h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I remember reading somewhere that blockbusters were those biggish books that James Clavell ("Shogun") and Colleen McCullough ("Caesar") used to specialise in.

>> ...need some usage example first please...<<

Well first let me say that I see staticulation and the resulting staticulates as akin to factoids. Factoids are a recent development created by the internet's ability to inform us of random and not necessarily important information.

A factoid might be: Paul MacCartney is left handed.
While this is a true fact it could be argued that it is not necessary to know it before enjoying the Beatles.

To staticulate on the number of rock and roll bassists who are also lefthanded would require considerable data input.

Oops times up...
peace
~jwf~

*comes the dawn, a new day, a fresh 1 hour session at the library*

Ahem... now where was I?

Oh yes, staticulation is the calculation of statistical data.
The example of left handed bass players may not have been the best but it will have to do now.

So, a survey of all bass players could determine what percentile of them are left handed and we could then compare (staticulate) that to the percentile of left handedness in the general population. No doubt the percentage will differ from the general population for it is always thus that any sample will be (by the acts of observation and classification) a bit out of skew with 'norms' established by a survey of the general populace.

In that simple example we have only examined three variables - left handedness, bass player or non-bass-player.

If we expand the number of variables to include factors such as race, age, gender, number of previous bands played in, financial success, number of ex-wives, country of origin, religious affiliation, political association, cars owned, favourite colour, length of penis, IQ, drug usage, etc., etc., it would be possible to staticulate (verb) a staticulate (noun) for every black bass player in Georgia regarding his (or her) likelihood of being a Christian.

OR perhaps we want to know how many geriatric female left handed bass players in Iceland are likely to park their Rolls Royces outside a synagogue. Again, none of this really matters to anyone but a staticulator. And security guards.


~jwf~

'Out of skew'. On *this* thread?

But yes, a fair defence. Your peers are no doubt deliberationing.

Trying frantically to think of another example, more like

I confess my current fascination with statistical analysis comes from reading 'Evolution For Everyone' a new book by David Sloan Wilson (son of the guy who wrote 'The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit' and 'A Summer Place' but no relation to E.O.Wilson the evolutionary revolutionary.

DSWilson is a mathematician turned evolutionist who has developed all sorts of probability theories from several long histories of data collection that, when properly mixed and matched, can prove just about anything 'scientifically' if you ignore the fact that most sampled groups are college students, inmates or serve in the armed forces.

Anyway, it just seemed reasonable that a word similar to 'factoid' would emerge from the brave new whirled of statistics and I was just trying to be pre-adaptive in my survival skills.


~jwf~

Fair enough. It's a pretty good word anyway.

How very perceptatious of you

I'm frantically clearing physically and mentally in preparation for the arrival of my sea freight. Somehow I managed to drop this thread. Freudian slip? Do we use other philosohers' names as adjectives?
Wellington seems to have stopped being an adjective and become a noun. Was Cardigan ever an adjective?
What would you like to be named after you? I think I'd rather a philosophy than a boring item of clothing.

Personally, I'd like a bookcase named after me. IKEA do a range called Billy, which is very good but the shelves will bow if you weigh them down with a load of large hardbacks. Any bookcase named after me would probably be very expensive because the shelves would have to be made not to bow under any load, no matter how heavy.

Surely it would have to have shelves that bowed under the weight of books so that it looked cheerful...

@ turvy

...but seriously, I'd like something astronomical named after me. Think Schwarzschild radius, Chandrasekhar limit, Wolf-Rayet star, Jeans instability and Bok globule to name but a few.

t.

Isn't "Jeans instability" what you get when you try to squeeze into a pair that's too small?

- touché

Help me out. What was the name of the guy who came up with the (disproved) formula for working out the orbital distances of the planets on a sequence?

Wasn't it Kepler?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_planetary_motion

t.

It was Bode.

A354412

It wasn't disproved, by the way. It matches the 8 planets and the asteroid belt very neatly.