John L

The CD reissue of the J.C. Quartet Plays contains a live version of Nature Boy, not on the Box, that is well worth the price of the CD alone.

Well, pick up a Lightnin' Hopkins disc and decide for yourself. You owe it to yourself. Lightnin' was very special. He had an exceptional voice for the blues, one of the very best, and a guitar style that went hand-in-glove with it. He is one of the handful of blues artists that everyone interested in the blues needs to come to grips with, one way or another. Maybe pick up first some of the more raw electric stuff that he did in the mid-50s. It is the most urban of his output, and also some of the very best. The Herald recordings should do the trick. The Modern recordings would as well. Lightnin' was not rural, but he was very downhome in the sense of a Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, or John Lee Hooker.

Very well put.

What is that Albert Ayler release? I thought that the only Ayler Hat was Lorrach.

Oh, yea! As I recall, that is the one where Bags plays two-four fingered piano as if he is using mallets. And he swings LIKE HELL. A killer!

Just hooked up with my copy. The previously unreleased takes are nice to have, although there doesn't appear to be anything really major among them. That said, Pres does play some stronger stuff on the new alt of Hollywood Jump than on the known master. My booklet came all screwed up. Most of the pages are missing, and the notes are unreadable. I assume that Mosaic will replace it.

Great photos! Thanks, Chris.

I think that this is the crux of the matter for you, Jim, and I have to ask - do you really know people who "continuously get it right"? I believe there is a psychological term for the tendency to remember all the times that a hunch played out and forget all of the times that it didn't. The fact is that your lucky friends and your unlucky friends are going to have the same odds - 1/3 if they stick, 2/3 if they switch. Yes. An interesting aspect of genuine independent randomness is that it does not usually mix things up in the sense that the intuition of some people expect. If someone wins and wins again, then he or she just might win again a third time, even if the odds are against it. Genuine randomness is completely consistent with generating winning streaks or losing streaks that are very low probability events, and lead to the possible impression that something else is going on. In fact, genuine randomness will always create streaks from time to time. If we introduce something to the stochastic process to force the randomness to mix it up more and make streaks less plausible, then we are no longer dealing with genuine independent randomness.

Well, I think that we will have to agree to disagree about this. Genuine randomness is indeed chaotic, and the odds don't guarantee anything. We might have hunches that we want to go on that we don't completely understand. Fine. We can represent all of that by our own subjective probabilities about the odds, and play those odds in order to maximize our chances. "Odds about the odds" can be factored into all of this too. That is just semantics. Rational decision-making is an advantage. With chaotic randomness, it is no guarantee, and low probability events are realized all the time. It is an advantage. That's all.

I think that the disconnect here may be that Jim is not arguing about the statistical logic that we keep defending, but that a subjective hunch about something might have real meaning. What proof is there that a hunch is not based on some sort of ESP that we don't understand? Some people who feel lucky in blackjack might take a hit on 18 in hopes of getting and ace, a two, or a three. That is always stupid, given the odds. But if gamblers played the odds, they wouldn't be playing blackjack in the first place. Jim's last comment about observing the past in order to assess the liklihood of what might happen in the future reminds me of a friend of mine who plays kino in casinos. First, he spends about 6 hours studying what numbers are coming up, tries to draw patterns, and then plays. No matter how many times I tell him that every kino game is completely independent of the past, he tells me to get fucked. But who really knows? Maybe mother nature, or some other supernatural force, really is affecting the history of the game in some systematic way that we don't understand? Or maybe it is even simpler than that. Some of the ping pong balls might not be of the exact same weight, and therefore come up with a different probability than the others. The Let's Make a Deal example is interesting in that it is not the case that we know mother nature will choose one of three doors, each with 1/3 probability, and put a car there. There car is already there, and it was put there intentionally by Monty. So a gambler will try to conjure up some power to feel where it is. What is important to realize is that the assumption that this event is completely independent of past history might not be true. It is Monty, not mother nature, who decides where to put the car, and he is probably deliberately mixing it up so that one door does not get the car several times in a row. If this is the case, the fact that it was behind door number 2 last time should mean that it is less likely to be there this time. If it was behind door number 2 two or three times in a row already, then Monty would probably choose that door again with very low probability. The initial odds are then different than 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 In an earlier post, I argued that, even in the case that you have a strong prior hunch about which door the car is behind, you should still switch. The oprtimal strategy is be to make an initial choice of the door that you expect to be least likely, and then switch. Jim responded that I wasn't accounting for goat farts, and he was right. The difference between a goat fart and a prior hunch is that the goat might fart only after the initial choice of a door has been made. So suppose you begin with an initial assessment of 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 and choose door number 1. Then Monty shows you a goat behind door number 2 and asks you if you want to switch to door number 3. Then you smell a strong goat fart. It might have come from that goat that Monty showed you, but you have a hunch that it is coming from door number 3 with high probability. On the basis of this fart, you update your subjective odds to 60/40 that it is behind door number 1 and you don't switch. Is that a faithful representation of what you are trying to say, Jim?

