All posts by Richard

The Northstar Nerd Loves Green Cheese!

Northern Life

It's Saturday morning. Over the past month the Northstar Nerd has blogged to you from Silicon Valley to the shores of Lake Superior, and even been interviewed by the New York Times. Now, it's time for something really important! From my northwoods cabin near the Canadian Border in northern Minnesota, it's time for Green Cheese!

That's right, I'll be competing along with many others in the weekly trivia radio show named Green Cheese, and you can join us! This show is a hoot, and recent weeks have found folks from as far away as Germany competing. All you need is a good brain … and "no" computer. In other words, don't use your computer and the net to research answers. Finally, you need a moniker … a good name. If you listen, this will become obvious why. Thus, link on over to KAXE on the net and listen to the live stream. If you miss the live show, you still might enjoy the show archive. KAXE is northern community supported radio … thus no commercials, just great folk! Here are the details:

(click upon cabin photo for expanded view)
Cabin  NerdJel_cheese

Data Visualization for Kids

Uncategorized

See my prior post for my New York Times data visualization links, however in addition to grown-ups I've tried over the years to provide high quality / educational resources for kids which encourage our children to encourage the sciences. Thus, today I bring you the Wolfram Education Portal. This site is a wealth of data visualization / concepts which revolve around mathematics. One may download a free Mathematica viewer should you desire an animated copy on your own computer. This resources will definitely be added to my Engineering Learning Wiki section, Engineering for Children.

My own involvement with youth science education goes back over six years … as coach of the Lego Robotics Team, S.N.I.P. (Super Nerds In Pink). See my Legos section of this blog. You'll even find a Lego Robotics Educational Search Engine which I built using Google Custom Search (see tutorial). After all … it all begins with Legos!

Legos

NY Times Visualizes the Northstar Nerd!

Uncategorized

My, what a tangled web we weave!

This morning the Northstar Nerd may be found among the corn fields of rural Illinois, a few weeks ago I posted about Silicon Valley vs. Lake Superior Hot Spots. However, most of my visitors today come from the New York Times' article on data visualization. Yes … as I get ready to head back to Minnesota, the NY Times featured my tutorial on Data Visualization. This post was actually part of a two part series on the importance of looking at data. This is how I led off my earlier post:

  • "Last Summer Second Life was all the rage in the popular media. In fact, one of the most linked (and found) pages on this blog are the Second Life Tutorials (more SL posts). However, as much as SL gathered media attention, the bigger interest for most of us was the discipline of engineering simulation and data visualization."

Welcome New York Times Visitors. Here are some key links:

Bye for now; it's time to get back in the car and drive another 400 miles. I've dropped off my youngest son at his new engineering college, Rose-Hulman. Molly and I were impressed with his choice of schools. His new engineering faculuty advisor actually stopped by his dorm room to say hello and introduce herself while we were unloading the van! How many engineering colleges would that happen at? (see my search for the perfect engineering college)

(Update on Oct. 27, 2008 … See Microsoft's new visualization tool, DataDepot)

Visual-data

A Statistical Approach

Uncategorized

Going back to my high school days in the early 70's I've always needed to know how to use statistics for solving technical problems. Back then I used a slide rule; now I use a high power PC. Hopefully my answers are still correct!

One software package that I have used in recent years is Minitab. Recently I found an excellent online text book which covers Minitab 15 … from "frequency distribution" to "confidence intervals" and "hypothesis testing". I will add this test to my Engineering Learning Wiki eBook / Manual section.

Stats