Nerdy statistical vignette:
The other day, at work, I had several rows of numbers in an Excel spreadsheet. They represented two ratios over multiple days. On every single day, ratio A was higher than ratio B. But when I added them all together over all days, ratio B was higher than ratio A. I was convinced I was doing something wrong, but eventually I went hunting round the office for a pair of statisticians, who gazed at my spreadsheet and declared I had stumbled across Simpson’s paradox in the wild. “It’s beautiful!” they said. Beautiful, but strange. If you’ve been looking for an excuse to read up on weird statistical quirks on Wikipedia, now is your chance.
Joke which I overheard and will now steal to balance out nerdy statistical vignette:
“I’m good friends with 25 letters of the alphabet, but I don’t know why…”
Rest of post:
After walking past the Kingston Mines blues club and saying “we should check that out sometime!” many times, Randi and I finally visited one Saturday night, and it was lovely. Also the drinks were surprisingly inexpensive, which is how I ended up drinking as much sangria as I did and having to compensate with cheesy chips. (They weren’t quite cheesy chips in the way Cat would understand, but close enough.) Later that weekend we played an extended game of ‘mega Carcassonne’ with Catherine and AJ, seeking an unfair advantage for ourselves by adding in as many expansions as we could. I doubt we’ll be invited back.
More Carcassonne! More!
Continuing the French theme, last week we went back to Improv Shakespeare with Ellen and Emilie and watched The Mariner’s Mistake unfold: a story of war between England and France’s rather sensitive and likeable King Philippe. Plus fighting cat soldiers. And then on Sunday, as you may have noticed, we watched all sorts of likeable French people in real life cheer in Paris as their successful election results were announced. Bon travail!
We also watched Howl’s Moving Castle (strong start, somewhat meandering middle, always beautiful to watch) and hosted two mini Eurovision parties for the semi finals. (A full Eurovision report from a cabin in Wisconsin should be expected from my next post.) Below is our second gathering… a shout out to Calvin and Emilie who helped us eat a lot of cheese and wine during the first one, including a baked Camembert which Cat would certainly have approved of…
A new generation of newly-minted Eurovision fans
Amanda Schalk, Bonnie Ní Súilleabháin, Gillian Self, Beth Dubowe-Lawrence, Randi Lawrence liked this post.
