I was having a super crappy night.
And then I found this.
Better than Lethargic Bieber? You decide!
I also went digging through all my old saved files and found all my angsty poetry latherings of yore. They’re hilarious.
I am dark.
I am a spark.
I am the turn.
I am the burn.
I am the fork in the road.
I am the wind’s sorry ode.
I am hell in a shrouded form.
I am the thing that howls in the morn.
I am philosophy.
I am prophecy.
I am tomorrow.
I am today.
I am sorrow.
I am Gray.
SO DEEP, MAN. I also just realized I haven’t written a poem since “Seuss on the Loose.” That’s probably a good thing.
Quiz Factory
Because my head’s being a noisy mess tonight.
“Your vision of the divine is similar to your view of a happy home. As long as everyone knows his or her place, all will be fine. If they step out of line however, you are the first to apply tough love, not with fire and brimstone, but with an unending torrent of guilt-inducing invective and non-stop lecturing.
“You tend to view the world as a generally benign creation that needs a little guidance to keep going in the right direction. Having created the world, you would then spend most of your time as a spiritual cheerleader, giving hope and guidance to those who never quite live up to your expectations.
“You tend to view your creations as unruly children who need a series of chores in order to keep their minds out of trouble. In service to this, you would probably create a religion full of complex ritual and repetition. It is only through a strenuous and exacting course of discipline that your followers can come to know you. If they don’t tow the line, you won’t send them to eternal damnation but rather an eternal boot camp where they can slowly and tediously come to a greater understanding of what it means to fit in.
“You are the god of bureaucrats and politicians, and your afterlife would be one of endless corridors and levels, each one leading to yet another duty that must be fulfilled, yet another loyalty to be proved. As a God, you are just never satisfied.”
Sorry, today’s been boring/long/blah.
HEY BLOG TITLE! STOP SHOUTING AT ME!
(Edit: haha, sorry guys, here’s another one that slipped through the radar during one of my mass postings.)
Oh man. This guy reminds me so much of Ebeeto (Yogi Bear, anyone?). So again, if excessive curing offends you, don’t watch.
Is it sad that my internal dialogue is practically just like this?
Why is it ZZ Top? Isn’t Z at the BOTTOM of the alphabet?
The best part of Sundays = reading all the Metalocalypse fandom reactions before watching the new episode. It makes me happy.
In other totally unrelated news, I randomly stumbled upon the website of the Australian Chicken Meat Federation. One of the pages has this picture at the top of it.
Um…
The Original Half-Life is Fantastic
I started a new game of Half Life a week or so ago and have been playing my way through it. I’d totally forgotten how long it takes to get to the damn surface that it is the most fantastic game on the planet.
10 reasons why this game is awesome:
10. It’s Black Mesa! I’d totally want to work there if it actually existed. I have a mug (available from the Valve store).
9. “Start the rotors” is a running joke with me (mostly just in my head). Anytime I do something that I know is going to cause catastrophe later, I say to myself “I just started the rotors, didn’t I?”
8. Watching Stephen King’s “The Mist” with my dad like a decade ago (old Claudia is old) I thought, “holy crap, this is a total rip-off of Half Life!” Turns out Half-Life itself is based partially on “The Mist.” Oops.
7. Gordon’s 27 years old and all the other scientists are geezermobiles. I just find that hilarious.
6. This game is my late childhood-early adolescence. I think my mom’s old friend got some sort of bootleg copy for me to play (‘cause that’s what he did with everything) and then we went out and got a legit copy ‘cause we thought it was so awesome.
5. I really like the fact that two expansion games to the original, Opposing Force and Blue Shift, allowed you to play the game from two perspectives other than Gordon’s—as a soldier (Opposing Force) and as one of the security guards (Blue Shift).
4. I know it’s not directly related to Half Life gameplay itself, but when I found the Half Life references while playing Portal, I had a little squee. Okay, a major squee. Good video of the “Competing with Black Mesa” slideshow.
