Thursday 14 July 2011

The joy of stats

This is in no way a sewing related post, but something I just had to share with all you lovely readers in blogland.

I've just watched the most AMAZING programme on BBCFour called "The joy of stats".  Some of it went completely over my head and some of it had my jaw on the floor.  As an example, if all the data available to us on the internet were in written form then there would be 90 piles of books stretching from the earth to the sun(!).  But here's the interesting stat for all us bloggers.

In California there is a place that analyses EVERY blog in the world and reads our emotions....  So if you write something along the lines of "today has been a good day, I feel very blessed" or "today has been a rubbish day and I feel tiered"  or "today I'm feeling very sick" the software picks up everything related to "feels like" or "feeling" or "feel".  Since all blogs are in the public domain they can analyse every blog and run their stats by age, sex, country, continent.  Isn't that fascinating?!  Apparently most of us are happy, most of the time.

You may be able to catch up with this programme on the BBCiplayer later today.

Did I ever mention I'm a number geek?!?!

Sewing posts coming soon I promise.  I FEEL as though my sewing mojo's still on holiday....

2 comments:

Karin said...

I love stats too! I took it as an undergrad and in grad school. Wish I could have got a job with a market data co, but ended up working in operations again after my MBA. Sigh.

Josephine said...

I'm terrible at stats, I really enjoyed studying the topic but I failed it twice at uni (although I put that down to the computer work more then the theory. Computers do my head in).