Final standings

Thanks to everyone for participating and attending the ceremony - we had lots of fun and hope you did, too.

Awards Ceremony, Noon, Tuesday, April 3rd in CRB Auditorium!

The 20th Annual MMM Awards Ceremony is tomorrow, with awards or derision offered for:

Lazlo Toth Award
$2 back award for the last place finisher
Winners and runners-up for each of the 4 regionals
Crash and burn award
Most improved award
Trophies for the top 3 labs
Bucket of Twinkies for the last place lab
Individual Twinkie Award
Whatever else we think of.

Right now, the following will be mentioned at least once during the awards ceremony, though usually not in a favorable light!

From the MMM Archives

First, remember to vote for your favorite bracket name - 60 votes are in so far, and I detect some evidence for ballot box stuffing! (mmmBOP site)

Now, from the MMM Archives: As our first-year students move towards selecting their thesis labs, the MVP Program feels that it is appropriate to provide our students with the information they need to make an informed choice.  All labs that participated in MMM over the past four years were analyzed, and advanced statistical methods were used (we added the scores from each year) to rank each lab for overall excellence (or not).  As can be seen in the table below, the Artis, Betts and Weiss labs ranked 1, 2 and 3, respectively, for overall excellence in MMM.  Experience has shown, however, that any of the top 6 labs (but not 7 or below) will provide an excellent home for aspiring PhD students. In contrast, we note that the Bates lab ranks dead-last amongst all consistently competing labs.  As was shown on the website, the very eminent Dr. Bates does not accept all rotation students and postdocs, but when he does they really suck.

Dear Trash Talkers, Smack Talkers, and Chris Nabel:

Please send any additional words and images to Laurie by 12 noon Weds. If you absolutely must, you may send after that time to Nirav at malnirav (at) gmail.com who, if he has time, will put it up.

Don't forget to vote for your favorite bracket name! (mmmBOP site)

Thanks--
MMM

Annual Word Search

While the rest of the MMM participants may be sick of the Hanson tunes in their heads or at least mad at Nirav and Kyle for naming the system mmmBOP, Bob is rapidly becoming a Hanson fan!!

original:

Vote for the Best Bracket Name!

"There is an obvious and simple explanation (or excuse) for why younger labs perform worse than, say, the Doms lab.

Students in young labs work harder and are more productive than their colleagues in more established places. They spend more time getting things done in scientific fields, such as immunology, bacteriology and virology, rather than fussing about "Bracketology."

So to all the folks from young labs: keep up your good work! But do try to score a bit higher on your brackets next time....."

Day 6- The Elite 8
"How not to hire faculty"

Still a three-way tie for first - Meera, Paul Giacomin and Mark Boyer each picked all 4 games right and so have held on to first.  But, many others also picked all 4 games correctly, so there has been some shuffling in the top 20. Josiah Petersen is all alone in 4th place, but having picked Florida State to win, he is not likely to remain there. A couple of the first years are doing surprisingly well - Megan Wise, Zahra Parker and Amanda Hay are all in the top 10 - none of the guys in the first year class are within sight of first place. 

The Microbiology Department and Penn in general are apparently not hiring the right microbiology faculty - the five newest hires hold the bottom three places in the lab standings as well as 18th place - Jen You, Sunny Shin/Igor Brodsky and Gudrun Debes.  Rahul Kohli's lab is in 18th, but then they came in last in 2011 and so are well known failures.  The only exception to this trend of early assistant professors having really terrible labs is Scott Hensley, who is in first place, but then Scott was hired by the Wistar. Apparently, faculty at the Wistar don't stink at MMM!  The recent hires just do not compare well to previous assistant professors - the Cherry lab won MMM in their first year in existence, and the Betts lab won two years after that.  In contrast, the Zhu lab managed to come in last, fitting in well with our newest faculty.

The future does not bode well for Jason Wojcepicfailsky, regardless if the fruit bat man comes knocking or not...

--
Anonymous Friend of the Anonymous Emerging Infectious Disease Scientist

Day 5

We are nearing the home-stretch - the games are now worth more points (Florida was worth 7 and Louisville worth 5) and there are fewer correct picks, so there can be big changes in the standings.  We have a three-way tie for first with Meera Nair and Paul Giacomin from the Artis lab being joined by Mark Boyer from the Fraser lab, each with 75 points. Ari Yasunaga (Cherry) and Erietta (Wherry) were the only entrants who got all 4 of yesterday's games correct, earning 18 points in the process and moving up the standings.  Ari, who has been promised Jie's desk and bench if she gets the top score in the lab, is now in 33rd place. Erietta, who is attempting to add an element of competence to the Wherry lab, is tied for 5th with Josiah Petersen, who is leading the Doms lab.  Mike Hogan, who is in 7th place despite using a coin flip to make his picks, is alone in 7th place and is no longer being looked down upon by the female-dominated Hoxie lab.  "We thought Mike was just good for getting stuff off of shelves, but there might be more to him than meets the eye", explained Adrienne Swanstrom, "a very little bit more, but at least he is not a total loser". Jonathan Madara (Shaw lab) and Alyssa Huegel (Kohli lab) each got 3 of the 4 games correct, including the two upsets, each earning 15 points.

            One of the nice things about the new MMMBOP system, powered by the Bushman lab, was the opportunity to come up with clever names for your brackets.  Names like Mighty Mitochondria, Inky Minky, Nobody gets infected with Ebola, kitchen nightmares, Ari and the giant orange, and fire breathing zebrafish, populate the standings.  However, one lab simply could not take advantage of this opportunity to express their (albeit limited) creativity - the Artis lab. Paul Giacomin, who cleverly named his bracket PaulGiacomin, and Meera, who cleverly named her bracket Meera, note that creativity is not the most valued trait in the Artis lab, explaining that a willingness to walk David's dog is one of things looked for in any new lab member. Greg Sonnenberg, who is a little more daring than other Artis lab members and came up with the name G. Sonn for his bracket, says that Jon Brestoff, who named his bracket Jon Brestoff, offered to walk David's dog twice a day for the next 3 years to gain entry to the lab, while Thomas Fung, who named his bracket Thomas Fung, walks behind to pick up the poo and Karen Joyce, who named her bracket Karen Joyce, takes notes on its consistency. Mark Siracusa, Elia Tait, and Mario Noti, who all gave great thought to the "Pick a Clever Name for your Bracket" question before settling on their own names, feel that Steven Saenz is a poor fit for the Artis lab, since he named his brackets "Steven Saenz PhD" and "Dr. Steven Saenz".  "That is too creative for us", said senior Postdoc and MMM co-leader Meera Nair, "Steven should concentrate on picking up dog poo, which is what he is best at".

            Big changes in the lab standings - while the dynamic HSV Duo of Gary Cohen and Roz Eisenberg cling to the lead, the Cherry and Hensley labs have moved into a tie for second place, followed by the Doms lab (led by Josiah "The Tribe" Petersen) and Artis labs.  Jen You's lab, which came in third last year, is now in lab place, but perhaps the most amazing turn-around is by the Kohli lab, which has moved all the way up to 11th place despite having to include Stu Isaacs "This is going to be ugly..." entry, which is tied for 348th place.

Watch out for Big D's Buck Hunters. We're gunning for you.

Day 4 - Meera Nair in First!

After the first two rounds, Meera Nair's slow and steady approach has earned her a solo first-place standing, a point above Amanda Hay.  Meera, who finds herself in a lab with volatile personalities who will go un-named, believes that a consistent approach to Science is the way to go - something she has imparted to Jon Brestoff, the lab's newest member who has been working with Meera. and is tied for 9th place, much to his surprise.  Michael Hogan, a first-year MVP, obtained the day's highest score with 26 points, claiming that he made his selections based on a coin-toss.  In contrast, George Leslie has used the same approach and is next to last.  Josephine Romano and Mark Boyer had 24 points each are are both now in the top 10.  Jason Wojcechowskyj's two anti-Bates lab entires, "Bates Lab Sucks" and "Nobody gets infected with Ebola" are both in the top 20, having rebounded from very bad 3rd day scores, but both entries are behind Josiah Petersen who managed to refrain to pick William and Mary from winning any games. To maintain suspense on the other end of the spectrum, we have removed most of the Lazlo's from the spreadsheet - to see who wins the Lazlo Toth Award,  you'll have to show up to the Award's Ceremony. Liam Bradley, by the way, is setting a record for the most days in lab place - this does not bode well for his prelim.

After years of hibernation, the dynamic HSV Duo (the Cohen/Eisenberg labs) is in first place, a full 0.03 points ahead of the Artis lab, followed by the Doms, Scott and Hensley labs.  Jianxin You's lab is in last place, being dragged down by Jason Diaz, but are in a tight race for the bucket of Twinkies Award.

March Micro Madness has started, and we'd be in first place if there wasn't an entry number requirement.

Shen lab:
1 person, two entries: 40.0 pt average

-Brian

Day 3 - It's Sheri Hanna!

Day 3 brought some calm - no upsets . As a result, quite a few people picked all 8 games correctly and many others got 7 correct, but not Liam Bradley, now an ex-member of the Shin lab, who picked only two games correctly, with those being entirely by accident.  "I meant to pick Harvard and Kansas State", explained Liam, "but I got confused when Sunny asked me what time it was, and so clicked on Syracuse and Wisconsin.  Maybe if she confuses me when I am actually working, my experiments might work". Sheri Hanna of the Cherry lab is in sole possession of first place, followed by Lindsay Lynch, Jenessa, Sasha Stone, Michael Paley and Amanda Hay. Amanda now has an official offer to join the Zhu lab, due to her outstanding MMM performance.  The first-year MVP student was apparently not welcome in the Zhu lab due to an over-abundance of competence. "She made us all look bad during her rotation", explained Dillon Birdwell. "She accomplished more in 8 weeks than I did in my entire first year, then she beat Andrew in Chinese Chess, then she started showing up to work before Jay - I just hate competent people!". We should note that Jay Zhu is last amongst all of the PIs, with just 26 points. In the lab competition, the Riley lab has moved into first, but all of the labs are tightly clustered, save for the Bates lab which is in first place.  The Kohli lab has moved all the way up to 23rd, untold heights for this crew of biochemists.

Well that was short lived. That is to say the Artis lab's stint at the bottom of MMM. It was somewhat humbling seeing how the other half lives. But we hope the Scott and Wherry labs enjoyed their day at the top b/c we all knew it wasn't gonna last. It's all part of the Artis lab's new strategery (sic) of spotting the MMM field a days worth of points, you know, to make things more sporting. It wouldn't be any fun for us to immediately demolish the field and claim our trophy so soon in the competition. But kudos to the Hunter, Scott and Wherry labs. They put in a solid JV effort. And speaking of junior varsity, the Riley lab- you know guys sometimes being in the presence of greatness is as good as it gets. So take a good look now while we're still in view, because come April 2nd you'll be back where you belong. In the boonies with the Betts lab.

Also, we assume the Collman lab's first place standing is a typo, which will be corrected in the Day 3 standing, so for now we'll let it go.

PS- judging by the Kohli lab's performance, the only thing that spreads worse than fear is mediocrity. Keep it up guys.

PPS- you guys should feel honored we even mentioned you in our post. Winky face.

Day 2 - A day of upsets

This is more like it - huge upsets on Friday, with two 15 seeds beating #2 seeds (Duke and Missouri).  Sheri Hanna (Cherry Lab) and Jason Wojcechowskyj (Doms lab) are in a first-place tie, closely followed by Jon Brestoff (Artis lab) and then by Jie Xu, Amanda Hay, Jim Riley, Michael Paley and others with 34 points.  This was a day when the Lazlo Toth entires scored the most points, the exact opposite of their goal. Alan Copenhaver had the day's high score with 27 points. However, the most impressive performance was by Rick Bushman, who after Day 1 was dead-last, but is now tied for 16th after scoring 26 points on Friday. However, the Bushman lab is beyond help - they are 23rd out of 27 labs, besting only the Hahn, Betts, Bates and Kohli labs.  Unfortunately, the Artis lab has moved from next-to-last to second place. Steven Saenz, who needs little encouragement to begin with, will be insufferable. The defending champs, the Riley lab, are now in third place, just fractions of a point behind the Collman and Artis labs.  Rahul Kohli's lab has now beaten the Bates lab for last place, but whether this trend continues or not is doubtful.  Liam Bradley, soon to be expelled from the Shin lab, is in last place all by himself - it takes a special kind of student to come in last out of 434 entries!  Other notables near the bottom include Jay Gardner (Betts lab), Sam Minot, Greg Peterfreund and Scott Sherrill-Mix (all Bushman), Andrew Smith (Hahn) and Rahul Kohli.