3. Cheating. Is. Hilarious. Activate god mode, noclip, and impulse 101 when you’re going through the tram system during the opening credits and you can go screw with all the scientists in the scenes you pass. I like to throw snarks at the security guards then sprint in the opposite direction.
2. Speaking of snarks…
1. CROWBAR!!
You can have your overly-fancy graphics, intelligent enemies, experience points, and dynamic environments. Just give me Gordon Freeman.
LOOK WHAT I MADE LOOK
Want to see my pretty? Or part of it?
This is the spreadsheet.
Here’s what it looks like when I select DAISY as the file type.
Here’s what it looks like when I select .epub as the file type.
Like two days ago, I had no idea you could do this in Excel. Excel has gained a whole new level of respect from me. Not that it cares.
(In my head, Excel is the most arrogant of the Microsoft Office products)
The obsessive part of me wants to now go back and fix the code for this so that it’s not six billion lines long.So that might have to happen soon.
Haha, sorry, I’m excited.
END!
I…
Just taught myself how to write macros in Excel. A lot of them. In like two hours. It was fantastic.
I basically figured out how to do what I was trying to do in R in Excel. It’s actually a lot easier to implement in Excel, especially since (I totally just learned this, pardon my beginner’s excitement) you can create a hyperlink in a cell that links to another cell within the same spreadsheet. Totally had no idea you could do that.
But now I can do stuff in Visual Basic. Woot.
Okay, that’s all.
GUYS
Guys guys guys.
Curiosity got the better of me today and I typed in “Brave Little Toaster” in Tumblr’s search box.
It effectively restored my faith in the claim that the internet is goddamn weird.
I don’t know what’s better (worse?), the screencaps or the cosplay.
Favorite:
Adventures in R: Decisions, Decisions, Decisions!
Hokay. So. Here’s the earth. Here’s what’s going down at work:
My boss put me in charge of writing up all these instructions for the ten or so AT programs that are used at Pima Community College. These programs make text/images/etc. on the computer accessible for students who need something to help them learn, be that need from a physical disability (low-vision, blindness, etc.), a learning disability, or some other such thing. These programs can do a lot of things: read text aloud on the computer, enhance displayed text so that it’s easier to read (magnification, color change, background color change, etc.), highlight individual words as their read…things like that.
Cool, huh?
It turns out, though, that of the twelve or so general features we utilize from these programs, each of the programs is able to different things. For example, a person using FS Reader will only able to change voice speed and magnify the screen, whereas a person using Kurzweil 1000 will pretty much be able to alter the visual and spoken text any way they wish.
The problem with this program diversity is that it makes it fairly difficult to help students choose which program is best for them—especially considering you have to keep track of ten different programs, some of which change with each software update.
So one of my tasks at work has been to make some sort of visualization that shows which programs have which features.
Which has turned out to be a more arduous task than first thought. Mainly because it’s difficult to include both the “reading features” (those related to the text-to-speech) and the “visualization features” (those related to how the text can be manipulated on screen).
The most “uncomplicated” visual I could do for the reading features was this pyramid thingy (even a regular flowchart looked horrible).
You don’t want to see the pictures for the visualization features. They’re horrible. There are twelve main features and no two programs have the same features. As you can probably guess, the pyramid looks like somebody vomited words everywhere and the flowchart looks…well, even worse.
My boss finally told me not to worry about a visualization for the features just yet, but I wanted to see if there was a way that I (with my lack of programming skills in everything but R) could make some sort of automatic “decision maker” that would spit out the appropriate program(s) if a user input what features they required.
So what did I, with my lack of programming skills in everything but R, use to do this?
R!
It took like four days, too. Either I’m a moron and over-thought this waaaay too much or it really is this complicated to implement in R.
Either way, here we go:
I wanted to make it so that someone wanting to figure out what AT program they needed could just input a binary YES/NO for each of the four reading options, copy this info in to R, and automatically get an output telling them what they could use. So I made this little Excel thing (click to enlarge, as always).
