Inauspicious

I am writing the most boring research paper in the world right now, literally. It involves a 100 page article from 1937 called “Historical Development of the Graphical Representation of Statistical Data.” It also involves a book called The Commercial and Political Atlas and Statistical Breviary, which I checked out of the library because I thought it had the world’s first bar graph in it. Except it does not have that. No no. That is only in the first edition. This is the third edition, so it only has line graphs. Forty-three line graphs. Zzzzzzzzz.

One of the boring problems this boring paper has boringly generated is that I have to parphrase a sentence that includes the phrase “under government auspices.” But I can’t paraphrase it, because at the end of the day, what the fuck is an auspice?

I thought, well. I will just go on the internet and look up the definition of auspice. And then I will know it. Wrong! When you Google auspice, the definition that comes up is, “Noun: A divine or prophetic token.” Under government divine or prophetic tokens? Dubious.

So I thought, I will look it up on Wikipedia. And I did. Maybe it is just because I have been writing this paper all day, and my life is feeling increasingly empty and auspice-less, but the Wikipedia page is hilarious.

FIRST SENTENCE: “An auspice is literally ‘one who looks at birds.’”

WIKI SECTIONS INCLUDE: “Auspices in Ancient Rome,” “History of Auspices,” and “Types of Auspices.”

WHAT AM I GOING TO WRITE IN MY PAPER: Under government ones who look at birds? Under government Ancient Rome? Under government prophetic coins? Underneath the government? Or maybe I’ll just say “Romulus and Remus,” because somehow they come up in the “auspice” Wikipedia page–and also in Harry Potter!

Words I Hate

I have so much homework that the word “copious” definitely applies in some way, but after a lot of effort I have realized I don’t know how to use copious in a sentence. So I will let you imagine a nice correct sentence on your own time. My point is: I should do work. But instead I just gazed at my reading for several minutes while in my head, I wrote a list of words and phrases that I irrationally hate.

The List From My Head

• “Arguably the greatest _______ of our generation”–I might hate the word “arguably” all the time, actually. Unclear.
• “I am writing a short piece of ______.” Or even worse, “a short work of _______.”
• Delightful
• Nosegay
• “Rate of speed”–SPEED IS A RATE ALREADY MY FRIEND. It is like saying “length of distance,” or “distrust anything I happen to say about rates in the future.”
• “Principle component regression”–It is just so hard. See also: the prefix “eigen-”.
• “Imma let you finish, but…” ENOUGH. Kanye made a mistake. He has made many new mistakes since then. He’s putting out a song with Jay-Z called “Ham”! Let’s make fun of that! Let’s move forward into the future!
• Titties–REAL TALK: Why can’t you just say tits? Nobody calls dicks “dickies.”

Coming soon–words I irrationally love!  Also, coming as soon as I can think of it–list of reasons it’s okay that I am always in the effing library.

Overheard in my life: Part Holocaust

[I am reading Damn You Autocorrect with my friend, because it is finals week.]

FRIEND: Did you read the one about the Fuhrer?

ME: No.

FRIEND (enunciating more): The. Fuhrer.

ME: No.

FRIEND (sort of doing a Nazi salute): The FUHRER!

ME: NO I DID NOT READ THE ONE ABOUT THE FUHRER.

FRIEND: Oh, okay.

Why. Why do I look like I don’t know what a Fuhrer is. Or the Fuhrer is. Or whatever. Hitler guys, I’m talking about Hitler!

Okay, time to go learn principal/principle (???) component regression. It’s the worst thing. Actually that is a ridiculous thing to say since like three sentences ago I was talking about the Holocaust…

 

 

Statistics humor doesn’t exist

I was in stat class today, and my teacher said:

“So as you can see, this correlation is 0.999. Which is way too high.” [Pause.] “Actually, it’s 0.989, so that’s fine.” [Pause.] “Just kidding, those are like, basically the same number.”

When stat profs attempt to bring humor or a hint of life to their classes, it’s always nice, but here is what’s weird: like five people in the class (which is, to be fair to humankind, more than 100 people) uncontrollably loled. Like, hysterical laughter. I usually love jokes about numbers, or even just comments about numbers, like “There are four of those.” But this made me seriously reconsider. Not just liking numbers but liking anything, ever again.

Fun Thing To Do

It is finals week for me, and so I am running low on Fun Things To Do.  I thought studying for statistics might be fun, because I love numbers – the last time I was doing my homework and a test resulted in a very high p-value, I SCREAMED in PUBLIC with JOY!!! – but sadly, studying for statistics is more like screaming in agony because you are being gored to death by a bear (blah blah blah bears don’t have horns well I AM DOING MY BEST) than it is like screaming with any positive feeling.

