Category Archives:

Finds

Percentage calculation problems or The shrunken bodies

2008-07-21

Statista is always worth a look if you’re no statistics hater (and speak German). Today’s stats of the day about the question “How tall are you?” (» filtered by sex), and 22358 adult Germans had been asked.

The unfiltered overview shows 2.9% for the really big ones (to which I also belong, thanks to my 190 cm), rounded on top of the bars for clarity:

Statista Körpergröße 1
(190 cm and taller: 2.9%)

You can also enter a number to compare to – and the result is:

Statista Körpergröße 2
Your reply: 190.0 cm
98.0% are smaller than 190 cm.
2.0% are like you taller than 190 cm.

Oops, did 0.9% of the people suddenly shrink? Or how else could this result be explained then? And why “are like you taller than 190 cm”?

If I enter 189 cm for testing purposes, I get: “96.8% are smaller than you. 3.2% are taller than you.” So nobody is 189 cm tall? Are 0.3% 189 cm tall and 2.9% taller, or 1.2% 189 cm and 2.0% taller? For 154 cm, the numbers “2.2%/97.8%” are reported, basically matching the bar graph, but here, too, with the words “smaller” and “taller” without mentioning the size of exactly 154 cm.

Well, apparently there’s room for improvement… but the title still says “BETA”. Let’s see if the error report that I sent them (they got a special link for that) will have any effect.
:bigsmile:

Videos of the Week (2008/29)

2008-07-20

Outsourcings from today’s “Links of the Week”, if you will – I don’t plan a regular category like this.

First, we got a cute letter opener:

(via Sebastian Schuster via Blogmachine)

Then there’s just about the coolest thing that Phil Plait has ever seen, as he says: The transit of the Moon in front of the Earth, taken by the EPOXI probe (you get other video formats there, too) from a distance of 50 million kilometers (31 million miles):

Lottery spam from the future

2008-07-07

It should be well-known that e-mail addresses can’t win lotteries – especially without actually participating in them – and such “win notifications” only are interested in address and bank data and possibly advance-fee fraud.

Also known should be that automatic translations can produce funny results.1

But that such mails come from the future – wow!

This one specimen arrived on July 7 at 17:11 (that’s 5:11 pm), but would be will sent on July 8 at 11:09 UTC in order to will informed have me on July 9 about the “drawing” from July 8 had. Or something to that extent. It’s so difficult with these tenses…

(The mail is also funny for its “German”, but there’s not much point in showing it here in the English part of my blog…)

  1. especially if they need two steps, e.g. Russian → English → German [↩]

The best time for an ad campaign

2008-07-02

Ball! Let’s imaging the following, of course completely hypothetical scenario in the advertising department of a German bank:

It is early June. One employee says: “Ey, boss, the European football championships are beginning soon, many people want a new, large 16:9 TV, but not everybody can afford one right away – wouldn’t that be a good time to advertise our credit offers?”

The boss (looking up from the championship schedule he was studying intensely): “Hmmm… yes, might be good. Best would be a bulk mailing, nationwide. You take care of that, will you? I’m currently busy.”

“Yeah, sure, boss, I will! Oh, by the way, I’ll take 3 weeks holiday – championship, you understand? Is that okay?”

Boss (was already looking at the championship schedule again): “…huh? Yes, sure, alright.“

Fast-forward until early July, i.e. the present (and the reality), the Euro 2008 ended three days ago. What’s in the mailbox? A pull-out cardboard bulk mail saying “16:9 for our boys?” with two cheering German fans on the front, pull out left → “No”, right → “problem!” and a third fan. Back:

“Public viewing during the European championship now also at home – with your new wide flat TV and the […] credit. By the way: You receive up tp 18,750 PAYBACK points on top!”

(“Payback” is a data-collecting discount point system, and “public viewing” is actually the “officially made-up” term used in Germany for a public (outdoor) screening.)

Well, that’s perfect timing, isn’t it?
:loll:

Without costs more than without…

2008-06-30

Mostly out of curiosity, I was just browsing through some notebook configurations at Dell (their German site, that is) and encountered these great options for a security solution which, however, somehow could be improved:

without or without

(1) First line: “without security/antivirus [included]”, without language mentioned, so probably English; second line: “without security/antivirus – German [plus 0.01€]” – So, missing security in German costs 1 cent, and those who don’t speak English have to pay! Or vice versa. Somewhat confusing. ;)

(2) But don’t give up hope, a few lines below you get the same, “without security/antivirus – German [plus 0.00€]”, for free! just 0.00€.
:loll: