Walk down the street on a summer day in New York City (and other cities, I am sure) and you run a high risk of being assaulted.  Not by muggers.  By frigid air blasting out of stores.  These stores think that opening the door and letting the cold air blast out "welcomes customers".  I think it helps destroy the planet, costs the stores money, and increases the risk of a blackout.

More below the fold

Two years ago I published a bunch of diaries on Senate races, with elaborate graphs.  

They're BAAAAACK!

Method:
 1.  I gathered polling data from Pollster.com.  I only included polls in 2008.
 2.  I assigned the undecided in two ways: 75% to the challenger (per general practice) and 50-50.  The first method is represented by solid boxes.  The latter method by hollow dots.
 3.  I then added loess lines to all 4 series of boxes: Solid lines for the solid boxes, dotted lines for the hollow dots.  Good descriptions of loess (aka local regression) are here  (technical notes on local regression)

Some notes:
 1.   For any poll and for either method, the percentages add to 100.  
 2.  If the hollow box is far from the solid box, then there are a lot of undecideds.

pollster.com has a nice map of the US with polling results for the POTUS race in each state.  

Obama has 293 electoral votes, McCain 172, 73 are tossups.

Of Obama's 293 votes, 260 are strong and 33 lean.
Of McCain's 172 votes, 97 are strong and 75 are lean.

What about the trends in the states that are tossups, or lean one way or another?

This series is for anyone.  There will be no advanced math used.  Nothing beyond high school, usually not beyond grade school.  But it'll go places you didn't go in elementary school or high school.

If you "hate math" please read on.
If you love math, please read on.

I welcome thoughts, ideas, or what-have-you.  If anyone would like to write a diary in this series, that's cool too.  Just ask me.  Or if you want to co-write with me, that's fine.

The rules:  Any math that is required beyond arithmetic and very elementary algebra will be explained.  Anything much beyond that will be VERY CAREFULLY EXPLAINED.

Anyone can feel free to help me explain, but NO TALKING DOWN TO PEOPLE.  I'll hide rate anything insulting, but I promise to be generous with the mojo otherwise.

A lot of good teaching goes on at dailyKos.  But a lot of it doesn't get read by everyone who wants to read it, because diaries scroll by so fast.
This series is about diaries that teach and about things you want to learn.  Could be any subject - an academic subject, a skill, a hobby, almost anything - but not diaries that simply inform, or it would include all of daily kos.

If you like to trade books, try BookMooch.

cfk has bookflurries on Weds. nights
pico has literature for kossacks on Tues. nights, but it's on hiatus (although he had one diary last week, and promises to return in August!)

sarahnity has books by kossacks, now its own series, on Tuesday nights

I've not been doing as much reading as usual..... there's this daily Kos addiction, and I am trying to get my statistical consulting business going.... but I gotta try to do more book reading, too.

Math mania will be an occasional series.  This post is an edited version of one I wrote for Education/Uprising, more than a year ago. A list of earlier diaries is here).

What if kids loved to learn?

What if at the end of class, they wanted it to be longer, and kept the teacher in the hallway answering questions?

What if they learned that coupling their imaginations to their powers of reasoning would give them a tool of awesome power for exploring the cosmos?

What if an 11 year old got so excited by his insights that he yelled out

OH WOW! I get this now!

What if all this happened in math class?

droogie's was so good, I had to do my own.

A while back, I wrote a brief series called Math Mania.

It never really took off, but I'm going to try again.

This series is for anyone.  There will be no advanced math used.  Nothing beyond high school, usually not beyond grade school.  But it'll go places you didn't go in elementary school or high school.

If you "hate math" please read on.
If you love math, please read on.

A lot of good teaching goes on at dailyKos.  But a lot of it doesn't get read by everyone who wants to read it, because diaries scroll by so fast.
This series is about diaries that teach and about things you want to learn.  Could be any subject - an academic subject, a skill, a hobby, almost anything - but not diaries that simply inform, or it would include all of daily kos.

If you like to trade books, try BookMooch.

cfk has bookflurries on Weds. nights
pico has literature for kossacks on Tues. nights, but it's on hiatus

sarahnity has books by kossacks, now its own series, on Tuesday nights

I've not been doing as much reading as usual..... there's this daily Kos addiction, and I am trying to get my statistical consulting business going.... but I gotta try to do more book reading, too.

A lot of diaries about abortion, or debate about abortion, includes people positing that no one is pro-abortion.

I am.  I'm a married man with two kids who is pro-abortion.

More below the fold

The title was going to be "Famous Americans who were pure in thought and deed".  But the rules forbid blank diaries.

So.... Instead..... I present

Even my heroes have warts

Yes, I do have heroes.  I am not so cynical as to believe that there are no heroes.  Some of my heroes are even (gasp) politicians.  In fact, one of the reasons I'm on this site is because I think politicians can be heroes.

It's always going to be a dirty game though.

A lot of good teaching goes on at dailyKos.  But a lot of it doesn't get read by everyone who wants to read it, because diaries scroll by so fast.
This series is about diaries that teach and about things you want to learn.  Could be any subject - an academic subject, a skill, a hobby, almost anything - but not diaries that simply inform, or it would include all of daily kos.

We haven't done mysteries in a while.  From the search, the last time was more than a year ago.

So, here we go!

If you like to trade books, try BookMooch.

cfk has bookflurries on Weds. nights
pico has literature for kossacks on Tues. nights, but it's on hiatus

sarahnity has books by kossacks, now its own series, on Tuesday nights

I've not been doing as much reading as usual..... there's this daily Kos addiction, and I am trying to get my statistical consulting business going.... but I gotta try to do more book reading, too.

Hi all

Today is my birthday.  I'm 49.

I'm a pretty active kossack.... below the fold, year in review.

In the comments, feel free to add stuff about your year

There are a lot of myths about Black turnout.  Fortunately, there's also data from the Census Bureau. I had to work with it a little to get the figures I wanted, but it's really fascinating.  

A lot of good teaching goes on at dailyKos.  But a lot of it doesn't get read by everyone who wants to read it, because diaries scroll by so fast.
This series is about diaries that teach and about things you want to learn.  Could be any subject - an academic subject, a skill, a hobby, almost anything - but not diaries that simply inform, or it would include all of daily kos.