Look at all the highly competent leaders we have in various fields of endeavour in our country and see how many if any of them are cool, we now have cool but pathetically incompetent leading our country I am afraid being cool is a cruel joke on all of us

Maybe we could have them exchange jobs for a day, week, month-or four years? Your posting reminded me of another thought about Geithner-we have 300 million people in this country-and he was the only one who could do the treasury job?

I believe the backbone of this country is made up of the “uncool” folks. I hope there are enough of us.

Nice diary Susannah. Thank you.

…that the Hollywood/MTV/Facebook crowd thinks HEIDI AND SPENCER are “cool”…

…I don’t put much stock in cool.

rather than freaks

will start flying Air Force One.

We can only HOPE!!!!

(Also, please don’t take this as mocking or disrespectful — I just have a rather mathematical mind, that’s all, and when I hear a suspicious-sounding number I have to do my best to verify it.)

In watching the video documenting the second crash, the US ambassador mentioned that, for a plane of 125 people of which 50 survive, the odds of a husband and wife surviving are 1 in 16. I’m not so sure of that probability, but I’d like someone to check my math.

Given that we know 50 people survive (unstated in the ambassador’s description, but a reasonable assumption given that if all passengers survive this probability would be 100%, not the cited number), the probability of the husband-wife team surviving is the number of possible sets of survivors which include both husband and wife, divided by the number of possible sets of survivors. Thus we have:

# sets of survivors including husband/wife = 123 choose 48
# sets of survivors = 125 choose 50

In the latter case, we simply choose 48 survivors from the remaining pool of 123 passengers. After expanding the combinations into factorials, this then gives us a figure of:

P(couple survive) = (123! / (48! * (123 - 48)!)) / (125! / (50! * (125 - 50)!))
= (50 * 49) / (125*124)
= 49 / 310
= 0.158064516

This number, if it’s correct, isn’t the 1 in 16 the ambassador mentioned; it’s actually a bit better.

There’s one other possibility for the probability of 1 in 16: it’s the probability of a couple surviving given that any number of passengers survive, from 0 to 125. In that case we must generalize the above probability to allow 48 to vary from 2 to 125 (can’t include 0 or 1 because a couple can’t survive in either case, and the formula is degenerate), sum all those values, and divide by the number of possible survivor counts. Let P(n) be the probability of a couple on a 125-passenger plane surviving a plane crash where 2<=n<=125 people survive. The general formula in this situation is:

P(n) = (125 - 2) choose (n - 2) / 125 choose n

…and the total probability, assuming equal probability of all numbers of survivors, is then:

P(couple survive) = (sum of P(n) for n from 2 to 125 inclusive) / 126

Simplifying P(n) we have:

P(n) = 123! / (n-2)! / (125! / n!)
P(n) = 123! * n! / ((n-2)! * 125!)
P(n) = 123! * n * (n-1) / 125!
P(n) = n * (n-1) / (125*124)

We can then remove the denominator and divide the total of all probabilities by that value. The final result, then, seems to be 1 in 3, as seemingly demonstrated by the following JavaScript calculation (presumably modulo floating-point error in the last digit; it wouldn’t be hard to sum n**2 and -2n across all values, to be sure, but I’m feeling lazy after crunching on this for awhile):

javascript: var ps = 0; for (var n = 2; n <= 125; n++) ps += (Math.pow(n,2) - n); alert(ps/126/(125*124))

Here’s a <a href=”javascript: var ps = 0; for (var n = 2; n link to calculate that, if comments allow HTML and JavaScript URLs through.

I’m almost depressingly rusty in performing this calculation despite having studied probability within the last year, so any help others could give by pointing out error or verifying my analysis would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! (And, one last time, my apologies if this comment offends anyone with its apparent lack of sympathy or with its relative tangency to the topic under discussion.)

he has grey hair, he’s not exceptionally good looking or charismatic,

Watch your tongue, there.

Allguys with grey hair are automatically exceptionally good looking and charismatic. Its about all we have left.

Excellent post.

n/t

Great post, Susannah

He just tried — and succeeded — at being very, very good when all of that skill was needed and the chips were down.

There are many, many more Chesley Sullenbergers out there in America, and they’re underappreciated, and they don’t make the headlines — but they keep America working, every single day. Of course, they’re also not normally the kind of people who seek to aggressively self-promote their competence, or deliberately make mockeries of themselves — they just happen to be there when the work they’ve done throughout their lives to develop and maintain that competence are really needed.

You want to know someone else who I think is cut from the same cloth? Ed Brown, who manufactures some of the best, most accurate, and most reliable pistols and rifles in America out of Missouri. They’re expensive, but that’s because they’re good.

I can only hope to be as “uncool” as this man. Pop culture has warped definitons of “cool,” it’s up to us to show our kids & those around us what cool really is.

He’s HOT! HOT! HOT! He saved real lives, just like the Old Mac.

