Answer: What's YOUR search challenge?

Quick update for readers...   (I'm actually traveling today, so I'm writing this in San Jose airport... waiting for a flight to Orange County.)  

SJC at 7AM, Terminal B, Gate 20

So far I've gotten about a dozen suggestions--all excellent!--that you'll see in the weeks ahead.  As I said, I'll be sure to give credit to the original author (although I might edit them a bit).  

A big thanks to everyone who sent in a challenge.  As you can appreciate, it's actually fairly hard to write and test-out these challenges.  I typically spend about 1 hour to write the challenges (even the short ones), and then about another hour to write up the answer.  As I work through the challenge, I take notes along the way, which I always advocate for search questions that aren't trivial... which in this blog is most of them...

Since I've been doing a lot of work on MOOCs recently, it occurred to me that writing tests, quizzes, and short questions is much like writing Search Challenges.  They're not easy to create. Sure, as a longtime teacher I've written my share of tests and quizzes, but until I started writing them for the blog and for AGoogleADay.com, I never really spent a lot of time working through the solution.  After all, I knew how to solve them, so why bother to do all that extra work?   

The reason, as professional teachers will tell you, is that little things will reach up and bite you.  "Simple" questions sometimes have unanticipated extras, additional complications or sub-problems that need to be understood (and solved) along the way.  Moral:  Test your problem before assigning it to your students.  I think it's okay to hand out difficult (or even unsolvable) problems, but you (as the teacher) really need to understand the complexities involved. 

And that, my friends, is what makes writing Search Challenges so interesting!  Crazy-hard problems that I wrote 2 years ago are now trivial.  Problems that seem easy, sometimes are immensely difficult to find.  What's more... this changes all the time as the web changes (for both good and ill) and as search engines change, increasing capacity, crawling of content and indexing ability.  

Thanks for your contributions.  My email door is always open for new ideas and suggestions.  If you come across a difficult-to-search-for problem in your daily life, let me know!  I might be able to help you out, or at very worst, we can make it into an interesting search challenge for everyone to learn from ! 

Thanks.  

Search on. 

Wednesday search challenge (5/15/13): What's YOUR challenge idea?

Well, it finally happened.  I hit an unfortunate triple-witching point this week and I don't have a clever Search Challenge for you.  

Then it occurred to me:  The ultimate search challenge would be... to ask YOU to send in a search challenge!  

So for this week, if you have an idea, even a nascent idea or just an idea-glimmer in the back of your brain pan, drop me a line.  If I use your challenge, I'll definitely acknowledge your contribution and give a shout-out to your personal web-site or social-media connection.  (Note: I reserve the right to edit your challenge questions to fit into the style and structure of SearchResearch.)  

Idea?  Let me know at dmrussell@gmail.com 

I'll summarize whatever comes in tomorrow.  

Remember:  The point of a search challenge is to be (a) interesting, (b) solvable by using search methods, and (c) have a teaching point to improve your search skills.  

If you think you've got something you'd like to share with SearchResearch, send it in!  I'll be looking! 


Create challenges!  

Answer: What was the defining publication?

"The Line Storm," by John Steuart Curry, 1897-1946.  (Image from NOAA)  

I should have known that many SearchResearch readers would know about derechos.  I’m impressed that there are so many searchers living in Maryland and places affected by the storm.

Short answers:  This particular big storm was a derecho, first published in 1878, Iowa Weather Bulletin Volume 1 Number 1, Dr. Gustavus Hinrichs, Iowa City, Iowa 1878. 

When I did the search, I started with:

[2012 Maryland wind storm]

The first hit was a Wikipedia article on the June 2012 wind storm in Maryland.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2012_North_American_derecho

I quickly learned this kind of wind storm is called a 'derecho' which is a fast-moving linear storm system with extremely high winds.  Unlike a tornado or hurricane, it doesn’t rotate, but flows rapidly eastward causing damage as it goes.

I looked up  “derecho” in Wikipedia and found a nice summary article there about derechos in general.  To double check my work, it was simple to search for

[ derecho Maryland ]

and find dozens of news reports from the time. 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/09/Derecho-warnings.png  -- image

CAPTION:  Warnings from the NWS on June 29–30. Red are tornado warnings, yellow are severe thunderstorm warnings, green are flash flood warnings, and purple are special marine warnings.

