Toluu

simon jackman's blog

observations on politics, statistics and computing from Stanford, California

102,000 Star Alliance milesDecember 22 2008

A lot of flying this year.

The Day The Earth Stood Still (regional edits?)December 20 2008

We saw this on opening weekend here (last weekend): Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, update of a sci-fi classic, so we’re there.

This scene, where the Sydney Harbour Bridge is destroyed, was not in the version we saw over here in the US. Different cuts for different markets?

Delta on LAX-SYD routeDecember 19 2008

Delta Airlines is going to do a daily 777-200 service LAX-SYD from July 1 (Chicago Trib story here with reactions from the United/Chicago perspective). Qantas will still have the lion’s share of the capacity on the route, but by mid-2009 it looks like there will be four options for LAX to SYD (Qantas, United, V-Australia and Delta). Its a very profitable set of routes for QF and UA at the moment, and its not surprising that others want in.

Random observations:

Its certainly an interesting time for extra inventory to be opening up on USA-Australia routes. Cheaper jet fuel trumps the collapse in the global economy?

Delta is so big (post Northwest merger) that it should have no trouble filling its 772 to SYD.

QF is said to have 70% of the current inventory; the routes are said to the be the source of 20% of QF’s profits. You see an awful lot of QF aircraft at LAX; according to the LA Times, QF can sometimes have four flights a day out of LAX, making it LAXs busiest foreign carrier. I know that UA does a daily 744 out of both LAX and SFO to SYD, and during the Christmas peak this can go up to 2 flights a day, and UAL is back to non-stops LAX-MEL.

desparately seeking gamma deviatesDecember 18 2008

This one got past the spam filter. I wonder how many other stats/polmeth people got this one?

Dear Sir,
you are my last hope. I am from [deleted]. I need to write the full code (in matlab) of a program that generates random numbers from the gamma distribution. Please help me.
Hope to hear from you, [deleted]

Accept-reject seems to be the preferred algorithm, with R using the Ahrens and Dieter algorithms (e.g., Communications of the ACM, 1982 V25(1):47-54). A quick glance suggests it wouldn’t be hard to code from scratch.

Virigin 747 landing video at SFODecember 7 2008

Some recent email:

I’m a Stanford student and have been reading your blog for a while now, so I thought you might enjoy this video if you haven’t already seen it:

http://sf.metblogs.com/2008/12/03/cockpit-view-of-landing-at-sfo/

It’s quite well-produced with multiple angles and full audio. Enjoy!

See also this video shot by a United pilot (Capt Walter Bates) on his retirement flight (SYD-SFO, my family and I happened to be on board). From Capt Bates:

I also include a video of our landing in SFO from about 1,000′ altitude on down - that’s Coyote Point Yacht Harbor off to the left at the start of the video. Just before touchdown you hear the automated voice of our radar altimeter calling off 50, 30, and 10 feet above the runway - and that’s calibrated from the bottoms of the first main wheels to touch the pavement. At touchdown my eyes are still nearly 60 feet up. At this point our inertial guidance system is being updated by transmitters on the end of the runway giving us an accuracy of less than 2 feet. With this system we can land with visibility of only 600 feet. We touched down at about 170 mph being over 350,000# lighter than at takeoff and use reverse thrust from the engines and a sophisticated antis