The Myth:

Cats that fall from the top of a 32-story building get hurt less than cats that fall from the top of a 7-story building.

The Story:

Two veterinarians, Wayne Whitney and Cheryl Mehlhaff, who worked at the Midtown Veterinary Hospital, noticed that in there were a lot of cats that fell from window ledges and roofs on tall buildings in Manhattan. When they studied the data, they found that cats that fell from the 1st through 5th floors (approx. < 50 ft) were often lightly injured, and cats that fell from the 10th floor (> 100 ft) and higher were also lightly injured. However, the cats who fell from between the 5th and 10th floors (approx 50-100 ft) tended to get seriously injured.

Why was this?

One theory is that the data set is completely tainted, so the conclusion that the veterinarians drew was incorrect.

Another theory is that when cats reach terminal velocity, they relax and spread their body out like a flying squirrel. When they finally hit the ground, they belly-flop, spreading out the force of the impact across their entire body. The cats that fell from the 1st-5th floors did not reach a high enough speed to receive serious injuries. The cats that fell from the 10th story and higher were able to reach terminal velocity and relax. Those cats that fell from between the 5th and 10th floors were, by this theory, not able to reach terminal velocity and assume the “flying-squirrel” pose. These unlucky cats likely landed on their legs, breaking them.

The Background:

I had heard this myth about falling cats before, and I was reminded of the story when they brought up on the “Falling” epiode on the NPR/WNYC radio program “RadioLab”, and again in a follow-up episode “Gravitational Anarchy”.

The RadioLab episode “Falling” is here:
RadioLab Falling Episode

The hilarious follow-up (RadioLab Podcast Short) is here on their “Gravitational Anarchy” episode that was released on Nov 29th 2010:
RadioLab Gravitational Anarchy Podcast Short

There is also an editorial write-up about this on HowStuffWorks.com
How Cats Survive Falls @ HowStuffWorks.com

What does a cat really do in free-fall/Zero-G?

It looks like, in a Zero-G environment, the cat just flips around and can’t get its bearings, but it landed feet-first on every single surface. When gravity starts being applied, the cat was quick to flip around and land feet-first. It looks like the cat uses the visual cue of the approaching ground, more than any other indicator, to know which direction he/she needed to point. But when the cat was just floating, it began spinning in circles and couldn’t seem to get his/her bearings.

Now I’m wondering how quickly they orient themselves in a long fall. Do they flail around until they get closer to the ground, or can they orient themselves quickly using other stimuli such as wind resistance?

Peer-Reviewed Scientific Papers

I just found the abstract from the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association that they were talking about in the RadioLab “Falling” and “Gravitational Anarchy” episodes:

High-rise syndrome in cats (Whitney et al)

There is also a more recent article published in the Journal of Feline Medical Surgery in 2004:

Feline high-rise syndrome: 119 cases (1998-2001) (Vnuk et al)

The abstract for the second paper () seems to contradict the theory in the first (that cats falling 9+ floors are injured less than those falling 4-8). Although, it doesn’t quite make that distinction, so I’ll have to read the paper.

I also found a list of articles that describe the physics and medical outcomes of falling bodies, cats and otherwise:

Falling Bodies – The Physics Hypertextbook

I’ll have to pull these articles next time my wife has plans and I can sneak away to hit the stacks at my local vet college.

Want to see this experiment on MythBusters?

If you think this would be an interesting MythBusters episode, make sure you comment on the discussion on the MythBysters forum!

As I find out more about this story and check through the papers, I will come back and update this post.

Technorati Tags: cats, falling, gravity, mythbusters, zero-g

Before I began developing software for a living, I used to be in chemical research & development as a biochemist.  For some reason, I always found myself gravitating back towards software and informatics, so I eventually gave in and started a software company.  But I’ve learned a lot of lessons during my time as a scientist.

When solving a difficult problem and you know 25% of the solution, you can figure out 70% through hard work, patience and trial-and-error.  The last 5% may never come, and if it does, is rarely when you’re looking for it.