Next, I had to figure out a way to program my R function so that it would spit out the appropriate program for the given input (e.g., if I needed all four reading features, it would only show me Adobe Reader, EasyReader, Kurzweil and MAGic). This part wasn’t that big of a deal. But when I wanted to also make it possible for the function to spit out the appropriate program for ALL levels of customization (like if I wanted just voice speed to be editable, the function would give me ALL programs as options, not just FS Reader), things got a bit more difficult.
So I finally just made a code that included what to output for all possible combinations of the four reading features.
tellme <- function(x,print=TRUE)
{ A=sum(x[,1])==1
B=sum(x[,2])==1
C=sum(x[,3])==1
D=sum(x[,4])==1
E=(sum(x[,1])==1)&&(sum(x[,2])==1)
F=(sum(x[,1])==1)&&(sum(x[,3])==1)
G=(sum(x[,1])==1)&&(sum(x[,4])==1)
H=(sum(x[,2])==1)&&(sum(x[,3])==1)
I=(sum(x[,2])==1)&&(sum(x[,4])==1)
J=(sum(x[,1])==1)&&(sum(x[,2])==1)&&(sum(x[,3])==1)
K=(sum(x[,1])==1)&&(sum(x[,2])==1)&&(sum(x[,4])==1)
L=(sum(x[,1])==1)&&(sum(x[,3])==1)&&(sum(x[,4])==1)
M=(sum(x[,2])==1)&&(sum(x[,3])==1)&&(sum(x[,4])==1)
N=(sum(x[,1])==1)&&(sum(x[,2])==1)&&(sum(x[,3])==1)
&&(sum(x[,4])==1)
O=(sum(x[,3])==1)&&(sum(x[,4])==1)
if (A==TRUE)
{FSReader="YES"}
else if (A==FALSE)
{FSReader="NO"}
if (A==TRUE|B==TRUE|E==TRUE)
{NaturalReader="YES"}
else if (C==TRUE|D==TRUE|F==TRUE|G==TRUE|H==TRUE|
I==TRUE|J==TRUE|K==TRUE|L==TRUE|M==TRUE|N==TRUE)
{NaturalReader="NO"}
if (A==TRUE|B==TRUE|C==TRUE|E==TRUE|F==TRUE|H==TRUE)
{WYNN="YES"}
else if (D==TRUE|G==TRUE|I==TRUE|J==TRUE|K==TRUE|L==TRUE|
M==TRUE|N==TRUE)
{WYNN="NO"}
if (A==TRUE|B==TRUE|C==TRUE|D==TRUE|E==TRUE|F==TRUE|
G==TRUE|H==TRUE|I==TRUE|J==TRUE|K==TRUE|L==TRUE|
M==TRUE|N==TRUE)
{AdobeReader="YES"
EasyReader="YES"
Kurzweil1000="YES"
MAGic="YES"}
else if (C==TRUE|D==TRUE|F==TRUE|G==TRUE|H==TRUE|I==TRUE|
J==TRUE|K==TRUE|L==TRUE|M==TRUE|N==TRUE)
{AdobeReader="NO"
EasyReader="NO"
Kurzweil1000="NO"
MAGic="NO"}
result <- rbind(FSReader, NaturalReader, WYNN, AdobeReader,
EasyReader, Kurzweil1000, MAGic)
return(result)
}
It’s still way too complicated for my taste; I was going to do it with the visualization features, but there are eight of those features and considering I had to do 16 different combinations just for the four reading features, I figured I’d hold off on the visualization features until I get a more streamlined code going for this project.
But check this noise:
Let’s say I was a student who needed to figure out what program(s) I could use based on my needs. I go to this little Excel check box thingy I made and select Voice Speed, Voice Profile, and Volume Control as the three things I need to be able to change.
I copy this info onto the clipboard and run the code in R. This is what it tells me:
FSReader "NO" NaturalReader "NO" WYNN "YES" AdobeReader "YES" EasyReader "YES" Kurzweil1000 "YES" MAGic "YES"
Cool, huh?
What if I only needed to be able to change the Voice Profile?
