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Me, a stat-finder? [Wednesday, May. 25, 2005, 3:25 pm]
Today I've decided to officially prove to everyone what a geek I am. See, I would never consider myself much of a "math brain." I generally prefer writing over figuring out problems, which probably has something to do with the fact that my major is English, and I hate subjects like algebra and chemistry. So I don't understand why I occasionally have the desire to figure my own personal "statistics," or why I consider it fun. Case in point: I used to make friendship bracelets. A lot. I ended up with about 400 before I just lost interest (and time) and stopped making them. So about 2 years ago I decided it would be fun to see if I could figure out exactly how much floss I'd used to make them all. First I added up how much floss I used (on average) to make each type of bracelet. And that took a while, because I had made quite a few different types, and variations on each type. But after that was done, all I had to do was find out how many I had of each type, and do some multiplying and adding. The result? I discovered that I had used approximately 74,940 inches, which is also 6,245 feet, or 1.1827651 miles of floss in all my bracelets. Probably more than that all together, because I didn't count all the bracelets I'd made for other people. Still, I'm surprised I had the patience to figure it all out. Last example: I went through one of my old notebook/diaries that I'd kept every day from November to April (before I filled it up), and wrote down how many pages I wrote for each day of the week. Then I averaged them all out. And? The day I wrote the most pages on was Thursday. That makes sense, because last semester Thursday was my busiest day of the week. But still, I'd kinda expected Monday to be first, and it was second. That shows that stats can often be surprising, and go against our preconceived notions, right? The day I wrote the least on was Sunday, which also makes sense because that's generally the day of the week that I slack off the most, or just do boring homework, so there's less to say. The sad part is that I enjoy doing things like this (when I have time, which fortunately isn't as often as it used to be). I often criticize statisticians for compiling stats on some of the stupidest things ever, but I should probably cut some of them some slack. Maybe they aren't always trying to make a statement with their stats - maybe they just have fun doing it. Although if they're getting paid that probably takes all the fun out of it, so never mind. Miss anything?
Vitality - Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009 |