Tag Archives: statistics

2011 By The Numbers

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Since I do this every year, I’ll just get this out of the way now. Carrying over the commute from last year and taking an extremely educated guess at foot travel. I’m up slightly from 2010. 

Commute:
  (6.85 mi [drive] + 47.4 mi [train] + 1.29 mi [subway]) x 2 =  111.08 mi daily
                                                                x  255 days
                                                               --------------
                                                                28,325 mi
Flying:
  3,656 mi x 2 = 7,312 mi
  1,617 mi x 2 = 3,234 mi
                                                             =  10,546 mi

Cruise:
  1,318 mi
                                                             =  1,318 mi

Walk (via pedometer minus treadmill estimated)
  1,160 mi - 250 mi =                                        =    910 mi

Etc (misc, pretty random guess here):                        = ~1,300 mi

                                                               --------------
Total:                                                          42,399 mi

Velocity for 2011: 42,399 / 8,760 = 4.84 mph

Laps around Earth: 42,399 mi / 24,901.55 mi (earth circumference at equator) = 1.7 laps

My average speed is now almost 5X what the NASA’s crawler-transporter’s did moving the Shuttles.

2010 By The Numbers

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And 2010′s numbers…

Commute:
  (6.85 mi [drive] + 47.4 mi [train] + 1.29 mi [subway]) x 2 =  111.08 mi daily
                                                                x  255 days
                                                               -----------------
                                                                28,325.4 mi
Flying:
  3,656 mi x 2 = 7,312 mi
  1,540 mi x 2 = 3,080 mi
                                                              = 10,392.0 mi

Walk (via pedometer minus treadmill (246 mi))
  1,145 mi - 246 mi =                                         = 899 mi                    

Etc (misc, pretty random guess here):                          ~1,300.0 mi

                                                               ----------------
Total:                                                          40,916.4 mi

Velocity for 2010: 40,916.4 / 8,760 = 4.67 mph

Laps around Earth: 40,916.4 mi / 24,901.55 mi (earth circumference at equator) = 1.64 laps

That includes the 2,000,572 steps recorded via a pedometer. I realized tonight I was about 1,000 short of the 2 million mark so I hopped on the treadmill for a quick 1,000 step walk to make it at around 10:00 PM.

My velocity last year was 4.43 mph, so a slight jump based on a few more steps and slightly more flying.

The Myths Of Halloween Safety

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An interesting piece on Halloween paranoia in the WSJ notes:

…that there has never been a single case of any child being killed by a stranger’s Halloween candy. (Oh, yes, he concedes, there was once a Texas boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix. But his dad did it for the insurance money. He was executed.)

Regarding the sharp objects in Halloween, it’s a very rare occurrence (at best). Part of the reason is it hardly goes unnoticed before someone eats it for obvious reasons. In almost all cases the reports are a hoax. Of all the sharp object in food injuries only about 10 caused injury since 1959, none serious.

Now compare 10 injuries since 1959 to the following from the, the CDC:

As people’s participation in organized sport activity increases, so does the rate of sports-related injuries. Recreational activities, including sports, account for an estimated 3.2 million visits to emergency rooms each year for children aged 5-14 years. Injuries from organized and unorganized sports account for 775,000 emergency room visits annually for children in this same age group. Sports-related injuries are the leading cause of emergency room visits in 12-17-year-olds.

A child is much more likely to die or suffer a life altering injury playing sports or in gym class than from eating candy on Halloween.

To kill the idea of child molesters having a field day on Halloween:

Rarely were the offenders of young juvenile victims strangers. Strangers were the offenders in just 3% of sexual assaults against victims under age 6 and 5% of the sexual assault victimizations of youth ages 6 through 11.

Satistically more kids are abused by a parent or close family member. It’s also worth noting that cases of a close relative being the abuser are generally thought to be underreported.

It’s interesting how paranoia, misinformation and people’s inability to think rationally on their own have such a strong impact on society. An entire holiday is feared for nothing more than urban legends and misconceptions.

Taking Advantage Of Bias In Rock Paper Scissors

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Here’s an infographic on how to improve you’re odds in Rock Paper Scissors. A year ago I linked to some research on bias in a coin toss (it’s not 50-50 it’s 51-49). At this rate I’ll eventually have an advantage in every game of chance.

Essentially this time around it’s more about psychology than bias in the implementation.

What’s the best way to prevent being gamed? Play rock, paper, scissor, lizard, spock, which has more possibilities and is just overall more enjoyable.

Very interesting stuff.

Texting Survey Comparing Parents And Teens

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L.G. did a mobile phone survey and found some interesting results about parents and teens:

Activities

  • 28 percent of parents admit to engaging in some form of “sexting” and 43 percent of teens admit to doing the same.
  • Almost half of all parents and teens surveyed admit to texting and driving.
  • 42 percent of parents admit to texting someone while at the dinner table; whereas 69 percent of teens admit to texting at the dinner table.
  • 38 percent of parents admit to texting during the middle of the night; whereas, 83 percent of teens admit to texting during those hours.

