Entropic Thoughts recently reanalyzed the data I'd shared on the relationship between mask requirements and dance attendance we've seen at BIDA. They conclude:

Other sources account for most of the variation in dance attendance, and masking only plays a small part. The amount of the total variation contributed by masking requirements is 5 %. This number is called the coefficient of determination, and its square root is the correlation: 0.21. This correlation is low enough that we cannot conclude that masking has a significant effect on attendance.
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"But it still looks like masking has an effect!!" It does. It's just that if the effect is there, it is small enough that we cannot statistically prove an effect with just 44 dances. Assuming the coefficient of determination really is 5 %, and we are aiming for a traditional significance level of 0.05, the sample size curves tell us we would need over 80 dances to be sure of the effect of masking.

The approach they took in their post involves some statistics that make assumptions about the distribution of the data. While these assumptions may well be right, now that we have fast computers we can often use simulations to avoid this. I decided to have a go at analyzing this data with a permutation test.

We planned to trial far UVC and glycol vapors at the BIDA contra dance last night: these are two options (beyond masks and ventilation) for reducing infectious aerosol inhalation. Both worked without issues.

I set up the far UVC Aerolamp on the stage, slightly angled down, primarily aiming to clear the air above the dancers:

I'm working out the logistics for trialing triethelyne glycol for pathogen control at a contra dance, and I need something to put the liquid glycol into the air. I'd initially been thinking of using a fog machine, but after discussion with friends who work in the area it sounds like an ultrasonic humidifier would work better. Instead of using heating and cooling, these use vibration, and put out much smaller droplets.

I got a random cheap humidifier on Amazon ($30) but (a) TEG is more viscous than the water its designed for and (b) its output is probably higher than I need. I decided I'd dilute the TEG to resolve both of these.

Before having kids I thought teaching them to clean up would be similar to the rest of parenting: once they're physically able to do it you start practicing with them, and after a while they're independent and do it reliably. You invest time and effort up front, but it pays back reasonably quickly with benefits for both you and the kid. While we've (n=3) had good success in some areas (street safety, microwave usage, walking to school, tooth brushing, ...), tidying has not been one of these.

Early on I tried a lot of getting them to clean up, but it was very slow, tended to dissolve into battles, and didn't seem to be getting much better over time. Instead, we've mostly moved to finding specific places where they can take on a bounded responsibility. The goal is to give them practice without overwhelming them, and to use natural consequences to avoid fights:

I generally find the numbers printed on pasta boxes for cooking time far too high: I'll set the timer for a minute below their low-end "al dente" time, and when I taste one it's already getting too mushy. I decided to run a small experiment to get a better sense of how cooked I like pasta.

I decided to use Market Basket Rigatoni. [1] It's a ridged cylinder, and I measured the ridges at 1.74mm:

I play by ear, and when I write tunes I normally save them by making a recording. This isn't ideal for sharing, though, especially with people who are more comfortable learning tunes from dots. I last had a go at this ten years ago, and decided to give it another try.