March 22, 2010
Descriptives
I think it's strange how much I love statistics. Not statistics in general but descriptive and inferential statistics. Which is probably why I love using things like Last.fm and Foursquare. I could care less about the whole social networking part of them. I doubt I'm really going to meet and network with people with either of those sites, but I love how their descriptive statistics.
It's awesome to think that they can compare the songs you listen to and their play frequency to all of their other users and they can match you up with similar people and create a "neighborhood." It's especially awesome when my friends IRL end up in my neighborhood, like Joey currently is even though I'm not in his. I guess I need to listen to more "Broken..." bands.
I can see how friends could be useful with location based apps like Foursquare. You can check in and see what your friends are up to and meet them and whatever. The points system is kinda stupid since no where does there seem to be a ticker keeping track of my points, damnit. And I think badges are a lame way of trying to spice it up a little bit when all they're really doing is collecting data on where people go. To me, that in itself is enough for me to be onboard. It's a relatively easy system to keep track of where I'm going and when and it's valuable data that could be used to help businesses improve.
I think the reason I love it so much is because it is mathematics applied directly to my life. Taking things, actions, habits from the real world and describing them using math. I would jump on right away if there was some sort of way to track everything I did day to day. How much/often I eat, sleep, walk, drive, etc.
Of course then we get in to the whole big brother thing. But there's ways to make users anonymous. And each user could have a login or whatever and be able to easily make charts and graphs of their personal data, but they wouldn't have access to any other individual's data, just the population data. How cool would it be to be able to look at the amount of time you spend at your computer, reading a book, or at work per day and compare yourself to the population?
Maybe I'm the only person here who thinks statistics is really cool. I can't think of a better way to describe someone than by looking directly at their actions.
Mark
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Active Discussion
Jeff Micklos • March 22nd 2010 • Reply
This is why I am so surprised that you don't use Digg's recommendation engine. It is totally right up your alley, as it pulls in upcoming stories that are similar to ones you have dugg and similar to ones that authors of stories that you have dugg have dugg.
I have no interest in going back and fixing that sentence.
As for that error, it looks like a file had been included twice, oops. Thanks though, I will get on that.
Also, there is a lot of great jobs for businesses and start-ups alike for data analysis. Here is just one, for instance.
Any job that lists 'an interest in discrete mathematics' as a qualification is right up your alley. haha
Mark • March 22nd 2010 • Reply
The only reason I don't use digg's recommendation engine is that it's just too much work on my part. I might look at it every once in a while when I'm really bored, but for the most part I don't want to spend the time going through all the crap and duplicates.
Annie Szafranski • March 23rd 2010 • Reply
How are your points coming along for foursquare? Foursquare seems like a great motivation to go out and try new places, get more points, even if they don't mean anything.
Totally agree with you on last.fm statistics though, I can't stop looking at them. It's weird how we're are neighbors on your account, but on mine, we aren't.