Doctorcherokee

Check out my subclavian artery, carotid artery, and gastrin articles!

I've also worked on Matt Foley and Consanguinity, as well as other ones in smaller detail. :)

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TV series -- Reliving High School

I'm trying to remember the name of a TV series but I cannot. Its premise is the main character (or characters) having the chance to travel back in time and relive high school or something to that effect. I believe it was cancelled soon after it premiered, and it had an interesting title. It aired in the past few years. And it's not Freaks and Geeks or How I Met Your Mother! :) --Doctorcherokee 01:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

There were two shows like that in 2002: That Was Then IMDb and Do Over IMDb. --Metropolitan90 02:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Internet Video Meme

There was an video circulating on the internet of some strange European dude who vaguely resembles Borat trying to be sing/rap, be cool, and I believe he also used some sort of sound mixer in his videos. (Very strange but hilarious.) I think the videos were from the 80's, and it's been a couple years. Can't remember much about it, I've tried to look up 'Net memes but I can't seem to get any results. I'm betting some of you might remember. --Doctorcherokee 20:44, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure it wasn't one of Sacha Baron Cohen's other acts? Like Ali G, perhaps? --Cody.Pope 20:49, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Definitely wasn't. This was a weird music video of some sort from likely from the 80's. This dude also grimaced as he was mixing his music in the video. Very weird, crazy, and funny. --Doctorcherokee 20:50, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I believe you may be thinking of Mahir Çağrı. Cyraan 21:11, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Super Greg

I asked a question on the Ref Desk about a weird 80's European video. You were correct...the character was one of Sacha Baron Cohen's. I finally found it..."Super Greg." Not on Wikipedia currently. Anyway, just wanted to let you know you were right! --Doctorcherokee 12:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Eh, thanks sorry I wasn't more specific at the time. I just thought that he had a whole bunch of "pseudo-characters" he'd done from time to time, so when you said it looked like him, I figured maybe... --Cody.Pope 00:18, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

United States Carriers' Angled Flight Decks

Does anyone know the first United States Carrier to have an INITIAL built-in angled flight deck? A lot of them were fitted later but I can't seem to find which was the first one to have an angled deck from the beginning.

--Doctorcherokee 01:57, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

The article Flight deck states that the angled flight deck "was tested on the American aircraft carrier USS Antietam (CVA-36), and subsequently adapted as the SCB-125 upgrade for the Essex class and SCB-110/110A for the Midway class. The design of the Forrestal class was modified immediately upon the success of the Antietam configuration, with Forrestal and Saratoga modified while under construction to incorporate the angled deck." So it looks like USS Forrestal (CV-59), while initially laid down with an axial deck, was the first carrier to be built with an angled deck. USS Ranger (CV-61) was the first built with an angled deck from the keel up. - Eron ^Talk 02:46, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Donald Duck "Hair Tonic Get Rich Scheme Comic"

Hello, there's an old Carl Barks Donald Duck comic (likely 50's or 60's) that involves a get-rich scheme by Donald to buy hair tonic, claim it doesn't work, and then return it for double his money. I think it involves, at one point, someone rubbing it in and he growing hair all over his body. I can't seem to get much info on it. Does anyone know the comic # and year & month? --Doctorcherokee 21:05, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, but the plot sounds almost identical to an I Love Lucy episode where she bought cans of beans with a guarantee "if these aren't the best beans ever, get double your money back". She then returned them, bought twice as many cans with the money, returned them, bought twice as many, etc. I wonder who ripped off whose idea. StuRat 21:57, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The story you're referring to was first published in Donald Duck #35 (1954) and was republished in Donald Duck #147 (1973)--SeizureDog 00:03, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

On a side note, the bean episode StuRat is referring to is "Lucy the Bean Queen" from The Lucy Show, not I Love Lucy, and aired on September 26, 1966. So Donald did the joke over 10 years earlier, though I doubt he was the first.--SeizureDog 00:11, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

No problem. It wasn't too hard to find out; I just searched for "Donald Duck hair tonic comic" in Yahoo and it came right up.--SeizureDog 10:40, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The hair tonic story was untitled originally published inDonald Duck #35 in May of 1954 is not by Carl Barks, it was by the "Other Good Duck Artist" possibly Walt Kelly?-- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.197.89.72 (talk) 17:03, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

When do you raise the rate on a certificate of deposit if there are unpredictable increases in interest rates?

A certain online bank has a 4-Year CD that allows you to increase your interest rate if rates go up. Over a CD's term of 4 years, this bank (if the interest rates go up) allows you to raise the rate up to the current rate TWICE over the four year period. For instance, if the rate is locked in at 2% for three years and the bank's 4-year CD rates rise to 2.5% at the end of the third year you can raise your CD's rate to 2.5% for the remainder of the term. You aren't required to raise your rate.

Let's say I get a CD at the interest rate right now. I'm not really expecting interest rates to rise anytime soon, but if they started to rise, what would be a good mathematical way of deciding when was the best time to use those TWO instances that I'm allowed?