My assessment:

This diary is flawful! Why would a very intelligent conservative woman mix up the beautiful REAL HEROES with fraud and corrupt politicians like the Kool O? It’s entirely obvious that there’s NO comparison whatsoever. No such parallel lives can be made no matter what.

Geez, Sis Susannah’s critical thinking must be slipping.

My verdict:

And for that…… I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS DIARY.

Oops, sorry. I’m the one really slipping here, no? My mind is really floating in the air, apparently from my overdose of MSM-forced prescription of a very potent anti-euphoria drug called UhbummahhCoolE tablet (it’s specially imported from Kenya, courtesy of the illegal immigrants in Hawaii.)

I am not a big fan of McCain’s however, there would never have been anything like this spending monstrosity that just passed, I wouldn’t be in fear of when the terriorists are going to call on the weak kneed lilly livered excuse we have for a president and the mother of a Cole bombing victim would not have had to make the comment “I voted for him.”

I wonder if Sully is interested in running for a seat in Congress?

I am not a big fan of McCain’s however, there would never have been anything like this spending monstrosity that just passed, I wouldn’t be in fear of when the terriorists are going to call on the weak kneed lilly livered excuse we have for a president and the mother of a Cole bombing victim would not have had to make the comment “I voted for him.”

I wonder if Sully is interested in running for a seat in Congress?

I heard the cockpit recorder tapes. Capt. Sullenberger sure sounded cool to me. He’s flying a commercial passenger jet and looses both engines shortly after taking off. He has a little inease in his voice as he is asking about Teterboro. The Air Traffic Controller sounds like he’s losing his cool. Then Sully says as coolly as I ever heard anyone say anything, “We’re landing in the Hudson…We’re landing in the Hudson.” He sized up the ever changing situation and chose the best course of action. Coolness is a way of acting especially under pressure. Do not confuse “coolness” with popularity or even worse fadishness.

…is getting a way-too-late wake-up call.

You are so right. We take competence for granted in this country at our peril. I see it slipping away all the time, especially when dealing with the gubmint. But it has become endemic wherever people are hired for reasons other than expeience, education and ability. Which is, unfortunately, wherever the gubmint can dictate hiring policy.

Some might say this is a small thing, but I don’t think so. As you so eloquently point out, competency may not be real important when it’s the deputy assistant undersecretary of the state Department of Redundancy department, but it sure as heck is when trying to crash land a jet airplane in the Hudson River. Many jobs in this country rely on competent, dedicated, well-trained people to make things run smoothly, but they are considered squares by the fornicating-is-fun crowd in Hollywood.

BTW, if you want an advance look at where our country is heading with this PC crap invading every nook & cranny of society & becoming public policy, read Theodore Darymple’s “Not with a Bang, but a Whimper.” What has happened in Britain with nationalized (read rationed) healthcare; an overly lenient, root-causes justice system; a state-run, self-esteem based education disaster; and so much more, is waiting for us in spades if we continue down the oh-so-cool Obama road to socialized incompetence.

He has extremely poor advisers and he knows nobody personally.

He has been elected President of the United States, yet he doesn’t seem to have any friends. William Ayers, yes, Rev. Wright, yes, although he renounces them; but who else? Whom does he know that he can trust to give him good and realistic advice? We have a President who has no experienced group of advisers who are also his trusted friends, or friends of friends. He has no kitchen cabinet, so it’s not surprising that he can’t fill his official Cabinet.

Someone, I suspect it’s Rahm Emanuel, is giving him decent POLITICAL advice, which is why he picked Judd Gregg and Tom Daschle for their proposed positions. Maybe that’s why Hillary is now Secretary of State, too. (heh heh) He is also getting far-left tactical advice from somebody not so adept. That included advice to not only move the census from Commerce to the White House, but to announce that plan before Gregg was tucked into the fold. A good adviser would have told him to drop Daschle days before Daschle himself quit.

We need to always keep in mind that Obama is very little better prepared to be President than you or I would be. He doesn’t have a significant background in national government or politics. He doesn’t have a history of being closely, or even distantly, acquainted with national leaders. He doesn’t have a friendly retinue of experienced political operatives, or diplomatic operatives, or even thoughtful supporters. What he has is a phalanx of handlers who have their own agendas and are perfectly happy to see him and the country fail if THEIR programs get enacted. And a So-Called Unbiased Media who have no intention of pointing out the many little and big things he has wrong.

Obama is the least experienced President we’ve elected in modern times, perhaps ever. Even young Jack Kennedy had been a Senator with a record of some accomplishment, and he had been associating with high-level movers and shakers for years. George W. Bush had been the governor of a major state, and he was the son of a former President and knew many experienced people from which to choose potential advisers. The closest to Obama was, of course, Bill Clinton, but even he had been part of national Democrat politics before he was elected. And he, too, had problems naming Cabinet members.

We are being held hostage to left-wing policies as our President receives on-the-job training.

He’s a former F-4 pilot. He’s built up enough cool points in that jet to last the rest of our lifetimes…