Via Junk Charts:

(Thanks to reader Josh R. for the tip.) The "plucky statisticians" at Urbanspoon decided to tackle the political hot potato: is Barack Obama an elitist? Scratch that -- what they actually did was to determine if Obama supporters were elitists (of course, Obama would then be, due to guilt by association.) Scratch that -- what they actually analyzed was if there tended to be more Starbucks per capita in those states in which Obama won Democratic primaries.

Hey, that Josh R. character sounds like a mighty fine bloke.

Mr. Urbanspoon, the statistics professor is here and he disapproves.  As discussed before (and here), plotting two series of data on the same chart and applying two different scales is a recipe for disaster.  Not reaching immediately for the scatter plot when one has two data series is another serious misstep.  (Indeed, Josh sent the link in with a note wondering why "people dislike scatter plots so much".)

Wow. I'm famous.

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[1] I have no idea what that plot is of other than being the first image returned from my home directory search for scatter*
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I tend not to speak up when I should. Especially when it comes to matters where I feel I lack the requisite expertise. I overcompensate by chiming in where I have an inkling that I know what I'm talking about. It seems that the wedding process is continually reminding me of the problems with this tactic. I'm not a graphic designer, but I feel like I know enough about Adobe Illustrator to know when our invites were incompetently composed. Come on, if you are going to pretend to draw a Banksia bush by using the vectorize tool with a photo you downloaded off the web, you better do it properly and fix up the artifacts. In the end I just gave up and just let them make it however they wanted. And it looked terrible, in my opinion, but hey it's only an invite - an immaterial part of the wedding.

For my suit, I want perfection. But I am by no means a tailor. I like the Duncan Quinn suits, and figured that they would take care of me. And maybe they will, I only just got back from my first fitting. However, I suspect that I may not actually wear the $5,000 suit on the big day. It is far easier to go through off the rack selections to find something that fits me the way I want than to be stuck with a piece of fabric that is constrained by the original cut.

You see, I have child-bearing hips. I can't help it, I just have wide and prominent hip bones. Whenever it comes up in conversation, usually constrained to clothes buying situations, but also the odd well lubricated party, I refer to my 'child-bearing hips.' Always good for a laugh. I definitely mentioned my concern at my initial meeting at Duncan Quinn. Perhaps not with the vociferousness concomitant with my level of concern.

"Make sure the back of the jacket doesn't flare out too much."
"Keep the pants low on my waist so that pockets don't flare."
"I like slim pants and sleeves, but my shoulders need to be broad -- I have child bearing hips, you see! tee hee hee."

I wore my Costume National off-the-rack suit in to the fitting today. The idea was to take a suit that I like, and ensure that the significantly more expensive 'bespoke' one would be better. It's not. On my way there I had my conversation all mapped out. When it came down to it, all I could manage was a moping mumle. The first thing that stood out to me was the shoulder breadth. It turns out that they can't let them out any farther as there is not enough fabric inside to allow it. I didn't mention the height of the pants - I was too concerned with the jacket.

Of course, I'm now sitting at home stewing over this. Not so much the cut of the suit, but more that I didn't kick up a bigger fuss. One day I'll learn.

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Every few weeks I clear out my Amazon shopping cart. It seems like every other day I find a book or a CD that I am interested in and pop it in the cart to buy later. Today is that day. I have about $300 in books on American economic history, four minimal (a.k.a highly repetitive) electronic music CDs and a Bollywood movie that I found on YouTube. My co-worker suggested that I check out half.com to see what I could find at a discount. I have no problems with saving money, but the thought of distributing my purchase history to another site irks me. However, I like the fact that Amazon knows who I am and I get just as much joy browsing my years of purchases as I do from looking at my bookshelves. I like reading comments on books that I have read. Seeing the same commenters on different products that I own. Amazon is by far my favourite social network.

That said, Amazon should really do more to embrace this. I was trying to follow up on some comments last night and Amazon frames everything inside an 'improve your recommendations' context rather than as a social activity. I noticed that both LinkedIn and Facebook recommend friends to me; "Do you know X?" And more often than not they are right, and it amazes me. I am not amazed when Amazon recommends stuff to me as they are quite transparent on that front. It would be amazing if Amazon embraced the social context and let me tackle my valuable metadata socially.

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