The Lair

I watched the much anticipated Human Footprint on Channel 4 last night. Although watching TV might not sound like much of a sacrifice, I did give up the Catherine Tate Show and Roman’s Empire (and even Graham Norton!) so there was a nontrivial amount of interest there.

In summary, it was the average number of things we (and I get the impression that this meant Britons, since some of the statistics explicitly made mention of the demographic) do in our lifetimes. The average number of times people have sex (4000 odd, which seemed low. Even more so considering how marriage rates are plummetting). The average volume of tears shed in our lifetime (120 liters? Really?). The average number of words spoken in our lifetime (123 million? Hmm.) and so on.

All accompanied by some wonderful imagery – the number of apples we eat in our lifetime was illustrated by a gigantic apple made up of … apples. In a slightly more squeamish twist (not if you chuckle at toilet humour), the loo roll use and crap we emit illustration was as graphic. The number of times people have sex was illustrated by condoms hanging from a tree and so on. It was faux art, I suppose – but my inner Philistine can’t tell the difference anyway so I found it all rather cool.

One thought did occur to me though – and it’s a thought that I’ve been pondering (in a different context) for a couple of days. Everything was expressed as averages – presumably an estimated arithmetic mean. As interesting, although perhaps significantly more difficult to gather, I would have liked to see the median in there too.

There is a simple reason for this desire. It is in fact explained in the median link above – but I recently saw a more entertaining explanation which I intend to reproduce via paraphrase (can’t remember where I saw it though).

Imagine that Bill Gates walked into a bar full of penniless, jobless, hobos. Suddenly the average (arithmetic mean) earnings of every person in the bar jumps into the giddy millions – but this does not represent “a real number”. The median calculates the probability distribution instead – so the influx of one high number does not skew all the remaining low numbers in the distribution.

The arithmetic mean would have one believe that the earnings potential of everyone in the bar jumps into the millions when Bill Gates (an outlying anomaly) walks into bar. The median provides a more realistic picture. Knowing as much as I do about statistics, I would guesstimate (ha!) that calculating the median based on a small sample size is much harder though.

And in a brief and unrelated footnote, Twitter has an awesome easy-to-use API (I wrote a PHP messaging API for Ach in literally half an hour) – but no means of keeping contacts private. Jaiku has a horrible API in comparison, but they do offer privacy for contacts. In other words, neither of the two services provides me with exactly what I need for my next step in wurld dominayshun. Curses! The Loverlord is not happy.

Bangladesh do a number on the Saffers. Sorry, I shouldn’t be generalizing but the words one dimensional and bullies seem fairly accurate to describe the South Africans so I can’t say I’m altogether unhappy. Not entirely dissimilar to West Ham doing a number on Arsenal. Said it before, say it again – the Gunners play nice football and I will always be a fan but their ability to be sunk at the death by lower rated and lesser teams is … depressing and all too familiar. If it’s not Zamora, then it’s Marlon Harewood. If it’s not Harewood, it will be someone like Kevin Nolan or Anelka. Or Benni McCarthy. I could go on and name more names but this is getting worse than depressing.

Of as much importance, Pompey shocked Manyoo. You stupid Mancunian gits. This had better not cost you the title, by gawd.

Right. Sporting bile dispensed with. I’m not even sparing a thought for the Masters that I was watching this weekend because meh. Tiger lost.

The odds on a subcontinental team winning the Cricket World Cup got a bit shorter, didn’t they? Oh my. I wish I cared more, honestly I do but there were other, more compelling sporting activities happening yesterday.

Ireland were pipped by France to the six nations title. To be honest, I thought the ref for the France/Scotland game (south african?) was pretty fricking awful. He farcically sinbinned the wrong Scottish player for a late tackle and the way he posed the question about the final injury time try made it very difficult for the TV ref to overturn it. Also, the guy scoring the injury time try for France was named Elvis. Remember the name, people. Elvis. Then again, the Irish also had a few forward passes in their tries against the Italians, so it’s all fair. Maybe. Ireland then made up for the lack of St. Patrick’s sporting cheer by mugging Pakistan in cricket. I’m sure the majority in the green isle won’t give a damn about the cricket but meh. Small consolation.

Everytime I write off the French rugby union team, they either sink further into the cesspool of imbecilic play or they turn shit around and kick the stuffing out of their opponents. I’m going to give up trying to predict what they’ll do next. Just like Arsenal in the Premier League, truth be told.

A heretic mails to inform me that his pick for the Cricket WC semifinalists are SL, WI, Aus and SA. He forgot NZ, the follower of the false prophet. He also forgot Bangladesh and Ireland.