After Newsnight last night a thing came on BBC2 called The Joy of Stats.
Sounded boring but I was hooked in seconds, the main lecturer being a dementedly enthusiastic Swedish professor of statistics.
At one point he reminded us that the population of a country - he used Sweden as an example - has on average slightly less than two legs, 1.999999 or something, because some Swedes have one leg or no legs while no Swedes have three legs.
So nearly everyone in Sweden has more than the average number of legs, he concluded with crazed triumph. Damn sight better than the jokes at the Apollo I thought. Another nugget was that Florence Nightingale was a tremendous statistics enthusiast and pioneered the coloured statistical graphics we are now so used to. Invented the pie chart so to speak.
The whole thing was a joy. Highly recommended if on iplayer.
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>>The whole thing was a joy. Highly recommended if on iplayer.
If this is the same programme that I watched a couple of months ago, it is very good indeed.
I bet you didn't know that there are more boat owners in Sweden, than in any other country.
Definitely more interesting than it sounds.
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I think you need to get out more Sire :)
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>>> you need to get out more
Down, boy, down! No walkies!
Believe me Perro, you would love it.
One of the features was live animated graphs. One compared Sweden and Singapore over the last 50 years or so for life expectancy/family income/healthcare, i.e. standard or quality of life. The two lines started far apart and slowly converged until they crossed, with the professor's voice rising to a worried shriek as he ended with '... good heavens we never expected Singapore to win!'
The last part moved into the internet age with staggering numbers of bytes and of course with powerful computers to make statistics a power-tool for the masses. The guy's whole attitude was democratic and optimistic. I repeat: you'd love it, unless you have been misrepresenting yourself here.
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Thanks, AC. My father in law is a prof of statistics (also demented). He'll like that. Is it being repeated on TV at all as I'll have to Sky+ it for his next visit to this country. I'm guessing you can't record content from iPlayer?
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>> for his next visit to this country. I'm guessing you can't record content from iPlayer?
Sort of. You can get on the fly video capture applications, like those used to capture youtube clips and alike.
Keepvid is one, but there are loads of others.
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Erk. Might have a look, but it sounds more hassle than it's worth. I'll just get him the usual bottle of Johnnie Walker.
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Hey, Zero - if I download it from iPlayer for Windows Media Player, does the content expire after a certain number of days?
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Knickers. Why is this? If I record a programme off the TV, it can be kept forever. Why the restriction? Any idea?
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Most internet streaming providers are the same, probably because getting video on PC is far too easy for piracy.
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>> So nearly everyone in Sweden has more than the average number of legs
That's why average is so misleading. One should use median in this case. :o)
There are 3 types of lies - lie, great lie and statistics.
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Just shows that you can make statistics prove anything.
The professor was not using the average but using the 'mean' ie the total number of legs divided by the total number of Swedes.
Movilogo reckons one should use median in this case...
You could do as it will be the number of legs of the person in the middle of the range of however million Swedes you are counting .
Harking back to when I studied statistics actually I think it is easier to use the mode..... which is the value appearing the most , ie two.
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>> The professor was not using the average but using the 'mean' ie the total number
>> of legs divided by the total number of Swedes.
Being pedantic, and IIRC, mean, median and mode are 3 types of average. So he was using one of the types of average.
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>>There are 3 types of lies - lie, great lie and statistics.>>
I've always understood it to be: "Lies, damned lies and statistics" and its emergence for more widespread use attributed to Mark Twain...:-)
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Had to be you, didn't it?
Of course it had the look of a repeat about it. But it was so good that I thought it worth mentioning for others who had missed it.
All nerds together, eh?
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>> All nerds together, eh?
Nah, probably just 97.6663% of nerds together.
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>>it had the look of a repeat about it.
The programme was first aired a few of months ago, not in 1943.
:)
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Statistics - Clk Sec
