Phairy Story
I attended
annual conference again this year and found it to be the usual mixture of hard
drinking, wild partying and marathon lecture-sessions. It certainly took its
toll on the aging McPearson physique and I have
resolved to behave far more sensibly in future and cut back. Next year,
therefore, I will be attending far fewer lectures. The cumulative influence of
so many fairy-stories is bound to have its effect, even on one as sensible and
hard-boiled as Guernsey McPearson.
Certainly,
I slept fitfully at the conference. It may have been the fact that the locals
seemed to be spending the night shouting drunkenly at each other outside my
hotel: you have enough of that at the conference dinner and expect to leave it
behind when back in your bed. However, I am more inclined to attribute it to
the diet of fanciful and improbable approaches to design and analysis to which
I was subjected during the day. (Although the Bayesians are far from being
solely responsible for this, I can’t help noticing that Time is having a
terrible revenge on them. They used to be an intellectual
elite, for in days past only the strong and clear-minded could forge an
understanding that was independent of the dominant frequentist
philosophy. Now it seems that more and more people understand less and less about
Bayesian analysis and, quite frankly, it bugs me.) Whatever the cause, my sleep was interrupted
by a most irritating dream in the form of a fairy story, which I now reproduce
for the benefit of readers of SPIN,
with the plea that any who can interpret it will contact me, for my attempts to
get my wife to help in that department have left me more baffled than before. (But more of that later.)
So here is
my dream, or rather my nightmare.
GMcP’s dream: Jack and the Beans-Talk
Jack was a
diligent pharma who lived and worked happily and
industriously for ‘the company’. His job involved tending one of several
cash-cows. Others in the business were involved in ‘calving’: trying to bring
on ‘projects’ (as they were affectionately known) until they could reach
maturity and, it was hoped, also become cash-cows. Still others in the company
were involved in carving. This was to do with chopping bits of the company’s
assets off, and selling them for money. Unfortunately the carving was
interfering with the calving and fewer and fewer cash cows were being, ‘brought
on stream’.
One day,
the chief executive officer called Jack in and ordered him to raise some money
for new innovative projects by selling the cash-cow. Accordingly, Jack was
ordered to take the cow to the stock-market and see what he could get for her.
On his way to the market, Jack met a curious little fellow wearing a red
bonnet, carrying a bulging sack and with an unpleasant looking black bird, just
like a crow only much smaller, sitting on his shoulder. ‘Hello, Jack,’ said the
little fellow, ‘I believe you need to sell your cow’. ‘Who are you?’ said Jack,
‘and how do you know my business?’. ‘I am a pharma co-gnome, that is to say I work with pharmas,’ the little fellow replied, ‘my name is Gino and this is my crow, Micro, who will be very useful to us
both in future. And it is my business to know about the business of others.’
‘I see,’
replied, Jack, ‘but where is your pick, because are you gnomes not well known
as miners?’ ‘You must be thinking of my brother Data,’ replied the vertically challenged individual, ‘he does that
sort of thing.’ ‘He must be very rich,’ replied Jack, ‘with all the wonderful
jewels he extracts from the data-mine.’ ‘He is very rich,’ said Gino, ‘but not
because of what is extracted from the data-mine. Most of that is merely fool’s
gold. The money to be made in data-mining is in selling equipment and advice
and that is what he specialises in. But enough of this banter. If you give me
your cash-cow, in return I will let you use the magic beans in my sack.’
‘What are
your magic beans,’ said Jack, ‘that I should give my valuable cash-cow for
them?’ ‘They are here in this bag,‘ said Gino, ‘and amongst them are almost
certainly one or two that, when manured liberally
with cash from your cow, will grow into mighty bean-stalks.’
‘Your point
being?’ said Jack. ‘The point being’, replied Gino, ‘that at the top of the
beanstalk you will find a magic castle in which a giant is fast asleep snoring
away and unable to guard the magic goose that lays the golden eggs.’
(At this
point gentle reader, I must interrupt with a personal observation. My nightmare
seemed to be getting louder and I heard in my ears a distinct sound of vigorous
and unpleasant snoring. Thus: snore,
snore, SNORE.’)
‘That is
truly remarkable,’ said Jack, ‘but how will we find which beans will work, for
there seem to be many in the bag you are carrying?’ ‘Oh that is easy, replied
Gino, ‘this is where my faithful assistant Micro will help us.’ And so saying
he tipped all of the beans in his sack onto the floor, where they formed a
small hill. ‘Nova vestis imperatoris’, said the gnome magically. No
sooner had the fateful words been said than the crow flew down off his shoulder
and arranged the beans into a tightly packed regular rectangle.
(Snore, snore, SNORE. The snoring in my
dream was growing louder)
‘This is a
Micro-array,’ said Gino, ‘now we must make the beans talk so that we can find
which one to manure with cash’. ‘And how do we do this?’ said Jack. ‘By singing’,
said Gino. No sooner had the gnome said these words than he launched into a
loud but rather tuneless version of the ABBA song ‘Money, Money, Money’,
(Snore, snore, SNORE is what I could hear
in the background and I couldn’t help but note, powerless as I was to stop this
nonsense, that by strange coincidence the Gnome’s choice of song is one that
had featured in the conference disco earlier.)
After a
short pause, the beans began to hum. ’Me, me, me.’
‘You see’, said the gnome, ‘the beans are telling us which ones to choose.’
‘That may be,’ replied Jack, ‘but there must be dozens if not hundreds of them
shouting at once and against the background of all this snoring its very hard
to hear which one is shouting the loudest.’
‘That’s
your problem’ replied the gnome, ‘but thanks for the cow’. ‘I haven’t given you
the cow,’ replied Jack. ‘Yes, you have,’ replied Gino, ‘it’s in the bill’. And
sure enough no sooner had he said that, than Micro opened its beak which had
suddenly grown to the size of an elephant (well this was a dream and a fairy story.) and swallowed Jack’s
cow.
(At this
point the snoring grew to a thunderous rumble and I woke to find that I was in
danger of being late for the session I was due to chair that morning.)
Mrs McP’s
baffling observation
I found
this dream curiously vivid and couldn’t get it out of my head and later, when
back at home shared it with Mrs McP,
who opined that it was a load of tosh not worth
thinking about but that one aspect of it was very clear to her.
‘What?’ I
asked.
‘The origin
of the snoring,’ she replied.
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