Awareness

  • 45 percent of teens admit to texting and driving. And only 4 percent of parents believe their teens ever text while driving.
  • 43 percent of teens admit to putting someone down or insulting them in a text, while only 10 percent of parents believe their teens had ever participated in this type of hurtful behavior.
  • 41 percent of teens admit to sending, receiving, or forwarding a text that said something sexual, while only 11 percent of parents thought their teens had ever sexted.
  • 52 percent of teens admit to checking someone else’s texts or having had their texts checked by someone without permission, while only 8 percent of parents thought their teens had ever participated in this behavior.

Interestingly “41 percent of teens admit to sending, receiving, or forwarding a text that said something sexual” but 43 percent “engaging in some form of ‘sexting’”. I would think sending, receiving or forwarding would result in a much higher percentage. I can’t find any information about the methodology of the survey to help clarify this discrepancy.

Back in my day you had to draw yourself on a piece of paper and walk it over. When it resulted in laughing we called the return trip “the walk of shame”.

Good luck sleeping tonight parents. Kids.

On Teens Mobile Phones And Sexting

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A curious note in Pew Research Center’s Teens and Mobile Phones study released a few weeks ago:

The teens who pay their own phone bills are more likely to send “sexts”: 17% of teens who pay for all of the costs associated with their cell phones send sexually suggestive images via text; just 3% of teens who do not pay for, or only pay for a portion of the cost of the cell phone send these images.

I suspect this is because someone else sees the bill.

An average bill for a heart attack was $45,000 in 2004. Assuming 7% annual inflation of health care costs that works out to roughly $67,500 in 2010. I believe the US health care inflation rate is actually higher that. It is estimated at 9% for 2010 alone. That’s conservative estimate.

A $100/month plan for 10 years comes out to a mere $12,000. Adding a line to a family plan obviously costs much less than that.

Seems like it makes financial sense to put your teenage daughter under your cell phone plan. Your welcome kids. Feel free to show your parents the math and remember: you can’t put a price on health.

More On Cell Phones And Toilets

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Last month I briefly touched upon the correlation between cell phones and toilets. My influence was coincidentally reading a story on third-world water sanitation a day or so before stumbling upon the cell phone statistics.

Now the UN is reporting in India more people have access to cell phones than toilets.

To briefly recap:

  1. I called it.
  2. I still find it disturbing.

Cell Phones And Toilets

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There are an estimated 6.8 billion people on this planet at the time of this blog post. There will be 5 billion cell phone subscriptions by the end of this year. Granted some people have several, most have 1.

To put this in perspective 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water (WHO/UNICEF [pdf]). The same report notes 2.5 billion “are without improved sanitation”. Roughly 1.17 billion (18% of the 6.5 billion population in 2006) still use “open defecation” or to put it in more crude terms, they crap in the woods, fields, streams, and rivers under the open sky.

There’s something a little disturbing about these trends. In my ideal world more people will always have access to toilets that don’t contaminate their own drinking water than use cell phones.

2009 By The Numbers

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Now to crunch the numbers for 2009…

Commute:
  (6.85 mi [drive] + 47.4 mi [train] + 1.29 mi [subway]) x 2 = 111.08 mi daily
                                                               x  255 days
                                                               -----------------
                                                               28,325.4 mi
Flying:
  3,656 mi x 2 = 7,312 mi
    779 mi x 2 = 1,558 mi
                                                              = 8,870.0 mi

Walk:                                                           1,065.0 mi

Etc (misc, pretty random guess here):                          ~1,000.0 mi

                                                              ----------------
Total:                                                        39,260.4 mi

Velocity for 2009: 39,260.4 / 8,760 = 4.43 mph

Laps around Earth: 39,260 mi / 24,901.55 mi (earth circumference at equator) = 1.58 laps

Not bad, more than a lap around the earth! At an average distance of 238,857 miles it would still take 6.08 years to make it to the moon.

Coin Tosses Not Totally Random

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It’s generally assumed that a coin toss is “fair” because it’s considered “random” as long as you don’t use a double headed coin. In fact professional sports like football use it. While previously known or at least suspected, it’s not so random. Research shows it has a 1% bias. Making the odds 51-49, hopefully in my favor. They were even able to build a machine to predictably flip a coin.

James Devlin at Coding The Wheel has a great writeup simplified for those who don’t have a head for all the math (pun intended):

  1. If the coin is tossed and caught, it has about a 51% chance of landing on the same face it was launched. (If it starts out as heads, there’s a 51% chance it will end as heads).
  2. If the coin is spun, rather than tossed, it can have a much-larger-than-50% chance of ending with the heavier side down. Spun coins can exhibit “huge bias” (some spun coins will fall tails-up 80% of the time).
  3. If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor, this probably adds randomness.
  4. If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor where it spins, as will sometimes happen, the above spinning bias probably comes into play.
  5. A coin will land on its edge around 1 in 6000 throws, creating a flipistic singularity.
  6. The same initial coin-flipping conditions produce the same coin flip result. That is, there’s a certain amount of determinism to the coin flip.
  7. A more robust coin toss (more revolutions) decreases the bias.

There’s also some potential strategy, a worthwhile read.

There paper is also available as as well if your so inclined, though you’d need to be a real math/stats nerd to want to read that.