I used to hear the Steve Miller (Blues) Band quite often in the 60s, as they played a lot of free concerts and festivals in the Bay Area. In you ask me, Boz Scaggs was always the best thing about that band, and he proved it later on by making albums that blow anything Steve Miller ever did completely away. Miles Davis really cracked me up in his autobiography when he talked about having to be second billed at the Filmore to "some sorry ass motherfucker named Steve Miller."

Well ok, you're talking prose, I'm mumbling poetry, but yeah, the earlier expressed notion that you should be surprised if you "smart" pick doesn't pan out the one and only time you get to use it is kinda...laughable to me. Like I said, I've lost big betting on hands with "favorable odds" and won big by sometimes chasing after things that go against the odds. "Beating the odds" is not always "luck", ya' know. Some cats really do have an intuitive sense about which way the wind's blowing at any point in time, and I've lost money to some of them. But then again, there's been times when I've had that intuition working too, and I've won money from people who didn't. and on the whole, hey...I ain't poor, let me put it that way, and if even though that's in no way a result of gambling, it's also not a result of not gambling, if you know what i mean. Odds, in a non-"theoretical" sense, are really just averages, which means that they don't always pan out, which means that sometimes, sometimes, counter-logical play is going to defeat logical play. I know that bugs people who like to think that the universe is a benign, non-fluid oasis of stasis, orderly place and if you just wait it all out you'll come out a winner, but...it is what it is, and what it is ain't no Sure Thing, ever. OK, I think that I am beginning to get you. The notion is that something supernational might be at play. If you just finished listening to ESP and you feel charged, then your choice of an initial door may not have been random, but actually made for a real reason that you don't completely understand, etc. Actually, mathematics doesn't go out the window in that case either. If you start out with a hunch that it is behind door number 1, then you can begin with different prior likelihood assessments (statisticians refer to them as Bayesian priors). For example, you can assign door number 1 50% and only 25% to doors number two or door number three, or something else that reflects your prior hunch. But guess what? You should still switch! In that case, you should make an initial choice of door number 2 or 3 and then switch to door number 1 or the other door. That would make your subjective odds of winning become greater than 2/3. if Monty doesn't show a goat behind door number 1, your odds become 75%. If he does show a goat behind door number 1, they still become 50/50. So there!

My God, Jim. You really do sound more like an artist than a mathematician. who would have known?

This is where it all breaks down. I too can't understand how Jim keeps stating that he understands that the odds improve by switching yet continues to think that in a singular event the odds are somehow 50-50. If they are 67-33 over 1000 iterations, then they are 67-33 for every single iteration. There is the so-called law of large numbers in statistics that says that if you play the switching strategy enough times in a row, the the number of times that you win the car will converge to 2 out of 3. If you only play a few times, there is a strong probability that you won't get the car two out of three times. But that is something different entirely than assessing the odds of a single event.

Jim: Maybe it is the whole notion of prior probabilities that has you reeling. We know that the car IS behind one of the doors. If it is door number 1, then it is behind door number one with probability one, not 1/3 The problem is that we don't know that, and therefore have to take our chances by assessing odds and choosing a strategy that maximizes our chances of getting the car. If we have no reason to believe before hand that there is any greater probability that the car is behind door number 1, door number 2, or door number 3, then we give them odds of 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. Those are not actual probabilities, as those are 1.0,0. That is a representation of our knowledge of the likelihoods, which is nill. In this case, we would be happier if we could choose two doors and not just one, and win the car if it is behind either of the two. That would double our chances of winning. In fact, the switching strategy does just that. That is all that we are saying here. Nothing else. Life is uncertain. We choose strategies like this all the time. Jazz musicians go to New York City because it can increase their chances of success. But, in some cases, it might not. We have to assess the odds and decide.