In the Wikipedia article I found that derechos are seen as long linear clouds, “shelf clouds,” that show the advancing front. 

Shelf cloud image from Wikimedia

Derecho comes from the Spanish word in adjective or adverb forms for "straight" (adv, adj. "direct"), in contrast with a tornado which is a "twisted" wind.

Wikipedia tells us that the term was first used in the American Meteorological Journal in 1888 by Gustavus Detlef Hinrichs when describing the phenomenon of a derecho that crossed Iowa in July, 1877.

Several people went to Google Books, and did a search for 

["The American Meteorology Journal" ]

and limiting their search to 1888.  It’s simple to find the book, search inside the book for the term “derecho” and find it on page 307.  This is a great approach, and often works for archival research papers like this.  

In that article he mentions an earlier publication, in the “Special Bulletin, No. 1, a quarto sheet, printed in two colors, map red, storm details in black—by use of the electric pen.” 

Curious about this, I looked up the Wikipedia article about Gustavus Hinrichs and discovered that he was actually a chemist, best known for his discoveries about periodic laws in the relationships between elements.  This work was important in leading up to the Periodic Table of Elements (although he didn’t do the work of Mendelev—Hinrichs’ periodic table was in the shape of a spiral). 

But he had a longstanding interest in weather, and was also the founder of the first state weather and crop service while a professor at University of Iowa. 

Hinrichs' house in Iowa City (image from NOAA

Hinrichs’ first weather station was at his home in Iowa City at the corner of Capitol and Market streets.  Flags on top of his house were barometer readings, and thought of as weather predictions by the locals. 

The Wikipedia article led me to an article at NOAA (the government weather service).  And the NOAA article also has a link to a PDF of his report from 1878…  What's odd about that report is that it looks like it's a handwritten document.  So then how was it distributed?  This was well before photocopiers, and while it's possible he wrote it out as an engraving, it would have been really hard to do so.  

So how was it made?  

Later in NOAA site it mentions that the original publication done by electric pen, an Edison invention.  

The “electric pen” was a device like tattoo needle, moving up and down rapidly to punch a series of tiny in common writing paper. (See:  http://electricpen.org/ ) This sheet of paper produced a stencil which could then be used to up to 5000 copies from a single original sheet.  (That explains why the PDF looks like it was handwritten.  This puzzled me until I read about the electric pen device.)

Fun side note:  Did anyone else notice the “Symbols and definitions” section at the beginning of the paper?  I was surprised to see “Hydro-meteors” (rain, snow, sleet…) and “Electro-Meteors” (northern lights, lightning, thunder…) and “Optical Meteors” (shooting star, meteor, fireball, Zodiacal light…) as three separate categories.  Does anyone know why these were broken out in this way? 

 

From the original electric pen doc. (PDF from NOAA, see above.)

Search Lessons:  This challenge was successfully solved by lots of searchers—well done!  The key here was to pull together information from a number of different sources (looking up the wind storm date to learn it’s a “derecho,” then looking up derecho to find the publication, then reading that to find it to find out there was an earlier publication).  This is a great skill to develop, especially in younger searchers, who tend to stop short of double-checking their findings. 

Search on!  

Wednesday search challenge (5/8/13): What was the defining publication?

While visiting friends in Maryland, I asked about why a particular tree in their yard was cut down to a stump.  I hadn't remembered seeing it like that when I visited last year.  What happened? 

They explained that a massive wind storm had swept through this part of Maryland last year just after I'd visited and had destroyed the tree.  

"That's odd," I thought, "I don't remember any tornados in Maryland in 2012... what happened?"  

Indeed.  What happened?  

I was able to find out after just a few moments of research.  It was a specific kind of storm that wreaked widespread devastation throughout Maryland.  And this leads to today's challenges; there's an easy form, and a more challenging question.  

1.  What kind of storm destroyed my friend's tree in Maryland last year?  (There's a very specific term for this weather event.  What's that term?)  

More challenging: 

2.  Can you find the original paper that gave the name to this kind of storm?  (You should be able to actually find and read the original text.  Accept no substitutes!)  

As always, please let us know HOW you found the answer(s), and about how long it took you to find it. 


Search on! 



------

(Thanks to Ben B for the idea!)  
(Footnote:  I'll be traveling all day tomorrowand might not be able to write up the answeruntil Friday.  Don't panic, I'll be back.) 

