Your Friday Deviant Statistic

(Well all right, _my_ Friday. I don't know what day it is where _you_ are...)

Rode past a couple of kids on my bike this morning, and one of them was saying "Jinx!" like we used to do whenever two people said the same word at the same time. I think it was supposed to be bad luck or something; I forget. Anyways, it made we wonder how often that happens:

Assume that "started in the same second" is close enough to "at the same time."
Best estimate to average number of words spoken in a day that I could find with references: 7,500.
Percentage of words (written, but we'll assume roughly equal distributions) that are on the top 25 most frequently used words list: 33%
Number of times per day, on average, you say one of the top 25 words: 2,500
Number of times per day, on average, you say _each_ of those words: 100
Number of seconds in a day: 86,400
Odds that someone is saying a specific one of those words in a given second: 100 / 86,400 =~ 0.0012, or about one in a thousand, give or take.
So 2,500 times a day I say one of those 25 words, and each time there is a one in a thousand chance that you're saying the word at the same time. Just counting those, we should "jinx" each other 2.5 times a day.

That's with two of us. There are approximately 328 million native English speakers in the word, so even discounting the non-native speakers, and the non-top-25 words (and the fact that those statistics are from 2006) the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the fact that someone somewhere is jinxing you every single time one of those words passes your lips, 2,500 times a day. That'd be a lot of bad luck, but I've just arbitrarily (but y'know, no less arbitrary than the original superstition) decided that its actually _good_ luck, so thats a relief.

"Jinx!" (But then, you just said that, didn't you?)

Reggie Watts F--- S--- Stack

So this video is Not Safe For Work, or for any small listeners prone to repeating what they hear.

AWW WHO DOESN'T LOVE A THREE LEGGED PUPPY...!?

Watson, my bottle baby. Happy, adopted (not by me) and tripoded.

SpaceChem

This game, is cool.*

SPACECHEM

(*Warning: the management takes no responsibility for your definition of "cool" being different from that of a complete and utter geek.)

Its a puzzle game, and it happens to nicely embed a number of basic concepts of computer programming. Those of you whom I have cornered at a cocktail party and bored nigh-unto-death about my doctoral thesis may recognise this as a topic near and dear to my heart; these guys did it much more elegantly than I did. I'm not actually sure they were _trying_ to make a game that taught programming concepts - they don't beat you over the head with it, certainly - but the concepts just sort of naturally fall out of the puzzles. The game doesn't teach them to you; you teach them to yourself just in order to play the game better. Perfect melding of content and game.

But here's the thing: the whole point of embedding something educational into a game (still assuming they did it on purpose) is to take something that the player might not find interesting, and drop it in a context that _is_ interesting, so the player will want to learn. What context did they use to make programming interesting? Industrial chemistry. Seriously. I mean, I like blowing stuff up as much as the next guy, but even I would never go so far as to say that making and breaking bonds between atoms was glamorous. It fits the material well, but it seems like it kind of misses the point.

Anyways, you can quite easily ignore that its about chemistry; its just a puzzle where you rearrange patterns on one side and make them look like patterns on the other. I suspect those among you who are already programmers won't be able to resist it; finding _an_ answer is often not that hard, but can you find an elegant one? One that solves the problem in fewer cycles (runs faster?) Or one that uses fewer elements (lines of code?) I'm not sure how much fun non-coders will find it - I'd be interested to know. Its not that you wouldn't be able to do it, its just that its the parallels to coding that keep _me_ coming back to it - its certainly not the chemistry.

Yes, its a computer game, and no, you don't get to blow anything up. Unless you build the right chemicals, I suppose. But if you're in the mood for a clever puzzle game, it might be worth a look. (It has a free demo, and the full game is $15 downloaded from their site.)

Mucus...

Mucus... its not working out. I think we need to see other people. I don't love you anymore. Its not me, its you. Fuck off, will you! And get your shit out of my lungs!

(Had that damn Tripod song stuck in my head for a week...)

Carbon Pricing

by @NineSortJam

For all you new(ish) homeowners out there:

Don't do this:


(Lookin at you Fitz...)