I don't think that's true. Well, here we go back to what everybody's been saying all along - you got two choices, right or wrong. 50-50. Y'all are arguing "wisdom" of choices, and all I'm saying is that, not so fast, sometimes, 1 in 3 times, the smart choice will be wrong. and you really don't know which one it's gonna be until it goes down. So it stands to reason that at some point, making the dumb choice will be making the right choice. So when, then do you make it? Easy - when you decide what to do. And there you got two choices. Switch or don't. One will be right, one will be wrong, and although one will be right more often than the other, you have no way of knowing which will be which or when, so you make one of two choices. And that gives you a 50-50 chance at getting the 2 out of 3 chance. Jim: Everything sounds OK to me until you cite 50-50. Like everyone else is saying it's actually 1/3 , 2/3. Sure, you might just feel lucky by picking the 1/3 option, and you just might get lucky. In fact, with probability 1/3, you will be lucky. But that doesn't contradict the point here: if the objective is to pick a strategy that will increase you chances of winning, then the switching strategy is the one to choose. But maybe you just have your mojo working or something.

The basic point to make the intuition jive with the reality is the following: Yes, you know before hand that Monty is going to show you a door with a goat. But you don't know which door. When you see which door, that reveals valuable information. Furthermore, which door Monty picks also depends, with some probability, on the first door that you choose. So your initial choice of a door gives a chance of winning of 1/3 if your strategy is to stick with it and not use any of the revealed information. In this case, you also know that with probability 2/3, it is behind one of the two other doors. After updating your information following the revelation of a door that has a goat (one of the two that you didn't choose), you can now place a 2/3 probability that the car is behind the other door. You initially placed a 2/3 probability that it was behind one of the two. Now you know which one of the two to give the 2/3 probability.

Strange. I am kind of vague on how the monkey M&M and Monty Hall problem are related. All the critique seems to be saying is that a reason that the same monkeys that prefer red over blue also usually prefer green over blue could be they don't like blue and never liked blue. The orignial experiment presumed that the monkeys were indifferent between red and blue before being forced to make a choice, and that choice then influenced subsequent choices. But the Monty Hall problem is something a little different.

That is an excellent choice!

"The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of" is a fascinating collection, but I wouldn't recommend it as a first purchase. It was put together mostly for hard core collectors based more on the rarity of the 78s than the quality of the music. Even the liner notes are more about the anal-retentive pleasures of 78 collecting, as opposed to the music. The "dreams" in question are the dreams of collectors about acquiring rare 78s. It was a major event at the time of release due to the inclusion of a previously unheard newly-discovered 78 of Son House. Mississippi John Hurt is one of the only early blues artists for whom I actually prefer the later recordings that he made in the 1960s before his death. "Mississippi John Hurt Today" on Vanguard is my favorite.

Absolutely. Yazoo presents the music with the best sound, excellent liner notes, and highly listenable sequencing. A cheaper alternative would be the various box sets of this music that have been released on JSP. But better to give Yazoo the business. They really need it right now. A cheap road to the Yazoo catalog is through emusic downloads. Yazoo doesn't do that much with early religious/gospel music. That problem is easily rectified by picking the the Goodbye, Babylon box set from Dust-to-Digital

For some reason that disc has been difficult for me to locate. Downloading from emusic or iTunes is one possibility. That is what I did.

My Diagonal Noise Enhancement maximizes the volume of whatever comes out of diagonal horns. Schoenberg will be an interesting read, I'm sure. It would have been kind of nice to get Michael Brooks to do the notes again. I really enjoyed those notes the first time around for the Lester Young story, although part of it may have had to do with the very steep Lester Young learning curve that I was on at the time. I ate up every note and every letter of it.

Chris Smith is also good. Between the two of them, it should be a good volume. I haven't seen it yet.

Not in my home. I've been using Diagonal Noise Enhancement for most of my life.