Friday, March 09, 2007

Ramblings from my desk...

One day along a lonely desert highway, a penguin noticed his air conditioning wasn't working as well as it should. Being a penguin, and appreciating cold, he decided to pull into a garage at the next town and asked the mechanic to look at the car.

The mechanic said he'd be 30 minutes making a diagnosis so the penguin waited across the road at the local diner. When he returned to the garage, the mechanic said to him," You've got some serious problems. Looks like you've blown a seal."

The penguin immediately wiped his beak, blushed slightly, and said," No, I was eating vanilla ice cream."

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The pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of pleasure are not the same things. Still, I'm willing to use my imagination and ignore the contradictions.

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My office chair has a little lever that allows you to raise its height. If you want to lower it, just bounce a bit or sit and wait patiently. I think it's a designed feature intended to maximize the value of the up lever.

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I'm extremely motivated to exercise, eat well, and keep fit. It's not so I can look better; it's so that I can keep abusing myself into old age!

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From an article at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17349066/

The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students’ NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.


Two-thirds are above average? Statements like that piss me off 117% more than is possible.

2 comments:

Minka said...

Morgan, it´s just numbers, you shoudln´t trust them ;)Read between the digits;)

I Dive At Night said...

Hoi Minka! I understoond what they meant. 2/3 is ~30% more than 1/2. The average score in 2006 was 30% higher than in 1982.

That's completely different from saying 2/3rds are above average.

I expect very few people to truly understand statistics and scientific results well. But the author writing a story on a piece of scientific research should be one of those people. (IMHO)

My final comment (117% more than is possible) was for those who enjoy their numbers. :-P