Boring!

What an uninspiring first day of March Micro Madness - only two measly upsets. However, Friday certainly made up for it - be prepared for major changes to the standings. We have a seven-way tie for first place, as Frances Male, Yi Zuo, Beth Haggarty (who is the person who really runs the Hoxie lab), Ciara Gimblet (who runs the Scott lab), Michael Paley (who let him in the tournament?!), Xin Wang and Amanda Hay (a first year - must have gotten lucky) got 15 of the first 16 games correct - not bad! On the other hand, there were some impressively bad performances. Rick Bushman is tied for the anti-lead with only 6 points - his lab pleaded with him to change his entry to a Lazlo Toth entry once they saw he picked Harvard to win it all. Rick noted that Harvard's colors match that of his famous red sweaters which he wears every day during the winter, and refused to make any changes. George Leslie, who has been in the Hoxie lab for nearly 20 years, got only 7 points while Chris Hunter and Rahul Kohli each got only 8 points, calling into question how they got to become PIs in the first place. Rahul's 8-point entry was his 'serious' entry - his other entry was determined by his infant son, Charak, with the picks selected based on whether he was drooling out of the right or left side of his mouth. Charak as 11 points, which is making Rahul's students think about jumping ship.

In the lab competition, the Artis lab is next-to-last, well behind the Wherry lab and, for that matter, all other labs save for Rahul's. Phil Scott's lab is in first, while the defending champs (Riley) are in 8th. But, at this early stage things can change a great deal. We note that the Doms lab is beating the Bates lab for the 20th year in a row - surely this cannot be by chance!

Note: We had some problems with the automatic scoring, which is quite complex due to the bonus points for upsets. The first day was scored manually, but now it looks like the auto scoring is perfect. If you notice any errors, just wait and see if they are corrected. Day 2 standings will be posted Monday morning. Contact Laurie if you notice any scoring errors at that time.

Attention Ninjas:

IKP is in full effect. Insane Kohli Posse.

We've spent the past year feasting on twinkies and Faygo soda. We're ready for redemption.

IKP

MMM Begins!

The 20th edition of MMM has begun, with 447 entries and 27 labs being represented, all entered on the MMMBOP site that was brought to us by Kyle and Nirav from the Bushman lab.  The first four games have been completed, and the Bushman lab is already in the lead with an average of 10.06 points per entrant.  Can they be caught?  There were some pretty good names given to specific brackets, including Yuan't gonna win (from Sally Yuan), KenLucky, Mark Side of the Moon, Hoxotology (from Chris Hoxie), Full Metal Bracket, Cholera? There's a vaccine for that, Jeff's Wiser bracket (from Jeff Weiser - he got the first 4 games wrong anyway), Nobody gets infected with Ebola, and my favorite: ESP>ESPN from Stephanie Cross (Kolson lab). In fact, Stephanie got the first four games correct, so her ESP must be in fine form - if this would only work for her experiments, she would be in great shape.  Then, there are the less imaginative names: Your bracket sucks, Riley Sucks, and Bates lab sucks.  These, of course, were all submitted by guys with anger management issues.  Steven Saenz, who remembers when entries cost $2.50 rather than $3 because he has been in the Artis lab for a decade, set up shop next to Laurie's desk so as to insult everyone stopping by with the entry fees from their labs.  Laurie was ready for him, having a cold six pack available for Steven's consumption starting at 10AM.  Pam Odorizzi was ready for him too, with a very sharp elbow to the ribs followed by a long list of reasons the Wherry lab is far superior to the Artis lab.  Steven, who plans on starting a postdoc in 2015, simply drank another beer.

