could get better photos than the professional photojournalists who shot with superior vantage points, superior expertise, and superior equipment?  Why distract themselves just to make an inferior product?

Some events are meant to be enjoyed, and others are meant to be recorded.  Similarly, there are many beautiful things in this world, but not all of them work well in the photographic medium. I find that if I attempt to split my attention between photography and enjoyment, both suffer.

The Grand Canyon is well known as a subject for photographs.  However, the images I captured during my time there were halfhearted.  I made a few, sure, but I made a conscious decision to stow my camera for most of my hike.  I was more concerned about experiencing the canyon, hiking between the rim and the river.  It was beautiful.  Attempting to capture that beauty would have ruined it for me.

Yes, I acknowledge the value of pictures in jogging memories.  In certain social situations, where I am one of the participants and there is no press corps standing by, I will take snapshots of my friends and me.  Even then, I am careful not to let photography become the focus of the event.  But a fleeting moment that is better covered by others? No.

Knowing when not to take photos can be just as important as knowing when to snap the shutter.

Ah, the things we do for love.

My legs hurt.  It’s a good hurt.  It’s the kind of hurt that makes one feel like something has been accomplished.

The cause?  After a two-year sabatical, I have returned to something I love doing: I played ice hockey on Monday.

It was a low-pressure environment, just two hours of pick-up hockey at a rink in Cupertino, CA (better known as the location of Apple’s headquarters).  I was nervous: Would I remember how to skate?  Would I be able to stop any pucks?  Would I be horribly outclassed?  Fortunately, everything came back to me, and everybody was close enough in skill level to make it fun.  I met not with great embarrassment but with great fun.  I plan to play frequently in the future, and I don’t plan to give it up again so long as I am physically able. Thus, a truth:

I never should have stopped.

I love playing hockey.  I harbor no illusions about my skill level; I simply play because I enjoy it.  When I moved to California, I convinced myself that I would not have time for both hockey and grad school.  I believed that the rinks were all too far away, and surely I wouldn’t be welcomed if I went.  All of that seems ludicrous now.  I’m still kicking myself for quitting.

Here’s the upshot: Don’t stop doing what you love, and if you’re not already doing it, start.

Life is too short to make compromises.  We all grow older every day, and our windows of opportunity for doing what we love are small.  Why wait?

Ask any photographer, and he will be able to recount in detail the photos that he missed.

Such events evoke a feeling of helplessness.  Whether because of equipment failures, a lack of equipment, misdirected attention, or bad timing, the result is the same: an image lost to eternity.

I experience this phenomenon several times during each sporting event that I cover.  Maybe I screw up the focus on an otherwise amazing shot; perhaps I have my 400mm lens in my hands when a play happens three meters in front of me.  The most embarrassing misses occur when I’m chimping — browsing the photos I’ve already taken — instead of keeping the camera to my eye, looking for new subjects.

One of the moments that I particularly regret missing occured during Rose’s homecoming this past October.  I was standing in the crowd waiting for the traditional bonfire to be lit.  It was nighttime, and we were all in a large field.  It seemed like everybody wanted to record the moment, so there where hundreds of cell phones and digital cameras being held in the air, all pointed at the bonfire.

My attention wasn’t on the bonfire as the flames began to lick the wood.  No, I was awestruck by the sight of those hundreds of backlit LCDs glowing in the night in front of the newly-ignited pile of railroad ties.  I can still see the image in my mind’s eye.  It would have been an amazing photograph, but I missed it.  My camera was in the trunk of my car.

I had flown thousands of miles with thousands of dollars of camera gear, but it did me no good because I foolishly thought I wouldn’t need it that evening. I spent the rest of the weekend lugging my cameras with me, but I saw no other worthy images.

All photos are brief moments in time, fleetingly ephemeral.  Once the moment is gone, it will never come again. No amount of grousing will bring it back.  However, there are a number of things one can do to minimize the likelihood of a missed photo:

1. Carry a camera.  The best DSLR in the world does you no good if it’s not in your hands.  Carry a decent compact camera even if you’re not planning on doing any shooting.  You never know when an image will present itself.  Even cell phone cameras can do in a pinch: some guy took a photo of the US Airways jet in the Hudson with his iPhone, and it ended up on the front pages of many major newspapers.
2. Know your equipment. You don’t want to waste time screwing around with the exposure and focus.  Similarly, you don’t want to take the shot, think you have it in the can, and later disover that it’s three stops underexposed and blurry.
3. Don’t “chimp.”  And by that I mean don’t go browsing through the “amazing” photos you’ve just taken; you’re liable to miss the new action.  Pros who chimp get ridiculed by their peers, and rightly so.  As a corollary, most pros shooting sports don’t use the instant-review function on their cameras (the feature that automatically shows the just-acquired image on the LCD for a few seconds after the capture).
4. Always be looking.  Open your eyes.  Scan the area.  Move around.  Some of the best moments occur away from the supposed subject.
5. When in doubt, snap the shutter.  Digital memory is cheap, so when in doubt, shoot.

In short, follow the Scout motto: Be prepared.