

Here's Waldo - ColinWright
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/11/where_s_waldo_a_new_strategy_for_locating_the_missing_man_in_martin_hanford.html

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jere
>Handford generally shies away from putting Waldo near the bottom or top of a
page, which leads me to theorize that Waldo placement is largely a function of
two factors: aversion from extremes and aversion from the middle.

Perhaps the methodology is flawed, but this is exactly what I would expect.
Ask someone to pick a "random number" in a given range and their response is
actually quite nonrandom.

[http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/02/05/is-17-the-...](http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/02/05/is-17-the-
most-random-number/) [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2009/12/17/the-
psyc...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2009/12/17/the-psychology-
of-randomness.aspx)

>When asked to pick a random number between 1 and 100, most people will choose
a number that is odd, often prime, and approximately 1/3 or 2/3 of the way
between the lower and upper limits. For some reason we think these values are
"more random" than other numbers.

The prime concept doesn't apply here, but this is basically what we see with
the two bars.

It wouldn't surprise me that Handford is reasoning, if even subconsciously,
about where a reader _might look_. The extremes and middles seem like good
starting points. Similarly, if we are trying to create a "random number" we
tend to avoid numbers that seem like they could be derived from something
else. Like starting in the beginning, middle, or end of a range. Or by
multiplying other numbers together (which is why I think we pick primes).

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nwh
He's not at the edges of the page partially due to the print process. You need
a large border of disposable material that can be cut from the edges (bleed)
should the alignment of the pages be slightly out when the book is bound and
trimmed. It wouldn't be much finding half of Wally, so they don't put him
where he might be cut in two with a guillotine.

(He's still better as Wally than Waldo.)

~~~
callum85
I think the margin of error for this kind of printing is usually only 3mm
though, so they could still put him pretty close to the edge if they wanted to

~~~
nwh
3-5mm is standard, but if I remember this books rightly they're fairly cheaply
bound (it's been a while since I've seen my copy of the one in that post,
saddle stitched or stapled). Assuming a 5mm bleed, you can have at most 1cm
cut in from the edge, which is substantial.

~~~
mistercow
That's still not enough to account for the size of the region of bias though.

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wikwocket
This reminds me of high school English class: let's obsessively analyze this
book/play/whatever, trying to discern the secret meanings and fundamental
truths the author has elaborately hidden inside his or her work.

When in actuality, the author was probably just writing what they wanted to,
and what sounded good on the page. As in this case, where the author literally
says, "I add Wally when I come to what I feel is a good place."

~~~
icefox
In college that happened to me when an author came and spoke about their work
and when we asked them about all of the meanings and "hidden truths" we had
been debated we were told they were all unintentional and had no deeper
meaning.

Really took a lot of the magic out of reading books for me when I started meta
analysing the discussions and the probability that there was no intentional
hidden meaning in many of the stories we were reading.

~~~
adamesque
Suppose a "hidden truth" turned out not to have been intended by the author —
would that make it less true?

One of the beautiful things about art (and life) is that it literally is what
we make of it (or what we can make _from_ it using the evidence at hand).

Authorial intent is super interesting, of course, and can enrich your
understanding, but it's also pretty rare information. Often the work itself is
all that remains after the author's gone.

At that point, it doesn't matter what the author "meant". You read what they
left you to read and get whatever value from that you can.

~~~
aaron695
> Suppose a "hidden truth" turned out not to have been intended by the author
> — would that make it less true?

Yes, it's not true.

Unless it was a side effect, like if they came from a repressed society X and
those effects bleed through to the story. Then there might be unintentional
hidden meanings.

The concept art and culture is whatever the user sees it as is a cop out.
(Unless the artist intended it that way)

We don't put up with it in the sciences, why put up with it in the arts?

------
jffry
Reminds me of this great StackOverflow thread on how to programmatically find
Waldo using Mathematica: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8479058/how-do-i-
find-wal...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8479058/how-do-i-find-waldo-
with-mathematica)

------
cscheid
This kind of spatial scan statistics is _really_ easy to misuse without
careful multiple-comparison corrections. Would they have reported a 52%
effect? a 51% effect? What about 1.4 inch bands? or 1.2 inch bands? That
"remarkably thin" 0.3 percent will disappear pretty quickly.

Sorry that this is dismissive, but this piece is just a slightly more
complicated case of [http://xkcd.com/882/](http://xkcd.com/882/)

~~~
sp332
It's not a statistical model for future predictions. The whole point here is
to over-fit as much as possible, because you only care about a single dataset.

