humor
1 posts
In the biggest crossover event of the century, Tom Lum used the Wikipedia API to chart the number of views for every reference in Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire. Yes. [via @waxpancake] Tags: Billy Joel, humor, Wikipedia
Got a chuckle out of me: Me explaining why standardizing your variables is important: pic.twitter.com/mQKj0nEJ0G — Chelsea Parlett Pelleriti (@ChelseaParlett) June 12, 2019 Tags: context, humor
James Holzhauer is on a record-breaking Jeopardy! win streak. It’s not so much for the number of wins in a row — an impressive 30 so far — but for how much he wins per game. He’s on pace to break current record-holder Ken Jennings’ total winnings of $2.5 million in less than half the number of games. Chicago Tribune made this chart to show Holzhauer’s cumulative sum: Holzhauer commented:...
Trey Harris, a previous tech administrator for a university, tells the story of a statistics department that couldn’t send email farther than 500 miles away. The story is more about the peculiarities of server admin in 2002, but I’m more interested in those statisticians: “We could send email. Just not more than–“ “–500 miles, yes,” I finished for him, “I got that. But why didn’t you call earlier?” “Well, we...
The debate rages on about the categorization of food items as soup, salad, or sandwich. Is a hot dog a sandwich? It has meat in bread. At what ratio of solid to liquid does a stew become a soup? The Soup-Salad-Sandwich Space makes the classifications more explicit. You’re welcome. Tags: food, humor, sandwich
Brian Brettschneider made a joke map randomly designating the favorite pies of certain areas. While intended as a joke and a parody of past “favorite” maps, some people took it too seriously — like Senator Ted Cruz. Brettschneider describes the lessons he learned: Maps hold a special standing among the public. We tend to place very high value in maps as holders of accurate information. If it’s in a map,...
xkcd referenced the ever-so-loved forecasting needle. I’m so not gonna look at it this year. Maybe. Tags: humor, needle, uncertainty, xkcd