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” – Albert Einstein

Just because you don’t know the answer right now, doesn’t mean that you can made headway and figure it out as you go.  I’ve learned the most when I’ve tried things that haven’t worked, but figured out what went wrong and then tried again.

If you’re not continually learning and improving yourself, your working days are numbered.

“Genius without education is like silver in the mine.” – Benjamin Franklin

Don’t be afraid of challenging yourself and learning new languages, technologies or skills.  Each one of them expands your experience and perspective, and can give you an opportunity to take a look at the status quo.  Unfortunately, self-motivated learners are in short supply but in constant demand because they can adapt to any situation.

If you want to succeed, you have to train for it.

“You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing — that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.” – Richard Feynman

Let’s face it…  The likelihood that you’re going to “knock one out of the park” your first time up to bat is pretty low.  Whether it’s business or baseball, the odds are against you.  It takes grit, determination, exercising yourself both physically and mentally, and lots of disappointment as you fail again and again.  But each day, train yourself a little more, a little harder, and each day you get a little stronger.  It’s cumulative, and it takes a lot of time.

Give credit to those who came before you.

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” – Sir Isaac Newton

In science, recognition is incredibly important and one of the first lessons that you learn.  When you’re making a presentation, writing an article, or doing your homework, you have to cite any sources of information that when into your work.  This is partly because scientists are focusing on sharing knowledge, and in order for the community to work together, there has to be trust between researchers that their information will not be stolen by one-another.

Even more so, no inventions are made in complete isolation.  They are incremental improvements based on our understanding of our world and everything that has come before.  The iPhone wouldn’t exist without the much earlier inventions of silicon wafers, transistors, plastics, aluminum, and light.  And the next wave of inventions will be no different.

Take advantage of the information and knowledge that we have, but show respect to the community that this knowledge came from.  You probably will need more help from it in the future.

Technorati Tags: education, einstein, feynman, newton, problem solving

At it’s essence, Bootstrappers are business owners that start and grow their business without any outside funding. That means no angel investors and no VC deals. You don’t hear about it much because it’s not glamorous, but it’s the way that most businesses are started.

I am a hard-core believer in bootstrapping, and I know for a fact that I have learned a lot of lessons the hard way that I wouldn’t have learned as easily if I had not been a bootstrapper. (Mo’ money, mo’ problems anyone?)

Especially when you start your first business (and if you’re like me, your second as well), you WILL make mistakes, and lot of them. I still make mistakes, but I like to think that my hard-fought experience has saved me several times. Sometimes I can get out of the way in time, and sometimes I still get run over. But I’ve become better and better at keeping the damages small and keeping the business agile.

If you’re in the Columbus, OH area, come out to a meeting of the International Bootstrapping Association and say hi!  Our next meeting is Dec 9th, 2009 at TechColumbus hear Ohio State University.  RSVP at the link below:

http://www.bootstrappingassociation.org

Technorati Tags: bootstrapping, business development, columbus ohio

Pothos on Twitter

It seems that nearly every day someone is figuring out a way to plug another object of their into Twitter.  It’s pretty interesting to watch, because creativity can run wild when you put your mind to figuring out ways that an object can send a 140-character message to you.

This latest one is very simple, but pretty unique:

Meet Pothos.

Kate Hartman and Rob Faludi of New York University decided to make a system that allows a plant to tell its owner, via Twitter, that it needs water.

The idea is actually a continuation of an older idea from 2007, where Hartman and Faludi made a system that called its owner over the telephone:

Each plant had a ‘voice’ to match the plant type, such as the Scottish moss, which had a Scottish accent.

However, the equipment to give a plant a telephone was expensive, which made it prohibitive to market.  Thankfully, their telephone-enabled plant was the only one in existence, because the long-distance charges from their Bonsai “phoning home” could have easily added up.  (Hey, *I* thought it was funny…)

When the Twitter craze begun, Hartman and Faludi realized that they just found the perfect way to make their “communicating plant” work.  The equipment is inexpensive, and the Twitter interface allows programmers to easily send messages to others.  The Twitter Botanicall kit was born.

