Redundancy in Acronyms?

It’s kind of amusing for a bunch of engineers to gather around and discuss grammar and spelling and other such literary things. As generally technical people, we tend to focus on writing things that are concise and meaningful to us as engineers rather than grammatically correct and understandable to someone unfamiliar with the technical details. But I tend to think – no, I know – I am more nitpicky about grammar and making written words look correct and be understandable not only to us but to other people, particularly management. Writing and proofreading isn’t something I despise (which should be quite evident to anyone reading this), but most engineers dislike that part of the job a lot.

 

Anyway, in a peer review of a fairly lengthy software change and test report, discussions about the technical facts and procedures were discussed very little but the English part of it was scrutinized. Yes, this was largely due to me complaining about sentence fragments, comma splices, bad subject-verb agreement, and general wording that would be unclear to the untrained eye (someone who is not an engineer who worked on the project in question).

 

One particular side discussion went on for awhile. One phase of the project is called SWIT (sometimes defined as Software Integration Testing and sometimes Software Integration Test) and another phase is called SIT (System Integration Testing, but likewise also has the –ing left off). Within each phase are a series of tests (maybe 100 in SWIT and 20 in SIT) that all have to pass before the phase is complete. The debate is when you are referring to one test in the series, is it a SWIT or is it a SWIT test? If we take SWIT to be a noun referring to the phase as a whole, then it should be a SWIT test. But if we expand the acronym it seems redundant to use the word test back to back. And calling it a SWIT makes sense, but then you get the confusion of having SWIT mean the phase as a whole and also meaning one part of said phase. From an engineering perspective, SWIT test is more understandable because it is not as ambiguous but from an English perspective, calling it a software integration test is perhaps more accurate. And that’s not even going into the fact that both acronyms (SIT and SWIT) are actually SIT. But I think any sane person would agree that they should not both be called SIT as that would be ridiculous. Maybe we should just get rid of acronyms and then the names of the test phases wouldn’t need “Testing” at the end. Software Integration would be a perfectly fine name and then a Software Integration test would clearly be one individual test within Software Integration.

 

I know I’ve seen this sort of redundancy other places but I can’t think of where.

Week 10 Rankings and Predictions

Sorry I missed last week. I had the rankings and predictions in my computer but never got around to actually posting them.

Missouri was #1 last week and fell only to #2 this week after the loss at Nebraska. At least my poll is in unanimous agreement with all the computer polls in the BCS in that Auburn is #1. And the BCS computers also still rank Missouri very highly, at an average of #4.  Meanwhile Oregon is still not getting much respect from my computer, coming in at #6. But I must say, there is a 10 point gap between #1 Auburn and Missouri, but then less than 5 rating points separate Missouri and #8 Boise State.

 

The Asbury computer was 9-7 with 1 draw against the spread two weeks ago and 9-9 against the spread this week in the top 25 games. For the season that brings me up slightly to 44.1%. Clearly my score prediction algorithm needs some work.

 

Here’s the Asbury Computer Top 25 up to date:

1 Auburn 100

2 Missouri 90.359

3 Oklahoma 88.640

4 TCU 87.309

5 Oregon 86.403

6 Iowa   85.114

7 Michigan State 85.006

8 Boise State 84.830

9 Alabama 83.602

10 Ohio State 82.467

11 Oklahoma State 80.582

12 Nebraska 79.001

13 NC State 77.884

14 Wisconsin 77.473

15 LSU 76.779

16 Arizona 75.626

17 Stanford 73.976

18 Utah 72.467

19 Mississippi State 71.110

20 Hawaii 69.949

21 Virginia Tech 68.520

22 South Carolina 68.409

23 Arkansas 68.157

24 Florida State 67.675

25 Nevada 66.839

 

And look for these scores this week:

Virginia Tech 33, Georgia Tech 24

Alabama 23, LSU 21

TCU 31, Utah 25

Stanford 29, Arizona 27

Oklahoma State 36, Baylor 28

Arkansas 28, South Carolina 27

NC State 29, Clemson 23

FSU 28, UNC 21

Questions from Non-Bridge Friends About Traveling to Tournaments

Whenever I tell my non-bridge friends that I’m going to or have gone to a bridge tournament for a few days, I invariably get the same questions.