If you read the first post and thought to yourself: "Jim who?" you are not alone. It took the Artis lab the better part of the day to figure out who this novice trash-talker was. For the record Dr. Riley, we have the previous standings in front of us and the previous year exempt, the Riley lab appears nowhere in ANY category over the past 10 years. In contrast, the Artis lab is heavily represented among winners over the past 3 years including 1st place Lab (2009), 1st place Individual winner (2009) and Lazlo Toth (2009 AND 2010), 2nd place lab (2011), 3rd place Individual (2011). We therefore submit to the MMM community, that based on these facts, the Riley lab represents the one-hit-wonder to our model of perennial dominance. Think Vanilla Ice to our Frank Sinatra.

As for that sinking ship, the Hunter lab, we really don't have anything to say. Moving on.

The Wherry lab. (Full stop). Gotta love their can do spirit and the cut of their gib. That's why its so hard for us to destroy year after year.

PS- Dr. Lopez, you should just keep your money in your pocket. It'd be embarrassing to get your $$ back two years running.

PSS- we were going to photoshop Jim's face onto Vanilla Ice's body, but since we don't know who he is or what he looks like we didn't know which Google Image to use. So instead we've attached the following video.

Enjoy.

From Wikipedia: Smack talk is also a slang term used in sports. It refers to inflammatory comments made by a person or team in order to insult, anger, or annoy opponents. Although it began as a term used by sports fans and athletes, it has spread to all areas of culture where competition takes place. In the United States, it is synonymous with "trash talk". As the winner of last year's competition, the Riley Lab feels obligated to initiate this year's smack talk.

It begins of course with the Artis Lab. It comes as no surprise that a group that spends so much time in the GI track would be filled with so much substance that dwells in the GI track. I have it on good authority (my imagination of course) that Dr. Artis stops all research in his lab this week and instructs his students and postdocs to find him a winning bracket-much in the same manner Veruca Salt's father stops production in his factory to find Veruca a golden ticket for Willy Wonka's factory. How else can you explain how someone of Dr. Artis' petite stature has had any success in a basketball competition? Also, wouldn't David make a most outstanding Willy Wonka-much better than Johnny Depp.

To the Bates Lab, time to produce another interesting (and somewhat disturbing) video as this will be the only way you will gather any attention in this competition.

I don't have the history in front of me but I don't recall seeing the Doms Lab occupying the top position ever. How could the leader of our department and the co-initiator of MMM not have secured the ultimate prize? One would figure after more than 15 years of doing this, the blind squirrel would at least find one nut (victory). Maybe Twinkies and Twinkies suits lead to poor basketball performance?

The Bushman Lab may be the only group to be able to tell us the chances of picking a perfect bracket but this clearly dosen't help one to actually do it. The chances the Bushman Lab lands in the last place: darn close to 100%.

To the Hunter Lab, picking winners based on how cute the team mascot is, while touching, not likely to work well unless you think a Commodore is cute.

Latency can be defined as hanging out under the radar and avoiding notice. Sounds like O'Doherty Lab role in MMM.

Sorry to those missed. I will get you next year when I write the winner's obligatory smack again.

Jim

"This Just In!!"




From: "Monogram Employee"
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2012 4:58 PM
To: All Employees
Subject: Twinkie Alert

I just got some serious news - Hostess Snacks is nearing bankruptcy, and is over $860 million in debt. You know what that means, Monopeeps.

Time to Twinkie up! If Ho-Hos, Fruit Pies, Twinkies, Ding-Dongs, Chocodiles, Do-Nettes, Suzy-Qs, Sno-Balls, or those little chocolate cupcakes with the swirly white frosting on the top were any part of your childhood, you owe Hostess at least the price of one snack cake.

Note that I didn't say you actually had to eat one- that would be a little extreme.

image source

I don't know which is more disturbing -- the fact that Hostess is bankrupt or the fact that someone at Monogram refers to his or her coworkers as "Monopeeps" --

Too soon Laurie. Paul (the telepathic octopus) died last year and I'm still not over it.

And besides, I am no longer friends with 8 legged animals. My friendship stops at 5 legs.