The 5 W's (and also 1 H)!!!

If there is one thing I love, it is chocolate chip pancakes. If there are 7 things I love, they would be chocolate chip pancakes and the words "Who", "What", "When", "Where", "Why", and "How". You might be asking me "what" do these words mean? Or "why
" are you so annoying? Or even "how" are you allowed to have a blog? Come with me, and I'll take you on a journey into the world of these magical words and how they give us glorious, glorious context.

"Who" represents the cases of the data, the people or things that are having data recorded on them. An example would be if you surveyed all of Arkham Asylum on their least favorite Bat theme superhero, the villains in Arkham would be the "who".
"What" represents what the data is about. Referencing the previous example, the what would be the bat themed superhero. This would be considered categorical because it is a quality, not something measured or counted. There is also quantitative, which is counted or measured values.
"When" is the time the data was collected, such as today, last night, or tomorrow with a time machine.
"Where" is the location of collection, this could be outside a store, at the park, a prison, or even someone else's house!
"Why" represents the reason for collection. A reason why could be for fun, but usually there are better ones. For example if you were researching donkeys and collected data on donkey hair, the why would be to advance your research.
"How" sucks because it isn't a W.. Ok not really. How is simply... How the data was collected. This could be a survey or an experiment or any number of things!

And that's the story. Now you know.

Stats and Such

Once upon a time there was a magical class called Statistics. All math is magical of course, but Stats is a type of mathemagic that can be applied to everyday life (which can't be claimed by many areas of math for the average person). This makes Stats interesting on its own, however to add to it we also do cool activities to learn. There's nothing that can help someone learn statistics quite like being stranded in Northern Canada's sub -30 degree temperatures. If you didn't get the message, Stats is a pretty interesting and fun class so far. If I had to rate it I'd give it a 6/7 because nobody is perfect (Batman comes close). If you're wondering why I rated out of 7, then that's a story for another day.

PS: Stats can even relate to the foods you eat! I like to eat bunny shaped crackers (real bunnies not so much...).

The Dork Knight Rises

The first days of school have been filled love, war, fear, and most of all statistics. Well, maybe not love, war, or fear. We have done an activity over the past few days, one of life and death. On a trip to the North Pole to meet Santa Claus, our plane crashed leaving us stranded on what can only be described as the worst place on Earth: Canada. We now must salvage the remaining supplies and rank them in order of importance to survive.

My group, for better or for worse, was thrust into this situation. Would we survive? Based on an expert opinion, it is possible. We had an absolute value difference of 0 on the lighter and steel wool (items ranked 1 and 2 respectively). We also only had relatively small differences across the board. On average, our absolute value difference was 2.45. I would say that is pretty good for our survival chances.

Independent of my group, my results were not amazing. I once again achieved zero difference on the lighter (because I'm number 1). Past that my difference ranged from 2-5 save for the Crisco shortening with an absolute value difference of 7. The average of my absolute value differences was 3.36, which is okay but not great. Thankfully I am the grizzly hero of Gotham City, and should survive off my grit and instincts. Or maybe not, so it is good that this is only a theoretical situation. I don't like the cold.

Pictured:

Cole Hutzel's face if he were to be in Canada

Jack Howard, survival expert, doing math