Currently, there are 3,169 people following Pothos, so the concept has definitely interested a lot of people.  Hartman and Faludi have also sold around 100 kits, each of which come as a box of electronic components that you assemble and solder yourself.  It reminds me of the Radio Shack electronics kits I used to play with when I was a kid.  (Ok, ok…  I STILL play with them, but this time I’ve upgraded to using programmable microcontrollers.)

I think there is a great market out there for these odd Twitter-enabled devices, and we are going to see a lot more of them in the future.  My only concern is this: will Twitter be able to afford the cost of being used as an alert service for everyone’s personal device?

So, here’s today’s question:

What item of yours would you like to see joining you on Twitter?  (Mine is an oil change alert sent by my car).

-Kris

Technorati Tags: botanicalls, device messaging, twitter, twitter api, twitter device

-Kris

Technorati Tags: april fools, artificial intelligence, cadie, funny

In what I can only understand as a bunch of doublespeak, hand waving and magical unicorn rides, SAP has unanimously decided that they are no longer in the “Business Intelligence” industry, and are now young, cool, and Google-y with their “Business Analytics” products.

Can someone explain this maneuver to me, PLEASE?

“I don’t believe (business intelligence is) where the future is,” said Jim Davis. “The future is in business analytics.”

Classic business intelligence questions, said Davis, “support reactive decision-making that doesn’t work in this economy” because it can only provide historical information that can’t drive organizations forward. Business intelligence, he said, doesn’t make a difference to the top or bottom line, and is merely a productivity tool like e-mail.

“SAS is bucking the trend because analytics has come of age,” said Davis.

Congratulations SAP.  You have just invalidated the entire reason why anyone would pay you millions of dollars for a BusinessObjects deployment.  I guess it’s time to up-sell your customers again?

Here’s the issue, and I’m amazed that SAP, which are one of the leaders in the market, would miss this:

Business Intelligence is a concept where you take your historical data and external factors you can come up with, and identify trends or opportunities to increase profits, decrease costs, increase efficiency, or refine your products and services.  You know, those things that improve the bottom line.

Unlike what SAP wants you to believe, business intelligence it is a FORWARD looking method, driven by statistical data.

Business Analytics in the exact same thing as Business Intelligence.  Look at all the historical data you can get, parse and organize it, and use it to predict probabilities of what could happen in the future.  You’re looking for those things that will improve your bottom line, and cut out the things that are not paying off.

Business Analytics = Business Intelligence.  Different terms, same definition.

Rather than just make up definitions for things so that you can seem interesting and fresh, why not actually do something valuable for a change: Educate your potential users on WHAT business intelligence/analytics can do for them, rather than just throwing out another term for some poor sucker to hang their hat on?

Rant over.  Whew…

-Kris

Technorati Tags: business analytics, business intelligence, sap

So, I spent a few minutes to see what bizarre Google Suggest results I could pull up.  This one topped the list, after my short 3 minutes of looking:

Google Suggest - I want to eat your children

Technorati Tags: goog, google suggest, google suggest fail

My name is Kris Hardy, and I am a website analytics expert.  My whole mission is to help your business become more profitable by analyzing your current customer base and finding opportunities to sell to them that you have missed.  I also implement fixes to your website and online/offline sales material to help you increase your sales and profit-per-sale.

Here are a few tactics that I use in order to help your business win:

• Market Research
• Marketing Analysis
• Conversion Analysis
• Profitability Metrics
• Pay-Per-Click/Search-Engine-Marketing Optimization
• Search-Engine-Optimization Analysis and Optimization

I will be sharing my experience of each one of these areas over time, and delivering the newest discoveries and research in the science of online sales.

Also, since this is my personal blog, I will probably also mention some bizarre and interesting things that I come across, completely unrelated to business.  It will give you a little taste what it’s like to be in the mind of an applied statistician.  =)

Until next time, best wishes!

-Kris