FSReader "NO" NaturalReader "YES" WYNN "YES" AdobeReader "YES" EasyReader "YES" Kurzweil1000 "YES" MAGic "YES"
Yay!
Next mission: to make it better!
Thinkin’ ‘bout the Inkin’
So it’s almost been a year since I almost died from an influx of anxiety attacks I defended my MA thesis. Way back in undergrad I promised myself a tattoo if I were to successfully get a Masters. Now that my diploma’s been sitting at the bottom of my drawer for almost 12 months now (okay, technically like six ‘cause I didn’t get it in the mail ‘till December), I have to get serious about this.
IDEAS!
This drawing. ‘Cause it’s colors + infinity.
This drawing. Because it looks like a tattoo, you know? Also snakes.
If I were confident that people would still know what the hell R was by 2050, I’d totally get the R logo tattooed somewhere on me. Because come on, we manipulate and frustrate each other, yet we’re very close. We’re practically married.
A bell curve? The problem with that is it’d be hard to get the best design of it. I’d like a simple bell curve, but just a random arching curve might look weird no matter where I put it.
I’d still like to get “LEIBNIZ” scrolled across some part of my body, too, ‘cause dear god I love that man.
If I had any modicum of intelligence whatsoever, I’d be able to smoothly and beautifully combine stats, Leibniz, and color into one badass tattoo. But I don’t, so I can’t.
Bah. Suggestions?
Today consisted of…
Looking at kitties at the Humane Society.
Cleaning.
Half Life.
Metalocalypse.
Very little else.
Good day.
Bits n’ Bobs
I’m hyper tonight.
- Two phrases I cannot stand: baby daddy and adorbs. Seriously, people?
- The first three or four times I heard Nicki Minaj’s “Starship” I could have sworn instead of “and if you a G, you a G-G-G” she was saying “and if you a tree, you a tree tree tree.” Go listen to that part. Tell me that’s not what it sounds like.
I need to get off the internet.
- Speaking of the internet: I predict that it won’t be long now until there’s some sort of college major relating directly to the internet. Like Web Studies or something. I can’t remember if I’ve ever said that here or not, but I’m saying it now anyway.
- I like Adele, but Rumour Has It drives me insane. Probably ‘cause I’ve only ever really heard it in the office and since the radio is like halfway down the hall, all I hear is this weird half-melody that’s got a really annoying repetitive nature to it.
- So I think I’m going to have to break down and buy the book form of The Brave Little Toaster because…well, because. Dude, I mean…it’s the brave little toaster.
- I’d forgotten what a downer Prime was. Especially toward the end. It was supposed to be this light-hearted little story about talking numbers. It got dark as hell kind of on its own. It’s also kind of boring in parts. Gotta fix that. Might keep the darkness, though, ‘cause it works.
- The chorus of David Guetta’s Without You really gets me going. This little animated lyrics video adds to that.
- I really miss Rob tonight. What’s up with that?
- I want this.
- I’m in a major drawing mood. I might do something involving the zodiac signs because a) that’d be badass, b) I don’t care if it’s pseudoscience, the zodiac is fun, and c) I want to.
- Dudes, Dethklok’s touring later this year and is coming to Phoenix. Tickets might have to happen.
END!
Yo Dawg I Herd U Like Surveys in Your Blogs
So I put questions about your blog in a survey so you can blog about your blog when you post the survey.
Or something like that.
1. Why did you sign up for writing your blog?
Peer pressure. Seriously.
2. Why did you choose your blog’s name?
I used to be Le Seul Mot Juste, but Eigenblogger is just so much more…me. You know?
3. Do you ever had another blog?
Excellent English. No I haven’t, unless you count MySpace. Which I don’t, ‘cause this is the same thing. I just moved it over.
4. What do you do online when you’re not on your blog?
Oh god…Tumblr. YouTube. Ted Talks. Wikipedia. Job hunting. Stats research. StumbleUpon.
5. How about when you’re not on the computer?
I get off the computer?