However, I have found one very fun, finals-friendly thing to do.  Go on Gchat.  (If you don’t have Gmail, I don’t even know what to say to you except that the G in Gmail stands for GANGSTA and you should probably make the switch.)  Then, type this in (except with no spaces):

: – ) < 3

They will both rotate – but the face rotates clockwise and the heart rotates counterclockwise!  IT LOOKS SO COOL. It is a very Fun Thing To Do.

The only minor problem is that you have to do this to somebody else. So you need to find someone to chat with who you love and want to smile at… which makes this the ultimate fun!  Because it encourages interpersonal connections!  I could talk about this forever but I don’t think anyone wants to listen forever so I’m going to stop now!  It is almost summer and then I will write more and hopefully it will be better quality!

1762392

So I’m a statistics minor, and I actually kind of like it, even though it is in most ways boring.  Do you know what a t-test is? Well, then you are missing out on A LOT.  Of nothing.  But here’s the thing: I freaking LOVE numbers. And that’s what stat is all about.

It is actually becoming a problem for my friends and family, how much I like numbers.  Once, I was talking to my roommate, and I wanted to really emphatically tell her a number, and so I said something like, “Ten!  One zero.  Dix.  I wonder what ten is in binary…” Then I started very slowly converting ten into binary.  (Do you want to know what it is? 1010.  WORD UP.) She was not amused, but I was amused enough for both of us and probably a third party too.

I also do this thing where I needlessly quantify qualitative things.  For example, how happy am I today?  Well, I could say, “Pretty happy.” Or I could say, like, “1.72 times as happy as I was yesterday.”  Sometimes I do the second one, although only with people who like me at least sort of unconditionally.  I also almost had a happiness attack (I am just as unclear on what that is as you are) on the bus because I looked at my iPod and realized that three quarters of my Justin Bieber songs have titles that start with “One.”  There are THREE NUMBERS in that realization (if you count a fraction as two numbers, which I do).

It gets super socially inappropriate in class, though.  Once, in one of my lecture classes, my professor was talking about survey methodology.  He said, “What if you had a survey that made people solve simple arithmetic problems?”  Then he wrote some numbers on the board, like 3+8 or whatever, and I was so happy I almost exclaimed something like “Hooray!” or probably actually just “NUMBERS” because I’m not that creative in times of great joy.  The only way I restrained myself was by g-chatting my friend, who is also in the class (we are extremely studious and never distract ourselves with the internet), and saying, “I am so happy now I want to jump out of my chair and SCREAM!”

That was when I thought, you know, maybe I have a problem.  Also because she g-chatted me back and said “wtf is wrong with you.”

Helpful Tip

You know how guys sometimes rank girls’ physical attractiveness on a scale from 1 to 1o?  Well, I do not approve of this practice at all.  You are OBJECTIFYING WOMEN, guys, and it’s WRONG.  You should be like Jesse McCartney, who is not superficial and instead chases and loves girls because they have beautiful SOULS.   That’s where it’s at.  Although I have always thought that song made the girl he was in love with sound sort of like a hamster.  He wants to chase her… and hold her… and watch her run on her little wheel thing…  It’s still not objectifying women, and it’s a great stride, but hamsterfying  comes with its own set of problems.

(I get that girls can also rank guys, and guys can rank guys, and turtles can rank aardvarks, but I need to pick one example for this post to simplify things so I’m picking guys ranking girls and just CHILL.)

Anyway.  I don’t approve of ranking girls’ physical attributes.  But I also have discovered a much more efficient way to do it, and so, now that I have given my gender equality disclaimer, I am going to show you The Way.

See, the problem is that when guys rank girls on a scale of 1 to 10, things get fuzzy.  Especially in the middle.  Is a girl a 6 or a 7?  It’s hard to say.  And all guys interpret the scale differently, so one guy may call a girl a 5, the other one might call her an 8, and they still might perceive her hotness the same way.  This just leads to needless arguments and, often, deaths.   This is why the new system is great – it’s simple.

Here’s what you do.  There are three hypothetical people.  They vote on whether a girl is attractive.  So instead of saying a number, 1-10, you say a vote count.  It can be 0-3 (awful), 1-2 (close, but no), 2-1 (close, but yes), or 3-0 (Rafael Nadal – kinda violates the guys-ranking-girls example but have you seen him?  DAMN, BABY!).

Isn’t that efficient?  I know!  My friend taught me, and I really appreciate it.  Not that I would ever use it, or that you should ever use it.  Here’s a life lesson: Physical attractiveness is just one component of the vast matrix of blah blah blah blah!  That’s RIGHT.