I know there's probably not a simple solution, as it depends on many variables (much like the stock market), but is there some sort of mathematical reasoning that would take some of this into account and give me a nonrandom strategy of when to raise the rate? Perhaps a formula that assumes that rates will continue to rise? How about a formula that assumes nothing?

I'm just kind of confused as to the best time to raise the rate if rates start to rise. Sooner rather than later is my thought, but I don't know. Thanks for any help you can give.

173.247.7.89 (talk) 03:41, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

You need to have some sort of assumptions (there's work on how to minimize the so-called "weak regret" in multi-armed bandit problems with essentially no assumptions at all, but I don't think that applies here). Once you figure out the assumptions you want to make, describing the solution mathematically is straightforward, though actually finding the optimal solution could be very difficult.

Let's get warmed up with a simple case. The problem is continuous; you can change the rate at any time; the bank's interest rate is deterministic, and is known to increase linearly from

r_{0}

at the start to

r_{e}

after n years. I will use the continuous interest rate; the annual rate is

(\exp(r)-1)\cdot 100\%

. If you switch at

n_{1}

and

n_{2}

, then at the end you'll multiply your investment by

\exp \left(n_{1}r_{0}+(n_{2}-n_{1})(r_{0}+(r_{e}-r_{0})n_{1}/n)+(n_{e}-n_{2})(r_{0}+(r_{e}-r_{0})n_{2}/n)\right)

. The exponentiation is monotonic and can be ignored when optimizing (it will be important in the stochastic case); differentiating and equating to 0 gives the solution

n_{1}=n_{e}/3,\ n_{2}=2n_{3}/3

, so you'll want to update after 1y4m and 2y8m.

Now let's assume there's a discrete number n of terms, and the rate changes only after each term. I'll use the per-term interest; if the term is a month (or anything else) but you're given the annual rate you'll need to translate it. Even if the rate is really updated more frequently, you may want to use a small n to simplify the solution.

This time we will not assume the interest rate is known, rather that it follows some stochastic process. This still requires specification of the process; we'll assume Gaussian random walk which is very reasonable, which means that the interest rate each term changes by a normal variable with mean 0 and known variance

\sigma ^{2}

(which can be estimated from historic data). We want to maximize our expected savings at the end of n terms. We'll denote by

f(n,o,r,u)

our expected eventual savings, as a multiple of the current savings, given that we have n terms left, our current rate is o, the bank's current rate is r, and we have u switches left. Then f is given by some recurrence relations:

f(0,o,r,u)=1\,\!

f(n,o,r,0)=(1+o)^{n}\,\!

f(n,o,r,u)=\max \left((1+o)\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }{\frac {\exp(-x^{2}/(2\sigma ^{2}))}{{\sqrt {2\pi }}{\sigma }}}f(n-1,o,r+x,u),(1+r)\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }{\frac {\exp(-x^{2}/(2\sigma ^{2}))}{{\sqrt {2\pi }}{\sigma }}}f(n-1,r,r+x,u-1)\right)

Solving this exactly is probably impossible, but with a variety of techniques an approximation can be found for any given parameters.

I've run a simulation for

n=4,\ r_{0}=0.025,\ \sigma =0.002

. The approximate optimal strategy is:

After 1 year: Switch if $r>0.0251668$ .
After 2 years: If you haven't switched yet, switch if $r>0.025$ . If you have, switch if $r>o+0.0005329$ .
After 3 years: If you have a switch left, switch if $r>o$ .

We can also consider the continuous case where

n\to \infty

. Then the stochastic process becomes Brownian motion, and the recurrence relations become differential equations. I don't think it would be realistic to solve these, but we can approximate with a large but finite n. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 12:02, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Grand Canyon Trail (east of Roosevelt Point)

For the life of me, I can't figure out what trail this is (or if it's a trail at all). It's EAST of Roosevelt Point (on the Walhalla Plateau, North Rim).

http://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?params=36_13_28_N_111_55_35_W

What trail is this? Tonto? Nankoweap? An unnamed primitive trail? Or is it just a stream bed or something? It's clearly visible from Roosevelt Point, though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doctorcherokee (talk • contribs) 03:14, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Looks like a dry stream bed to me. Rmhermen (talk) 03:44, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, it's just a canyon bottom -- probably very difficult to get to. Looie496 (talk) 04:47, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually that's called Kwagunt canyon, and apparently it's possible to hike up it from the river, although challenging. Looie496 (talk) 05:03, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Be very careful about hiking off of established trails in the Grand Canyon. Certainly you should not do so alone or if you are not an experienced desert and off-trail mountain hiker, and you must be sure to bring enough water to meet your needs until you reach a sure source of drinkable water. That can mean a very heavy load of water if you start from the bottom of the canyon and are considering hiking off trail to the rim. You would need at least two days for such a hike, depending on the distance and the difficulty of the route. And you would need to carry enough water for the entire hike, which would limit the amount of food and gear that you could carry. The biggest danger, of course, is that you could be injured or dehydrated in a remote area and could be dead by the time a search party finds you. A lesser danger is that you are alive when a search party finds you and then have to pay the bill for their efforts. Marco polo (talk) 16:26, 16 November 2012 (UTC)