6. What do you wish people who read your blog knew about you?
That I tend to write and post my blogs when it’s like 4:30 in the morning and I’m half asleep. At that time of night (morning?) my ability to write cohesive sentences is at it’s lowest and I’m a lazy butt who never proofreads anything, so that’s my explanation for about 99% of the typos/nonsensical sentences/lack of interpretable phrases. Sometimes I accidentally my posts.
7. What is your favorite community in the blogosphere?
The blogosphere itself! Though the R community is awesome. We need each other.
8. What is your philosophy on your blog layout?
I’d like my individual posts to be “separated.” By that, I mean that I’d like a break in whatever color/box houses the body text of each blog. I’d like there to be only one side menu. I’d like to be able to customize the colors and the header. I’d like the title to be an obviously different style than the body text. Actually, I like my current blog layout quite a lot.
9. Tell me about your picture you use to represent you on your blog.
It’s one of the few pictures of me where I don’t look up to my usual standards of hideousness.
10. Pick three random blogs posts and tell us about them.
Random post button, ACTIVATE!
I miss my artsy-fartsy childhood sometimes: I talk about the Art Camp I used to religiously attend as a kid and rave about Dogwood Ceramic Supply.
LEIBNIZ DAY: I get overly appropriately excited for Leibniz’ birthday.
In this blog: I attempt to sell a ShamWow to Superman: exactly what it sounds like.
11. What features do you think your blog should have that it doesn’t currently?
I’d like to be more in control of the colors. I know that’s not really a feature feature, but it matters to me. A lot.
12. What do you consider the 10 most “telling” interests that we would infer from what you blog about?
Statistics, Leibniz, surveys, weird pictures, YouTube videos, colors, drawing, making lists, music, R.
13. Do you have any unique interests that you have never shared before? What are they?
Yes. But I’m not telling. HA.
14. The best thing about blogging is all of the friends that you make. Beside from those folks, do you think your blog has fans?
I’ve got seven followers. I know two of them personally. Either one of these fellows is from Ohio, or I’ve got a random creeper who lives there, ‘cause aside from Idaho it’s the state from which I’ve had the most visitors (hello, Ohio Creeper!). Ohio Creeper would be a good band name. Or a plant.
What was the question?
Oh, yeah. Fans. I really have no idea. I jump around topics so much that this is probably the least focused blog ever; I don’t see many people liking that style. I like it in other blogs, but I’m strange.
15. What’s your current obsession? What about it captures your imagination?
I guess it’s R, though that’s not really “current.” I really like trying to figure out how to write code for various things, especially things for which commands already exist. It’s fun!
16. What are you glad you did but haven’t really had a chance to post about?
Something way back when. It’s private, hence my not posting much about it.
17. How many people that first became a blog friend, have you met face to face?
No blog friends! Forever alone.
18. What don’t you talk about here, either because it’s too personal or because you don’t have the energy?
I try to avoid talking about my mental health (or lack thereof). The little bit that does get through is just the occasional blah-blah that I have to get out if I want to avoid spontaneously combusting.
19. What’s a question that you’d love to answer?
I don’t know, how ‘bout someone ask me?
20. Have you ever lost a blogging friendship and regretted it?
I don’t think I’ve ever really *made* a blogging friendship.
21. Have you ever lost a blogging friendship and thought, “Was that overdue!”
See above.
Shameless self-promotion? DON’T MIND IF I DO
Uh-oh, guys.
Check it out at your own risk. Some of it is/will be reposts from here, but most of it will be stuff too frivolous for its own blog post.
Lots of YouTube videos, memes, Metalocalypse, and gifs forthcoming on it.
You’ve been warned.
TroloNOOOOOO!
RIP, Eduard Khil. The internet loves you.
In tribute:
Trololo Rock Band!
Trololo Chiptune!
Trololo Meets Metal (I just discovered this. It’s phenomenal.)
That is all.
Damn you, YouTube
For the love of god, someone tell me why I find this so uncannily funny:
YouTube Poop: a post-postmodernism phenomenon or just…well…poop?
