Keeping track of time is never easy without an accurate clock and so people have come up with a number of different folk methods to keep themselves on pace. One of the most common techniques is to introduce a multi-syllable word as you count seconds so that you don’t count too fast. The …

Experian-Simmons released some survey data in December that looked at the relative popularity of major television shows for three different political groups: liberal Democrats; conservative Republicans; and middle-of-the-road voters. Each show was given an index based on the concentration of specific voters and this information was used to create lists of …

This little exercise came about after I read an article on the old Northwest Territory in the U.S., which basically consisted of all the land west of Pennsylvania, northwest of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River. As the country expanded westward, this geographic area gradually became known as the “Midwest” (or the East …

A few weeks ago, Samuel Arbesman wrote an article in Wired touching on the mathematical properties inherent in LEGO structures. In it, he discussed the results of a 10-year old study of natural and human-made networks that described how the number of distinct components in a network increased with the overall size of …

Now that we can safely say that Brett Favre has retired (notwithstanding rumors to the contrary), I thought it was time to pull out some data on the indecisive quarterback’s career touchdown passes. Stats on passes say a lot about the relationship between a quarterback and his receivers so I wanted …

The Wall Street Journal recently published a table of income and unemployment data  that presented pay and employment rates for various college majors. The original study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce contained enough additional details that I thought it might be worth trying to incorporate the information …