Answer: What was the name of that stream?

When you're trying to track someone down these days, a reasonable first starting place would be their G+, Facebook, or Flickr social postings.  Or, in my case, since you know I have a Home Page, you might check there.  If you do the obvious query, you'll find both my G+ update and my conference travel update. 

My site:  https://sites.google.com/site/dmrussell/ 
tells you I'm probably in Paris, and checking my G+ post confirms it.  I posted a CHI2013 event yesterday afternoon.  

Now that you know I'm in Paris, let's look at the parks and see if any could possibly look like the one in that photo.  Here's the photo.  The key features we'll want to look for in the map are a large green park with a long boulevard running through it, with a large freeway-like thing and a traffic circle near one corner.  
  

And here's the relevant map of Paris:  

Although there are a few parks, only one, the Bois de Boulogne (on the left side near the red label of N185) has a road that looks like the one in the photo, cutting a big slash through the parkland.   (This is a little easier to see if you click on the map image above to see it in full resolution.)  

At this point we suspect that it's the Bois de Boulogne, so let's search for that and read up a bit.  

[ Bois de Boulogne ] 

Leads to the Wikipedia article, which suggests that there is a stream running through it, which sounds even better.  

A good double check here would be to look for the conference location with: 

[ CHI 2013 conference ] 

and find the conference page that reveals that the conference is being held at the Palais des congrès de Paris.  Map that out in Google Maps, and you'll see it's right on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne.  There's also a conference hotel by the Palais that's positioned exactly right to create my photo.  

Once you look for the word "stream" in the article on the Bois, you'll see that the stream called the Ruisseau de Longchamp (1855) is the major (artificial) stream in the park. It flows through the Pré-Catelan area of the park, under the alley of Reine Marguerite, then to the Mare des Biches, one of the oldest natural ponds in the park, then to another reservoir and the Grand Cascade.

A bit of history from Wikipedia: 

[The architect's ] plan called for long straight alleys in patterns crisscrossing the park and, as the Emperor had asked, lakes and a long stream similar to the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Unfortunately, Varé bungled the assignment. He failed to take into account the difference in elevation between the beginning of the stream and the end; if his plan had been followed, the upper part of the stream would have been empty, and the lower portion flooded. When Haussmann saw the partially finished stream, he saw the problem immediately and had the elevations measured. He dismissed the unfortunate Varé and Hittorff, and designed the solution himself; an upper lake and a lower lake, divided by an elevated road, which serves as a dam; and a cascade which allows the water to flow between the lakes. This is the design still seen today.

And while there are many trees in the Bois, the one that caught my eye was the Redwood tree, the California state tree.  

Hope you had fun doing this... I certainly did!   (I also checked other maps of the Bois, confirming my find that this was the *artificial* stream that I'd run beside.)  

Search on! 

Wednesday Search Challenge (5/1/13): What's the name of the stream?

Today I went for a run in this park.  (I took this photo from my hotel room, not very far from the park.) As you can see, it's a fairly large park in a well-known city.  

As I ran, I ended up running along a stream. Alas, there were no signs to tell me the name of the stream. 

What's the name of this stream?

Today's challenge isn't too hard: 

     Can you find out the name of the stream
     I was running past?  

There's only one stream in the park (so far as I can tell). 

BUT, just to save you some time--I've removed the EXIF data from the photo, so you'll have to do something other than just looking up the lat/long.  

Can you do it?  

Extra credit: 

As you know from last week, I love to know what kind of trees I'm seeing as I run.  In this case, as I was running along, I saw a particular tree of a particular type that reminded me of home.  

     Can you tell me what kind of tree I saw?


Tell us not just the answer, but HOW you figured it out! 


Search on! 

Answer: What kind of trees are those?

Yesterday's questions should start to look familiar by now.  When given an image and asked something about it that sounds a lot like "location-specific information," you probably want to first check it for EXIF metadata.  

1.  What kind of trees are these?  (No guessing.  You should be able to figure this out definitively.)  

2.  When I took this picture, I could hear a bell ringing in the distance.  Why was the bell ringing?  (Hint:  It wasn't from someone's house.  This question is a little harder, but you should be able to find the answer.) 

So I downloaded the image and extracted the metadata from it.  

First, let's start with the lat/long.  I found that it was (37.3648083333333, -122.146610833333).  