2:27-2:31 needs to be a looping .gif.
Also: [insert extreme Metalocalypse love here]
This freaking show asldfjefadjvaoerfnaf.
Do-do-do-DOOO! ART!
NO WORDS JUST A PICTURE
SORRY I’M HYPER
Parking Lot Adventures: Nature Edition!
I got owned by a dust devil this afternoon.
I left work around 1 PM today. Since it’s summer session at PCC and no one ever comes in on Friday anyway, I was lucky enough to park not only in the main lot but also in a nice shady spot under a tree.
So I’m walking across the parking lot and everything’s fine…it’s not windy at all (surprisingly) and even though it’s like 105 degrees, it felt good after sitting under a blasting air conditioner all morning.
I unlock the car and open up the back driver’s side door so I can throw my backpack back there. I’ve got the upper half of my body in the car (I was trying to bury my backpack under a bunch of stuff so my USBs/iPod/phone/etc. weren’t in the direct sun on the drive home) and my butt sticking out of the door.
As I’m screwing around back there I feel this fairly strong gust of wind hit my back. I didn’t want to stand up and mess up my hair in the wind (I’m vain like that), so I just kind of hung out in the back of the car for a second, bent over with my butt still sticking out.
Then this HUGE gust of wind just slams me in the back, KNOCKING ME INTO THE CAR along with a small forest’s equivalent of tree particulate, dust, and sand. The door slams behind me and I look up just in time to see the tail end of a dust devil go spinning wildly past the car. And all is calm once more.
So now the entire back seat of the car, the front passenger seat, the floor in the back, and all the stuff we had on the back seat (cloth grocery bags, my coat, miscellaneous journals and boxes and whatnot) are covered with tree debris. I got a good shot of it down the back of my shirt, too.
Haha, sorry if this blog seems obvious to you (“dust devils involve wind? DO TELL”) but that was my first up-close-and-personal experience with one. I think they look deceptively weak.
Mother nature: 1
Claudia: 0
The Panther, the Wizard, and the Laundry Chute
For all of you who enjoy my stats-related posts, here are some of my dumb cartoons. Yes, I know they suck. Yes, I know I can’t draw/Photoshop/be funny. Oh well. Click to enlarge.
(Source for original scale pic)
This irks me
<rant>
Three (or four?) of my friends on Facebook have posted this picture within the past 5 hours. Posting it here to rant.
The thoughts that went through my head, in order, when I saw this:
- Oh yay. A guilt trip. There’s nothin’ quite like a guilt trip from Facebook.
- Wait a minute. Facebook shouldn’t be giving me guilt trips, period. Stop it.
- Ugh, there are so many things wrong with this message, though!
- So to look like that I can only eat in public (under a shroud of shame, of course)? Is that all I have to do? No like, you know, exercise or weight training or steroids or tanning lotion?
- And if I desire food when I’m alone, I’d better make damn sure it isn’t anything more than lettuce leaves and the microbes that live on them! Is that right?
- Fuck. I could do that—I could eat only lettuce and lettuce microbes—and still not look like her. Have these people ever heard of genes? Specifically those that say “you’re going to grow up short and stocky and no matter what you do you won’t turn you into a model”? ‘Cause I’ve heard lots of people have that gene.
- Is it wrong that I’m offended by this picture/caption, seriously? Does that make me one of “those people”?
- At the same time, is it wrong that this makes me feel guilty?
- I don’t think I’m alone in this sort of contradictory thought process, though. Please tell me I’m not the only one.
- I think things like this are the reason why Americans can’t have normal relationships with food/body image/reality. “You’ve got to look one specific certain way and we’re going to oversimplify the steps you need to get there. You’ll feel worthless after you don’t get the same result in a short period of time. You’ll have a donut. You’ll feel guilty. You’ll realize how dumb that is. You’ll feel guilty about feeling guilty. You’ll stop caring because it doesn’t matter anyway, now does it? You’ll realize that it does matter if you want to be taken seriously in this society. So you’ll seek out some medium that will tell you what you need to do to look that one specific way.” Rinse. Repeat.
