Tie Vote The odds of a tie vote, as in perfectly down the middle, in every 2012 battleground state are astronomically small. But they aren’t zero. Let What If? take you on a journey through odds, strange ways of dying, and how tied elections relate to being hit by airborne bales of cocaine, as only Randall Munroe can. Quattuordecillion is a very big number. (via xkcd)
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Tie Vote

The odds of a tie vote, as in perfectly down the middle, in every 2012 battleground state are astronomically small. But they aren’t zero. Let What If? take you on a journey through odds, strange ways of dying, and how tied elections relate to being hit by airborne bales of cocaine, as only Randall Munroe can.

Quattuordecillion is a very big number.

(via xkcd)

Source: what-if.xkcd.com

Hans Rosling: Religions and Babies

Watching Hans Rosling chase data points across a screen with a huge pointer as he gives breathless play-by-play of statsitical changes will never get old.

In a planet that’s getting increasingly full, we must ask a couple of questions: How can we prepare for tomorrow’s population, whatever it will be? How do birth rates relate to lifestyle around the world?

I’ve heard it said before that certain religious beliefs lead to more children per woman. There’s the stereotype extremes of Latin American Catholics and Northern European athiests. Do they hold water?

Hans takes a look at world religions, average income and family planning and how they relate to birth rates and population growth in the way that only Mr. Rosling can.

I’ll let you watch the details, but controlling population is most certainly about providing more opportunity, not less religion. An instant TED favorite.

(via TED)

Source: youtube.com

The "Kardashian" as a scientific unit of measure

Ethan Zuckerman offers an innovative idea to quantify attention paid to various things on the internet. The unit of measure? The amount of attention Kim Kardashian gets in one day. As he explains:

The Kardashian mentions how much attention is paid, not how much attention is deserved, so naming the unit after someone who is famous for being famous seems appropriate. Should the unit be adopted, I would hope that future scholars will calculate Kardashians using whatever public figure is appropriate at the time for being inappropriately famous.

So how do things size up in Kardashians? Angelina Jolie gets about 0.35 Kardashians, The Kony 2012 campaign peaked at 7.7 Kardashians, but now sits at a paltry 5 centiKardashians.

As for me? Searches for this blog are registering no higher than the nanoKardashian range. And searches for my name are mostly people misspelling “Scarlett Johansson”. You gotta start somewhere!

(via Kottke)

Data Analysis Creates 13 New Basketball Positions We know about the five basic, traditional positions in basketball: Point guard, shooting guard, small and power forwards and a center. Muthu Alagappan, a Stanford student and data viz fiend, analyzed the stats of 452 NBA players, created performance associations between various stat fields, and came up with a more detailed spectrum of 13 different position types. Players who play the same traditional position often have completely different styles and skills, and vice versa. Do you know the difference between a Paint Protector and a Scoring Paint Protector? A Combo Ball-Handler and a Defensive Ball-Handler? If you’re a true fan, maybe you should. (via Playbook)
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Data Analysis Creates 13 New Basketball Positions

We know about the five basic, traditional positions in basketball: Point guard, shooting guard, small and power forwards and a center. Muthu Alagappan, a Stanford student and data viz fiend, analyzed the stats of 452 NBA players, created performance associations between various stat fields, and came up with a more detailed spectrum of 13 different position types.

Players who play the same traditional position often have completely different styles and skills, and vice versa. Do you know the difference between a Paint Protector and a Scoring Paint Protector? A Combo Ball-Handler and a Defensive Ball-Handler? If you’re a true fan, maybe you should.

(via Playbook)

Source: Wired

Data-Mining Your Battleship DataGenetics is a project of Nick Berry, and he loves to analyze games. They have a whole series on the stats behind the gameplay for Risk, Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, Yahtzee and Battleship (as seen above). There’s some incredibly detailed gameplay analysis here. You should never lose to your 8-year-old nephew again … right?
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Data-Mining Your Battleship DataGenetics is a project of Nick Berry, and he loves to analyze games. They have a whole series on the stats behind the gameplay for Risk, Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, Yahtzee and Battleship (as seen above). There’s some incredibly detailed gameplay analysis here. You should never lose to your 8-year-old nephew again … right?
Zoom Info

Data-Mining Your Battleship

DataGenetics is a project of Nick Berry, and he loves to analyze games. They have a whole series on the stats behind the gameplay for Risk, Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, Yahtzee and Battleship (as seen above).

There’s some incredibly detailed gameplay analysis here. You should never lose to your 8-year-old nephew again … right?

Hey girl, have you guys met Biostatistics Ryan Gosling yet? You should. I’m not of the persuasion to be “titillated” by this sort of thing, but something tells me that quite a few of my followers will be :) Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be out finding a leather jacket and a rainstorm so I can take my new avatar picture.
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Hey girl, have you guys met Biostatistics Ryan Gosling yet? You should.

I’m not of the persuasion to be “titillated” by this sort of thing, but something tells me that quite a few of my followers will be :)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be out finding a leather jacket and a rainstorm so I can take my new avatar picture.

(via biostatisticsryangosling-deacti)