statistics
Latest
Finally, someone used Pareto’s economic theories to find the best Mario Kart 8 racer
Who hasn’t spent sleepless nights pondering what would happen if we applied the theories of Vilfredo Pareto, the early 20th-century Italian economist, to Mario, the Mushroom Kingdom’s Italian high-jump champion and part-time elephant cosplayer? Data scientist Antoine Mayerowitz, PhD, tackled that age-old question.
Coin flips don’t appear to have 50/50 odds after all
A large team of researchers concluded that, when caught in the air, coin flips are 50.8% likely to land on the same side that started facing upwards.
Outlier adds Astronomy and Statistics classes to its online university
Fancy learning astronomy or statistics from star academics with real college credit?
UK soccer stars may sue betting companies over player data profits
Can a team of UK-based footballers get money for their athletic data?
Uber's first safety review contains thousands of sexual assault reports
Over the last few years Uber -- among other ridesharing services -- has been accused of failing to respond adequately to reports of sexual assault and other crimes linked to those on its platform. Now the company has released its first safety report (PDF), along with a number of notes about steps it's taking to make things safer for passengers and drivers. The nearly 6,000 reports of sexual abuse Uber said it has received over 2017 and 2018, or the 19 fatal physical assaults jump out of the pages of the lengthy report. While Uber correctly notes that even these are from just a fraction of a percent of the 2.3 billion trips taken during that period, each one is devastating for those involved. While the report, commissioned two years ago by current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, also accurately describes the problems as pervasive throughout society, it doesn't extend to an explanation of why methods for reporting and dealing with these issues is something that's happening after billions of trips, instead of before.
How to track everything your baby does (and why you should)
When did your baby last eat -- and how much? Has her diaper been changed recently? And did she nap enough today? Knowing the answers to all these questions is essential for every new mom and dad. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to be a data-conscious parent today, including gadgets, apps and some decidedly old-school methods. READ ON: How to track everything your baby does
Tools to help quantify your baby’s progress
The most straightforward way to keep track of your baby's data is the trusty spreadsheet. We recommend Google Sheets, since you can easily share it with your partner, and it has most of the features you'd want from a proper spreadsheet application. With the freedom of endless customizability comes complexity though. Now that there are plenty of baby-tracking apps out there, diving into spreadsheets is something we'd only recommend for serious stat-hounds. READ ON: Tools for tracking your child's progress
Pew: Twitter users are younger and more Democratic than most Americans
A recent report from the Pew Research Center says Twitter users are younger, more highly educated, have higher incomes and are more likely to identify as Democrats compared to the general public. They're also more likely to support immigration and see evidence of racial- and gender-based inequality in society. This might be surprising given how loud opposing views can appear on the platform.
Steam Spy returns with less accurate game stats
Earlier this month, Steam revamped its privacy settings to let users change how much of their game data can be publicly viewed. The company made player libraries, along with time played per title, hidden by default -- which ended up locking out game industry stats site Steam Spy. Unable to access the data it needed, the site essentially shut down...but only temporarily. Now, Steam Spy is back up, but with a different method that produces less accurate statistics.
Google wants to help developers make better websites
Developers already have access to a number of tools that let them see how real-world users experience their websites, but until now they weren't able to see how their website user experience compared to others. Enter the Chrome User Experience Report, a public dataset of key user experience metrics gleaned from Chrome users who have opted in to usage statistic reporting.
Facebook is slowly becoming less white and less male
Facebook's latest diversity stats are in, and it seems that while the process is glacially-slow, the company is becoming less white and less male. In the last year, the number of women in tech has risen from 17% to 19%, with women accounting for 27% of all new graduate hires in engineering and 21% of all new technical hires. The number of Hispanics at the company has increased from 4% to 5%, while the number of black people has risen from 2% to 3%. These figures don't represent a particularly impressive move forward from last year, but they are in many cases much better than they were in 2014. According to a blog post by the company, much of this "success" can be attributed to a range of diversity-focused programs, designed to eradicate the White Boys' Club mentality that has long-plagued Facebook's boardrooms.
Earthquake science explains why election polls were so wrong
Polls are not predictors. This is the message that American University history professor Allan Lichtman has been screaming at the world since 1981: It's not that the polling system itself is broken -- instead, polls behave exactly as they're designed. The problem is they aren't designed to predict the outcome of elections. "Polls are snapshots," Lichtman says. "They are not predictors. They are abused and misused as predictors because they're so easy. If you're a journalist, you don't even have to get out of bed in the morning to write a story about the polls and tell where the so-called 'horse race' stands." Lichtman has accurately predicted the winner of the nine US presidential elections since 1984, relying on his 13-point Keys to the White House model. He even got it right this year, when most pundits and polls were wildly, disastrously incorrect. But Lichtman didn't just get it right; he predicted in September that Donald Trump would win the presidency, more than a month before Election Day. That was also before a swathe of potentially game-changing October surprises rocked the news cycle, including a tape of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women and FBI director James Comey reigniting conspiracies about Hillary Clinton's use of a private server as Secretary of State.