I wanted to start by taking a look around that location, so I went into Google Streetview, put in the lat/long as the searcy query,  and just looked around a bit.  I found almost the exactly same image in streetview: 

   
Since Streetview gave me the estimated street address, I tried searching with that, but didn't get especially far.  

But when I kept rotating the view around, I DID discover a sign at the entrance to the gate leading up to the house.  By using the Streetview + tool to zoom in on a portion of the image, I was able to read the sign quite clearly. 

And if you're given a clue in the form of a name like that, you've got to do the next obvious search.  My next search was for:  

    [ Taaffe House Los Altos Hills ] 

Strategically, I wanted to find out a bit about the house on the hill, assuming that it might have something to do with the grove of trees in the foreground.  

It worked beautifully.  Wikimapia has a brief article on the house, which is on the estate of former Hewlett-Packard CEO David Packard.  This article also mentions that the trees are apricot trees, but this seemed to neat, fast, and remarkable.  (I mean, what were the chances that the random picture I took of fruit trees while on a bike ride would turn out to be those of a Silicon Valley giant?)  

I wanted to second source this information from a trusted source.  So I did follow-up query: 

   [ Taaffe House William Packard ]

Sure enough, in these results I find the Packard Foundation itself discussing the Packard house on Taaffe Road (now a conference center).  And a bit further down in the results, there's an entry in an architectural data base that describes the Taaffe House as having "70 acres of apricot trees."  That just about lines up with my visual estimate of the size of the property.  

Answer to question #1:  Apricot trees, found on several different sources.  

The second question is a bit harder.  WHAT could possibly be ringing a bell in the afternoon?  (Given that it's not a house.)  I wasn't sure what I was looking for, so I went back the Google Map of that area and did a search for: 

     [  *  ] 

Yes, searching for as asterisk will put all of the "known entities" for all of the visible map as red dots and push pins (A through F in this illustration).  

I figured I was looking for a church or a school (the most likely institutions to ring bells).  I see that Foothill College in the lower right is there, but they don't ring bells.

There's a church (St. Luke's Chapel in the Hills, pushpin H) and there's "Poor Clares Nuns" at pushpin F on this map.  

A search for: 

    [ St Luke's "Chapel in the Hills" bells ] 

reveals that the Chapel's web site only talks about the use of "sanctus bells" during Sunday Mass at noon.  (I did a background lookup to verify that "sanctus bells" are small, handheld bells used in a church service--unlikely to be heard at a distance.  So the bells I heard probably aren't from St. Luke's.)  

A quick check of the EXIF metadata shows us that the photo was taken at 2013:04:04 16:35:18  (or, decoding slightly:  April 4, 2013 at 4:35PM)  

I checked the bells at Poor Clares with the query: 

     [ Poor Clare's Los Alto Hills bells ] 

and found the sisters' blog with their daily routine and a listing of times when they would ring bells their practice.  

Answer to question #2:  4:30PM is roughly the end of what the nun's blog describes as "Rosary, Vespers, collation"--so I'm willing to bet that's what it was.  A bell marking the end of that step in their daily ritual.   (For what it's worth, I also had to look up "collation" and found that it's a light meal.  I could imagine that the bell might signal the transition.  But it's a little unclear if it's the end of rosary + vespers + collation, or from rosary + vespers to collation.  Nevertheless, it's somehow signaling rosary + vespers.  

In any case, given that the afternoon wind is usually in a south or southeasterly direction in this part of Silicon Valley, it was mostly likely the "Immaculate Heart Monastery of the Poor Clares."  (This name is taken from the image of their road sign on their web site.)  

Here's an image I made from one of the pictures on their web site.  (I just cropped and zoomed in a good deal on their original image.)  You can actually see the bell that's used to signal events during the sister's daily routine.  

I found it striking that this lonely sound of devotion would drift across the hills over Silicon Valley and be heard by Packard's apricot tree.  But it's also a great thing that you can figure all this out with just a few minutes of searching. 

Keep searching on! 

Postscript:  Interested in the bells, I've ridden my bike up there a few more times around 4PM and ridden slowly up and down the street in front of the monastery.  Sure enough, the bell rings repeatedly every afternoon about 4:30, sometimes a bit earlier, sometimes a bit later.  But since they're a cloistered order, I don't know that I'll ever find out exactly what the bell signifies.