Horizontal Snowing!

It has been so cold during the week that it's not even easy to walk on the streets. I have never felt cold like this since I came to Canada. It's snowing right now and it's horizontal snowing! It means if you walk you'll have snow flakes right in your face and makes walking almost impossible. Saskatchewan is the coldest Province, boasted the lowest temperature on earth Wed. Key Lake in the north of the province dropped to -52.3 ºC without the windchill, while Meadow Lake in the south dropped to -60 ºC with the windchill. Highways are covered with snow and schools are closed. So are the other provinces, mostly! The only warm(!) place is BC, which is 0 to 2 ºC.
It's -22 ºC now (getting warm!) but feels like -34 ºC because of windchill. According to forecasts this cold will last till next weekend.
(Photo: This picture which was taken in Apr 2014, more than 10 years and 2 months after this post is a perfect example of horizontal snow in Canada! I was driving from Vulcan to Lethbridge in southern Alberta and encountered this distance sign on Highway 23 and could not resist! I pulled over, pulled out the camera and took this photo. If you pay attention, there are two lines for two destinations. The first letter of the top destination is M and that could point to Milk River because that is the second most traveled community in the area after Lethbridge but I kind of see an O after M. So I'm really not sure! The second lines clearly reads Lethbridge. This was between 09:30 and 10:15 AM. Sun was going up and the snow has started melting)

Oscar

The nominees of the 76th Academy Awards (Oscar) were announced yesterday. But what I wanna say here is not listing the movies. I'm talkin' about what you sometimes see in American movies including The Lord of the Rings. This movie is nominated for 11 awards!! But it's an offensive movie and Non-Caucasian people have been teased in it. If you get in to the detail of some other American movies, you'll find that it happens in many of them. Consider Bruce Almighty although I like it very much but there's a scene that bullies go for Bruce and beat him up. They have been all selected from colored guys. Hispanic and Black fellows. Same thing in many other movies. In Indiana Jones and the temple of doom, East Indian people and in Raiders of the lost Ark, Egyptian (and in a wider view, Arabs) are teased and looked down.
(Photo: Jim Carrey and Jennifer Aniston in Bruce Almighty)

An Example

I wrote about Hypothesis Testing techniques for data that don't fit any distribution which is called distribution-free or non-parametric. As this is a very useful technique I give you an example of Kruskal-wallis one-way Analysis of Variance by Ranks. it might help you to organize your QC plans:
Suppose you have 3 machines in a workshop, producing the same part. You are concerned with the process consistency and want to know whether or not the machines produce the part with the same specification. As this is a mass-production, it's definitely not economic to check every single piece and also it's very time-consuming. The other thing is you are not sure if your process fits normal distribution and may think it's a non-normal one. Therefore what u do is u take small samples from each machine and formulate null and alternative hypothesis. Here r the samples from each machine and hypothesis:

the next step is to code the samples and rank them as follows:

After ranking the samples, you calculate the test statistic, H:

The calculated test statistic is compared to critical Chi-square with a degree of freedom of 2. (DF=knumber of sample test]-1. According to Chi Square table (which u can find in any statistics textbook) the critical Chi-square is 5.99 and as the calculated one is less than it, the null hypothesis is not rejected and we conclude that all three machines produce the part with the similar specifications.
Note: take a look at Chi-square distribution. It helps you to understand why the null hypothesis is not rejected:

The shaded area is the region that if the test statistic falls in, it's considered rejected. (There's no scale for this diagram)

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Both King George II, son of a Bush (George W. Bush!!) and Tony, the big liar (Tony Blair!!)have being criticized for the US led invasion to Iraq in last year. It's said that the reports shows that Iraq has no WMD. Blair is accused of sexing up the Britain's intelligence dossier to build public support for that war.
George Michael calls him a good dog for Bush in his music clip called Shoot the dog.
After all the bottom line is I'm very happy with the US led invasion to Iraq, killing thousands of Iraqis and capturing Saddam although I know it was Americans who supported and supplied him in his invasion to Iran and in that 8-year long devastating war. We should wait and see how it affect Saddam's trail, if there's any.
(Photo: Demonstrators hoist big cards with Blair, Strew and another guy's photos. As you see they call the prime minister, the B.liar and Strew (the foreign minister) jack of spades and the other guy (whom I don't know him) a liar. The cards are made according the deck that Americans made with Saddam and his top allies)

Wicked Cold

It was really cold today. I have my Adidas jacket which I bought in Damascus on, sitting at the desk and typing! If I take it out, I'll be frozen in a min.! It's -29 ˚ C right now but feels -39 ˚ C because of the wind chill. I was goin' to post office, Safeway and then may be Roots to change a sport short, which I bought yesterday, but changed my mind and thought it was better to stay at home, study DOE and watch last part (I guess) of The simple life.

Bitter Cold

It's very cold today here in Calgary and also all over Canada. I was goin' out and it was chilly, almost -30 ˚C or less and when the wind is blowing it's even worse. You have to wait for at least a quarter to car gets warm. Drivers usually plug their car in but I haven't yet.

Today I went to Superstore to get a lobster but noticed it's almost $13 per lb. So If you buy two, you'll have to pay at least $25 'cause they are really big and one is enough for one person to be full. Lobster and crab is sold alive in Superstore. I asked a guy about how to clean it but he didn't know! (A stupid Oriental guy who didn't speak English well too!) I also asked him about cooking it and he said I'd have to cook it alive!! (He is right) It's sad! Therefore what I did was I just bought a small try of shrimp and left. I may get it next time I go there.

(Note: the link to Superstore has been added in a 2006 review. They just built the website in 2005! The idiots didn't have any website in 2004 and before!)

(Photo: Red lobsters are really big. One is enough for a person's meal)