Comcast set-top boxes now offer detailed stats for more sports
Did you like the abundance of stats while watching the Rio Olympics on Comcast? If so, you're in for a treat from now on. Comcast is rolling out those same on-screen stats for every sport its X1 set-top box app covers. If you want to see where a basketball team has taken most of its shots, or want to know how well your favorite hockey player is doing, the info is just a short hop away. Finding that data should be easier, too.
Long Reddit threads will eventually mention Nazis or Hitler
It's logical that as any public discussion expands, either through the number of participants or contributions, there's a greater chance it will touch upon new, divergent topics. This idea is neatly wrapped up in Godwin's law, a concept created by Mike Godwin, which states that as any online debate grows longer, "the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." On Reddit, that's especially true -- in threads with more than 1,000 comments, the likelihood that "Nazis" or "Hitler" will be referenced at least once is more than 70 percent.
Researchers use criminal profiling to unmask Banksy
Researchers have turned to profiling techniques often used on criminals in an attempt to confirm the identity of London street artist Banksy. The team from Queen Mary University of London believes its geographic mapping technique, combined with statistical analysis, helps prove the artist is a man named Robin Gunningham. The theory that Gunningham and Banksy are one and the same was first put foward by the Daily Mail in 2008. According to the research paper, comparing the known homes or frequented places of Gunningham with art locations around London "support[s] his identification as Banksy."
Twitch streamers raised $17.4 million for charities in 2015
Twitch is huge. There's no getting around this fact: Video giant YouTube basically copied Twitch's gameplan last year, the site launched Twitch Creative and Twitch Plays sub-sections, it dominated the streaming eSports market, and debuted a successful convention that attracted more than 20,000 people. Twitch has grown so rapidly since its launch in 2011 that it's already jumped the shark at least once. Just in case anyone was still confused about the bright purple future of live streaming, today the company shared some internal statistics from 2015, including the fact that it helped streamers raise $17.4 million for more than 55 charities last year.
Periscope's live streaming video reaches nearly 2 million users daily
Now that Facebook is getting into streaming (soon for non-celebs too) and even Google/YouTube is taking notice, the folks at Twitter-owned Periscope are publishing some stats to let us know where the bar is for live video apps. In a blog post on Medium, the team says it has grown past 10 million registered accounts just four months after its launch. An accompanying graph shows its number of Daily Active Users has risen to nearly two million people, with a spike showing where it just about doubled in May with the launch of an app for Android. Rival app Meerkat beat it to the punch on Android, but we don't have similar stats on its growth yet. By their measure however, the important stat is "Time Watched", which Periscope reports has risen to over 40 years of video being watched every day. This includes "huge viewership" on the web, outside of its iOS/Android apps, which the daily users stat does not. in a video Q&A, Periscope CEO Kayvon Beykpour says that features coming soon include landscape video support and better tools for handling spam/abuse.
Young adults flock to Instagram, while more seniors sign up on Facebook
When we wrote about that survey, which found that working adults care more about email than social media, we said that might be why grandparents are some of the most active on Facebook. Well, according to this new study that's also from Pew Research center, we got it right: more than half (56 percent, to be exact) of internet users aged 65 and above have signed up on the social network. What's even more impressive is that percentage apparently comprises 31 percent of all seniors in the US. If you're looking to get in touch with your selfie-loving teenage cousin, though, you may want to hit up Instagram instead. 53 percent of young adults between the ages 18 and 29 prefer the photo-sharing social network, which probably explains all those cringe-inducing reactions to Instagram's recent spam account crackdown.
WoW and FFXIV see boosted playtime on Raptr; ArcheAge playtime 'cratered'
Another month, another Raptr report. Yesterday Raptr.com posted its most played PC games list for November, and MMOs did rather well. Unsurprisingly, World of Warcraft surged up the list to #2 thanks to the Warlords of Draenor expansion. "The MMO's monthly play time was up 71.3% versus October," Raptr's press release says. And though WoW "likely" drew from League of Legends' numbers, it couldn't quite usurp the MOBA's #1 seat. Among other MMOs, ArcheAge playtime "cratered by 39.97%," but World of Tanks and Final Fantasy XIV both saw rises in theirs. Guild Wars 2 rose in rank, Raptr says, but lost playtime in November vs. October. SWTOR fell two places since October. As always, Raptr roundups come with the caveat that they represent Raptr users on PC, not all gamers; some MMO studios are also known to boost their Raptr numbers with in-game incentives. But since some of these games refuse to release population data, you might call this the next best snapshot of popularity outside of touring the servers yourself.
Shroud of the Avatar preps for Steam launch
On November 24th, Shroud of the Avatar will be launching on Steam's Early Access service. Backers of the game should already have their Steam keys. Once the game is launched, the development team wants to keep the game's servers on at all times, leading to the current state of the game. In this round of testing, contrary to past tests, players can this time access the game servers according to the game's most recent development update. The newsletter also highlights the ominous Tower of the Shuttered Eye, a rather unpleasant place that will be added to the game with the next major patch scheduled for release on November 20th. There's also a post-mortem on the launch of the game's most recent test patch, which saw a big increase in numbers over previous events. Take a look at the full update for a clearer picture of how the game is doing and what's just around the corner.
