Friday, May 19, 2006

You know you've become a complete data/science geek when....

You find yourself yelling at your car stereo because the random selection on the cd player isn't really random. I mean, come on, if it keeps going to the same three songs, it's basically the equivalent of a die that only rolls 1s, 3s and 5s which is definitely not random, completely illegal in Nevada and most Indian Reservations and quite frankly, wonky. (And yes, that is a technical data related term.)

I understand a certain affinity for "Baba O'Riley" and am willing to accept that The Who may in fact have their very own gravitational field. But, this is Japanese engineering!!! Come on, guys!! I'm not willing to accept that your greatest wisdom was conveyed in "wax on, wax off."

Maybe we just need a bit more honesty in the labeling. Instead of randomizer, how about "car selected order"? That would be honest and definitely more accurate. Let's be honest with ourselves, there's no little random number generator inside my car spitting out numbers between 1 and 20. If there was, it would want to know if I wanted repeats allowed or not ~ and man, would that confuse the heck out of someone like my mother!!! Better yet, "driver relinquished control" of song order. That's basically what it is, until I start yelling and hitting the forward button because there's only so many times you can hear "Out here in the field!...." on you way to work.

Ah, geez, this is turning into the whole significance nightmare. If you've been there you know what I'm talking about. It's that need to ask, (whenever anyone tells you that something, anything, is significant), at what level? What's the confidence interval? And what was the power? The sample size?

And this is why geeks rarely have non-geek friends....

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