 

“Who did you go with?” This is fairly simple and straightforward and so far this year I’ve been to 14 different tournaments and played with 10 different partners, spent 34 nights in hotels for these tournaments, and taken 14.5 vacation days for bridge (out of the 17 vacation days I have for this year, not counting the carryover of 8 from 2009, and used no vacation for anything else). By the end of the year, that will be up to 17 tournaments, 12 different tournament partners, and 40 hotel nights.

 

“Did you win?” This can be a little hard to answer without going into much detail since we typically play more than one event and have many various degrees of winning, so my answer is usually somewhat vague. “8^th in flight A” or “I got one section top but otherwise didn’t do anything” or “I barely scratched” is a bit difficult for some people to grasp. But “I won one event and was around the middle of the pack in another event” is something normal people can comprehend.

 

“What did you win?” These imaginary things called masterpoints that we collect to show how long and how well we’ve been playing. What’s the point of that? Pride. Self esteem. Bragging rights. I dunno. I don’t understand the system either.

 

“Why do you like to play even though it’s mostly old people?” Well, there are some young people. Since most of my non-bridge friends are highly intellectual people (almost entirely engineers, computer scientists, future doctors and lawyers), they should understand the intellectual stimulation that bridge can provide but many do not understand how going on a trip to play some card game for a weekend can be more fun than getting drunk at bars, waking up at 1pm, and being a lazy bum watching tv and movies during the day Saturday and Sunday (or chores around the house for the married ones).

 

“You travel so much. How do you afford it?” Lots of reasons but mainly I’m just a smart spender. My house isn’t cluttered with material things that I buy on a whim. I don’t have a bunch of expensive electronics, I don’t normally buy drinks except in 12 packs, I spend lots of time looking for good hotel and flight deals, I have a good job and rental income, I have no dependents. I really don’t know.

Oklahoma in #1 By a Huge Margin

For the first time probably all season, I spent a Saturday glued to the TV to watch college football. Well, except for the Georgia Tech game, which I could only get online, I hooked up my second monitor to my computer so I could watch and still do internet/bridge base stuff and not miss any of the game. There were several upsets last week, most notably Wisconsin over Ohio State and Kentucky over South Carolina. For the record, my computer correctly picked Mississippi State to beat Florida.

This weekend there are two matchups of undefeated teams: Oklahoma at Missouri, and LSU at Auburn. But probably the only game I'll watch (between sessions at the Columbia, SC bridge tournament) is Georgia Tech at Clemson.

The last column in the table below isn't one I've included so far this season, but it is the team's strength of schedule rank among the 121 FBS teams. Wyoming has apparently played the most fierce competition to date.

Rank	Prev	BCSrank	W	L		Team	Total Rtg.	SS Rank
1	1	1	6	0		Oklahoma	100.000	12
2	10	4	7	0		Auburn	88.915	32
3	4	7	7	0		Michigan State	87.728	56
4	3	11	6	0		Missouri	87.386	57
5	2	6	7	0		LSU	85.150	36
6	5	3	5	0		Boise State	84.708	60
7	7	2	6	0		Oregon	82.866	102
8	6	5	7	0		TCU	82.269	83
9	8	8	6	1		Alabama	80.704	48
10	12	14	6	0		Oklahoma St	79.815	81
11	11	12	5	1		Stanford	76.991	33
12	9	10	7	1		Ohio State	76.798	86
13	18	15	5	1		Iowa	75.471	55
14	17	18	5	1		Arizona	72.231	53
15	31	13	6	1		Wisconsin	71.057	84
16	16	17	6	1		FSU	69.388	73
17	21	22	5	1		Kansas State	69.238	54
18	29	24	5	2		Mississippi St	67.895	31
19	14		7	1		Nevada	67.304	92
20	15		5	2		NCST	66.108	35
21	27	20	5	1		WV	66.039	82
22	33		4	2		UNC	65.805	10
23	13	21	4	2		South Carolina	65.362	18
24	28	9	6	0		Utah	64.484	120
25	22		5	2		Michigan	64.193	39

So, here's what my computer says about this week:
Clemson 27, Georgia Tech 25
Kentucky 29, Georgia 28
Oklahoma 27, Misouri 23
Auburn 30, LSU 23
Iowa 27, Wisconsin 24
Oklahoma Sate 36, Nebraska 27