- If I actually “wore” what I ate I’d have a broccoli wardrobe.
- I’d be okay with that.
- And what about the stuff I eat in public? Does that only appear in private? Does the reverse side of this horrible, horrible logic apply in Horrible Horrible Logic land as well?
- Also: yes, she’s pretty, but not every guy/girl/whatever finds that particular body type attractive. When will people learn this agsdhslksdfjaldkjgalkfdlkjsfaisea.
Put us all in pretty little boxes. That’ll make us happy people.
</rant>
Benford’s Law? More like Benford’s LOL
Okay, today’s going to be a quick little blog ‘cause I’m busy trying to organize/transfer/protect from any possible massive hard drive failures my music library. It’s stressing me out.
While I was working on the “References” section of a textbook today at work, I noticed a pattern that I’ve come in contact with several times: there appeared to be a lot more “entries” that started with a letter from the first half of the alphabet (A – M) rather than the latter half (N – Z). I’ve done at least one other analysis regarding this topic, but I decided to do another slightly different one to see if it applied in this case.
QUESTION OF INTEREST
So what is Benford’s Law? For those of you who don’t want to click the link (lazy fools!), Benford’s Law states that with most types of data, the leading digit is a 1 almost one-third of the time, with that probability decreasing as the digit (from 1 to 9) increases. That is, rather than the probability of being a leading digit being equal for each number 1 through 9, the probabilities range from about 30% (for a 1) to about a 4% (for a 9).
What I want to see is this: is there a “Benford’s Law” type phenomenon for the letters of the alphabet? That is, do letters in the first half of the alphabet appear as the first letter of words more often than letters in the latter half of the alphabet?
HYPOTHESIS
In a given set of random words, a greater number of words will start with a letter between A and M than with a letter between N and Z.
METHOD
Using this awesome little utility, I generated (approximately) 5,000 words each from The Bible, Great Expectations, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I then counted how many words there were starting with A, how many words there were starting with B, and so on for each letter of the alphabet.
I then did two other breakdowns of the letters:
A) I divided the alphabet in half (A – M and N – Z) and counted the total number of words for each group.
B) In order to “mirror” a sort of Benford’s Law type of structure, I divided the 26 letters into nine groups (eight groups of three letters each, one group of two letters). I wanted to make a similar breakdown of groups to the nine numbers that Benford’s Law applies to, just to see if that sort of arbitrary screwing around did anything. Visualization ‘cause I suck at explaining stuff when I’m in a hurry:
Kay? Kay.
RESULTS
I made charts!
By letter:
By “half of the alphabet” in what is probably the most worthless visual ever:
By semi-arbitrary group (dark blue) with Benford’s percentages by number (light blue) for comparison:
DISCUSSION
Well, that whole thing sucked. Okay, so obviously it’s not a perfect pattern match and I didn’t do any stats (I WAS IN A HURRY) to see whether there was any statistical significance or anything, but it was fun to screw around with for an hour or so. I wonder how different the results would be (if at all) if I were to use truly random words from the English language, not just random words selected out of three works of fiction. Perhaps material for a later blog…?
END!
Teehee. Friends.
I wanted to dedicate the whole of yesterday’s post to my good friend leaving Moscow, so this stuff is going in for today. And technically, most of this stuff DID happen today, so HA.
Dear Matt, Maggie, and Max: I love all you fools. It was awesome to hang out with you, chug sugar shots, make fun of large milkshake straws, be social nuisances in Shari’s, and be social nuisances in Ghormley Park.
And draw presidents with boobs.
For those of you who weren’t there: that’s Viking Lincoln being ogled by John Wilkes Booth. There was a little more added to this drawing after taking this pic, but it was inconsequential to the pic’s overall awesomeness.
Anyway, I’m 99% sure I’ll be back in Moscow at some point in life (all roads lead to Moscow…), at which point we all must hang out again.
WOO!
Eigenblogger 