2008 Random Distance Run
Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.
– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
Last Friday I had the great honor of being the official Randomness Provider for the annual Random Distance Run (RDR). What this meant, basically, is that I got to roll a pair of big fuzzy dice:
Doesn’t sound like much, I know, but in fact this honor was enough to bring not just me but my wife and son out to the event. These aren’t just any old fuzzy dice. The RDR was started in 2003 by Adam Wierman (former grad student, now on the faculty at CalTech) and Rob Reeder (current grad student), as a footrace whose length is determined by the roll of the dice.
On Friday I rolled the first die, a 5. Amidst some groans, the assembled crowd of runners took off. (It’s amazing how much guilt you can feel for rolling a high number!) At about the time the race leaders approached the end of the 5th lap, I rolled the second die, a 2. (Much better!) This meant a total race distance of 7 laps. Roni Rosenfeld was particularly pleased, not only because his son and daughter ran good races with him, but also because I managed to roll the mode value of the pair of dice — something only a statistician / machine-learning person would care about after huffing and puffing for more than a mile! ;-)
The full results are available at the race’s official web site. Jake Krohn was the male winner, and Diane Mattingly the female winner, both with impressive times. The prize for the top advisor-advisee pair went to Ziv Bar-Joseph and Jason Ernst. (OK, they were the only advisor-advisee pair in the race. But they still ran very well!) Jonathan McCune was the Random Finisher, strangely enough because he finished not 7th (the sum of the roll of the dice) but 12th (12 = 52 mod 40, where 40 is the number of finishers). Other faculty involved included at least Mor Harchol (running) and Phil Gibbons (organizing).
Congratulations to all of the winners and in fact to all participants. A special thanks to Gaurav Veda, who not only organized this year’s race, but also invited me to provide the randomness.
Finally, I took the opportunity to make another test of the Gigapan robot. You can see the gigapan picture of the event here. Ralf Brown’s pictures are available here.
Peter Lee @ May 4, 2008