Jonathan offered a randomized decision rule:
Brutus is the Ohio State mascot. As I type this, they trail by 4 against Michigan. I invoke aleatoric uncertainty to let Brutus go through or not dependent on the outcome of his football team.
Michigan won, so that implies that Mo Willems should advance.
And Manuel offers a positive case:
I confess that I ignore everything about Elephant & Piggy, but I guess the slides with the child-like drawings will keep me awake. And Willems can talk about many other things.
Knuffle Bunny!!!
But Raghu ices it with a citation to the recent scientific literature:
“Let the pigeon drive the bus: pigeons can plan future routes in a room” — Brett Gibson, Matthew Wilkinson & Debbie Kelly, *Animal Cognition* 15:379-391 (2012). Link
From the Introduction: “In the beloved children’s book — ‘Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus!’ — a human bus driver pleads with the reader not to let a pigeon drive his bus while he takes a break (Williams 2003). On the one hand, the bus driver might have been concerned that the pigeon would not be able to safely drive the vehicle. On the other hand, maybe the driver was more concerned that the pigeon would not be able to take a route that would efficiently pick up all the passengers at the various stops throughout the city. … The task of determining an optimal route to several locations or nodes is called the traveling salesperson problem (TSP). … It remains unclear whether animals, other than non-human primates, are using rigid rule-based solutions when solving TSPs, or a more flexible solution…”
Having written this, I now vote for Brutus.
Agreed. No way do I want to go to a seminar and hear about the “traveling salesperson” problem.
Today’s matchup
John Lennon is an excellent novelist and author of the unforgettable New Sentences For The Testing Of Typewriters. Leona Helmsley is famous for saying, “only the little people pay taxes.” Either of them would probably have a lot of stories to tell; on the other hand, Lennon might be saving his best material for future books, and Helmsley might stay mum on her best stories as they would just incriminate her.
What joker put seven dog lice in my Iraqi fez box?
I don’t really know either, but the use of the phrase ‘little people’ would surely make the audience want to rise up and overthrow the speaker, voiding the seminar. I will vote for the person who at least reminds me that ‘a working class hero is something to be’.
Same — I didn’t know either.
I’m not impressed by the Wikipedia article on Leona. Maybe a good character for a Knives Out #3 but doubt there’s much interesting for a seminar — so you have a lot of money and are a mean weirdo? Yawn.
For John I ended up reading the whole 404 error page on his website. If he can do a compelling 404 page, I’m sure he can swing a seminar. I also bought a couple books. John Lennon hands down.