Drawing Attention to the Law Breakers

When a cell phone rings in an environment that is supposed to be quiet, what happens? People make more noise in efforts to fund the guilty party and to clear their name. You hear a lot of "it wasn't mine", "my phone is off", "it's over there", "it was Jimbo".
People have a natural tendency to want to disobey the rules but people also have a tendency to point out when other people are caught disobeying. Even moreso, I think people enjoy disobeying, not getting caught, and then bragging about it later. Why do we care so much about such things. When a phone rings in the middle of a meeting or during a bridge game or in the middle of a class, why does everyone give the incident lots of attention? It doesn't make sense. We should all just try to ignore it, except for the one person whose responsibility it is to reprimand the violators.
It's kind of a similar thing that most new stories are about people breaking the rules. Humans have a cruel nature about them to want to see others get in trouble and want to get away with the same things. But really, I think people just want attention, and someone who follows all rules and doesn't stir up any controversy won't get much attention, even though he probably deserves more attention/praise.

Rankings after Week 6

It still looks a bit strange with Missouri and Michigan State cracking the top 5 while being 21 and 13 in the AP poll.  And my game predictions haven't been so good either. Against the spread I am 38%. But it was a good weekend for Georgia residents with Tech, UGA, and the Falcons winning. Georgia Tech comes in this time at #41 and Georgia #82 in this week's ranking.

Just as interesting as the team ranking at this point is the conference ranking, which places teh Big 12 as the best conference with a rating of 126.46. The SEC is 121.29, the Big 10 119.13, Pac 10 116.03. Then there is a huge drop off to the ACC at 92.22, Big East at 79.86, and MWC at 73.22, all the way down to the Sunbelt at 21.11.

For next week's games, my computer is anticipating:
Ohio State 32, Wisconsin 24
Nebraska 27, Texas 16
Auburn 28, Arkansas 24
Georgia Tech 35, Middle Tennessee 20
Georgia 26, Vanderbilt 23
Virginia Tech 41, Wake Forest 17

Rank	Prev	AP rank	W	L		Team	Total Rtg.
1	1		5	0		Okla	99.988
2	8		6	0		LSU	91.128
3	3		5	0		Mizzou	91.112
4	16		6	0		michst	88.737
5	15		5	0		Boise	86.461
6	9		6	0		TCU	86.361
7	4		6	0		Oregon	84.120
8	2		5	1		Alabama	83.452
9	11		7	0		OhioSt	82.696
10	10		6	0		Auburn	82.664
11	17		5	1		Stan	80.095
12	7		5	0		OkSt	80.035
13	24		4	1		SC	79.873
14	20		7	0		nevada	77.071
15	19		5	1		NCST	74.509
16	21		5	1		FSU	74.010
17	5		4	1		Ariz	73.597
18	13		4	1		Iowa	73.374
19	38		3	2		OreSt	72.939
20	6		4	2		UF	71.375
21	12		4	1		ksu	70.940
22	14		5	1		Mich	70.871
23	18		4	0		Neb	69.098
24	36		3	2		Cal	68.012
25	23		5	1		af	67.998

Friday nights lameness is not allowed

I think I have learned to accept that Friday nights and Saturday nights in Warner Robins may be and frequently are boring and lonely. I still cannot accept spending a Friday or Saturday night away from home be as lame as it is at home. Actually, not just Friday and Saturday, but any day. Tonight I had sort of thought I would spend the evening calmly in my hotel room relaxing and sleeping early, for I have a 7:45am flight back to Atlanta. The last 4 nights here in Philadelphia for the World Bridge Series have been long and fun-filled, mingling with many different people including but not limited to Sean, Dana, Meg, Alli, Capp Jr, Minimeck, Sam Nystrom, Laura Ginnan, Man Henbest, and other bridge players I have been introduced to and forgotten names already.

But I guess the adrenaline will get me through tomorrow since I am going to the homecoming game at Georgia Tech, after what will wind up being about 2.5 hours of sleep. So, in theory Sunday and Monday will be the relaxing days for me. I kind of wish that I could go on a trip and come back not totally exhausted, and I often think it will end that way, but it never does.