~~~
cscheid
Sorry, but if that were the case, then just showing the list of pages and
their locations would get 100% of them, with 0% probability of being "by
chance".

Then, you say "that's a complicated rule: no one can memorize the list", and
that's fine. But finding the simplest rule that has the best fit can be shown,
via the Minimum Description Length principle, to be equivalent to models with
deep connections to statistical learning.

The gist of the matter is: even if you have a single dataset, statistical
considerations are very important to make sure that the statements you make
are sensible. That does not appear to be the case in this Slate piece.

~~~
sp332
He made no claim to minimal or maximal anything. His technique does give you
an edge, though.

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praptak
I remember a mathematician's advice about playing lottery (other than "don't
play it") - pick numbers near the edges of the coupon, as people avoid those
places. This way you minimize the chance of having to split the jackpot with
someone else (and yeah "don't play it" still holds :-) )

~~~
nly
The same, in theory, applies to sequences like 1 2 3 4 5 6 "because that will
never happen", and numbers >31 (birth days).

In practice though, the number of n jackpot winners is significantly less
likely than 1... and do you really care if you only win $10M instead of $20M?

~~~
eterm
Except 1,2,3,4,5,6 is actually bought way more (by hundreds) than would be
bought by random.

It's best to use a source of random numbers. Any rules you construct just
makes it more likely someone else is using the same constructions.

~~~
jaynos
And never play the same numbers because if you play the same numbers all the
time and they are the winning numbers the one week you don't play...

~~~
nisse72
No worries, they might win again the following week!

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6202...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6202593/Bulgarian-
lottery-picks-same-numbers-in-straight-draws.html)

------
thomseddon
I've always known him as Wally, it looks like "Waldo" is an american thing:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where's_Wally](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where's_Wally)

~~~
Zoomla
He is called Charlie in French... "Où est Charlie ?"

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knoepfle
This is a silly example of ex post evaluation of an ex post model. You need to
have a holdout sample.

It's made more silly by the fact that they use the universe of Waldo books, so
their "strategy" is essentially just "here's approximately the answer".

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callum85
Slightly off topic, but I've always wondered... Is there any particular reason
why they changed his name for the US editions? Is there something about
"Wally" that sounds weird to Americans?

~~~
nwh
I've always been told that it's dumbing down, usually the line is "American
children wouldn't understand it". I suppose it's the same as the Harry Potter
books, "Philosopher" changed to "Sorcerer" in the title. It's very prevalent
to change "foreign" names to Americanised ones.

~~~
jstalin
Perhaps philosopher has a different connotation in UK English. Sorcerer just
seems more appropriate in a book about magic.

~~~
JonnieCache
The term "Philosopher's stone" is from medieval european alchemical lore.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher's_stone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher's_stone)

I don't know if they imagined british kids all knowing about that, but I can
assure you the term would be just as fantastical to them as to americans.

~~~
jstalin
Interesting. Having never looked into the history of alchemy, I would never
have associated philosophers with alchemy. Sorcerer just makes more sense (to
me).

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user24
If you put the bands here instead, you get a whopping 54% of the points,
[http://imgur.com/kkqdyNR](http://imgur.com/kkqdyNR)

So, I'm not convinced. Other than a slight void in the centre and at the
edges, it looks like a fairly random distribution to me.

I'd love to see a more in depth examination of the clustering of those points.

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mzahir
Forget the measuring tape, find Waldo with Mathematica!
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8479058/how-do-i-find-
wal...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8479058/how-do-i-find-waldo-with-
mathematica)

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cjfont
I was hoping to hear about the statistical approach the author used to find
the bands, that would have been far more interesting to me than postulating
about the reasons for Waldo's placement.

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Sharlin
The rule of thirds springs to mind:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds)

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mrcactu5
his pictures of the Waldo distribution remind me of the eigenvalues of the
Gaussian Unitary Ensemble!

[http://www.math.wisc.edu/~valko/courses/833/circle.jpg](http://www.math.wisc.edu/~valko/courses/833/circle.jpg)

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michaelochurch
I was expecting to learn that there are trivial Waldos at the nonnegative even
integers and that the rest of the Waldos must be in the critical strip 0 < Re
z < 1.

I was not disappointed.

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iamvery
Maybe I overlooked it skimming the article, but has anyone else noticed that
the pattern of his location matches the pattern of his shirt?

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Kalki
As A kid I could not get enough of finding Waldo. I even had the Nintendo
game.

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pattle
I always liked the wizard best

~~~
mbarrett
Agree, and shoeless waldo.

