quiz-a-thon update
this'll help me decide when to start collecting social security, assuming social security stays solvent long enough. a female acquaintance received a time of death estimate of 79 from the same quiz. i'd like to see some more results, for comparison purposes--not that i attach much significance to this result; for instance, it doesn't take into account a nutritional supplement i'm taking that's proven to prolong life in rats.
i sent email to the test makers suggesting 2 enhancements: a median predicted age for each gender, and a correlation computation for fatal test & nerd test scores.
for anyone not math or social science savvy, correlation is a number between -1.0 and 1.0, with -1.0 and 1.0 being perfect negative and positive correlation, respectively, and 0 being no correlation. 0 correlation does not mean that 2 things never happen at the same time, which is perfect negative correlation; rather, it means 2 things happen together 1/2 the time. to conclude with a familiar example, heavy smoking and lung cancer have high correlation, say 0.7 or 0.8, but it couldn't be 1.0, not only because it doesn't always cause cancer, but because a heavy smoker could die from other causes, not just disease, but also accidents, foul play, suicide, and so on, before developing cancer.
incidentally, i found an interesting discussion of the smoking/cancer correlation here:
http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/Editorials/Vol-1/e1-4.htm
the correlation might be lower than i thought; on the other hand, this article overstates things the other way, because a smoker who dies in a car accident at a young age doesn't prove that smoking doesn't cause cancer, yet the statistics he uses includes such people among the ranks of smokers that don't develop cancer.
posted by yitwail at 1:05 PM
5 Comments:
Shucks, Massermahnd, all that mayuth iz too much fer Feisty Granny (ah thank mah nerd score'd drop off the bottom of the chart, if ah could read wayull enuff ta even take the test. They had sum funny-lookin' fellaz in thar: looked lahk Baythoven, and ahm thankin, whah would they inclood him in a nerd test?)! But ah do know that stuhtistix ain't everthang, and besahds, maybe yer Creatr wants ewe ta live till yer 95 or sumpin! :)
Happy Living!
FG
PS: What the blayziz iz you tekkin supplimints fer that wuz tried on ***RAYUTS***?!?!?! Ewe iz far more valyoobull than no old rat, plus, as you know with yer 56 nerd score, rayuts is a totally differnt DNA 'n hyoomunz. (Ah got that fusshand frum the Perfessr. Hain't got no idee whut in tarnation DNA iz. "Death-Nerd avrij"?) This supplimint issue remahnds me of sumpin ah once heard: kin ewe beLEEEEVE they use beaver yoorin ta flavor foods (er wuz it skunk yoorin? On 3rd thought, it mighta been from coons)? Made me wanna go right over 'n chuck the TV dinnerz that wuz in the freezer there where I wuz stayin. Thin agin, they make estrojin outta horse-pee...
Ah reckon you didn't reckon on gittin' this kahnd of discussion atchyer blog, eh? Sorry, whudyoo expeck from a cud-chewin' granny from the boonies? ;)
Careful with them supplimints, or ayuls, you might not even see 77! :0
I say, old chap, how do you suppose that Feisty Granny can type (albeit with cavitied spelling, to be sure) when she can't read? Puzzling, puzzling...My nerd score of 150 fails me in the resolution of this conundrum. But then again, Feisty Granny, with all her mysterious incongruities, defies any and all analysis; she is a unique phenomenon in the universe...akin, perhaps, to the type of comet that streaks across the heavens only once (mercifully, I might add) in a millenium...
Cogitating,
The (in)Famous "Perfessr"
Now wait jiss a minit! Ah hurd that comment, 'n ah rezimblz it! Prfessr, allejidlee, yer mah FRIN! What're ewe doin,' stabbin me in the back? And besahds, this here blowg ain't fer cuttin' down folk; it's fer discussin jinyoowine ishooz.
Az fer mah tahpin abiliteez: ah ***DO*** know mah falfabet; ah jis sound out the wurds, then peck aroun on the keebord till ah find the right ledder. Thassa whole lod eezyer 'n tryin ta make hedz r taylz outta all that fancydoodle spellin' that's suppoz ta be so keereck! Whoevr HURRRD o spellin' like this: mete, meat, meet!!!! Then thar's "cede" 'n "seed," yetcha kain't say "seed" as in "ah nevr seed a more stuck-up prfessr!!!!"
HRUMPH!
fg raises an astute question about the validity of extrapolating results from rats to humans. ideally, something proven to work in humans is preferable to something only known to work for rats. in my case, however, if i waited for this to happen, i might be too old for the supplement to make much of a difference. now some people *do* resemble rats, but yitwail is not among their ranks, i hope, so we will all have to wait and see how this pans out.
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