An Introduction to This Blog

Everyday, all of us think of questions we want the answers to. From serious policy considerations, to trivial pop culture curiosities, from comparing sports teams to dissecting demographics, plenty of thought and energy are expended seeking answers to these questions.

In my work as a engineer in the defense and automotive industries, I’ve had a variety of questions that need answers. How the best way to develop a project? What might be the cause of a defect in a product? Is there an inefficiency in a manufacturing process? How can it be fixed?

And, in answer these questions, I have been also been required to “Speak With Data.” Tell the answer I have found using data that can be seen plainly, and speak for themselves. I have always asked myself what would happen if I applied that philosophy to more of society’s questions. So that is what this blog is. Or, an attempt at. Using data to create a voice to answer the questions we all have, in topics from major policy to history to sports to pop culture. So, hopefully this goes well. And I remember to actually post things.

Comments

Brohm and Calhoun: Purdue's New Top Two Choices Analyzed

Earlier in the silly season coaching search, the top two coaching candidates floated by Purdue's fan base were Western Michigan's P.J. Fleck and former LSU head coach Les Miles. In recent days, it has appeared neither may end up in West Lafayette. Yesterday, news-ish broke-ish that a deal was done-ish with Purdue and current Western Kentucky head coach Jeff Brohm. Western Kentucky was revealed to be beginning its own coach search, while coach without an agent Jeff Brohm stated no deal existed and he would not think about future plans until after the C-USA championship game today. Another name floated was current Air Force Academy head coach Troy Calhoun. Which are two odd choices when considered together; at Air Force Calhoun ran a run-heavy option offense (although he has experience coaching quarterbacks in the NFL under Gary Kubiak) and Brohm's offense at WKU was a pass-oriented spread offense. Using the same methods I used to look at Purdue's last few coaches , I

UConn Woman's Basketball Is Astronomically Dominant

Tonight, the bracket for the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament was revealed; unsurprisingly, the undefeated NCAA basketball 107-win-streak-holding UConn team was the number 1 overall seed. 107 wins dwarfs the previous record, the UCLA Men's 88 wins under (my fellow Boilermaker) John Wooden between January of 1971 and January of 1974 (1). The probability of a team to have 107 straight wins, given a naive assumption of a 50% chance of winning, is 6.1630E-31% (2). Ignoring the rounding resulting from using 64 bit floating point arithmetic, that is roughly a 1-in-162,259,276,829,213,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance. For comparison, the diameter of the Universe is "only" 5.5E23 miles (3), and the odds of winning the Powerball Jackpot is 1-in- 292,201,338 (or 0.0000003422% probability) (4). One would have to win the Powerball 3.8 times to equal the probability of a NCAA basketball team having a streak like UConn has. Of course, UConn is no average team who woul

2017 Weekly Boiler Stat Summaries: Week 8, v. Rutgers

So, my dad got married last Saturday. Purdue lost. I got married on October 1, 2016. Purdue lost. My sister got married on September 6, 2015. Purdue lost. Purdue football is 0-3 on my family's weddings. I'm sorry folks. It's all my fault. OK, superstition didn't sink the Boilers. No - the Boilers, despite putting up good performances in some areas of the game, did so awful elsewhere that they lost a perfectly winnable game. Of Penalties And Passing The two biggest issues that held the Boilermakers back were struggles with penalties and throwing the ball. On the day, Purdue had 9 penalties for 55 yards - and 6 of those penalties were on the offense. Compared to a season average of 6.14 penalties a game for 54.57 yards, this wasn't a good day for Boilermaker discipline [1,2,3]. It also pushed the Boilermaker offense back repeatedly. In a typical game, the number of penalties Purdue had would be bad (they rank 64th in the nation in penalty yards per game) but n

Speak With Data

Search This Blog