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choco_froshThe preschool version.
Once upon a time there was a man named Josh. And he collected some data. The data was on people who moved to Konstanz in the fifteenth century. (These are called immigrants, or Einwanderer auf Deutsch).
But look! Josh’s database is over one thousand entries long! And he has no real database software: Just Excel. Do you know what Excel is, buys and girls? No?
Well, you should probably be glad of that.
So Josh has to analyze all this data by hand. Including finding where all these people are from. Some of them are from far away, so Josh has to look up their hometowns on Mapquest. And some of them are from so far away, that the town scribe had no f’ing clue how to spell the town. Not that fifteenth century German had standardized spelling anyway.
And some of them are from places so obscure (and/or badly spelled) that Josh STILL has no clue where they were from. He puts them in a special category of their own, called “Unidentifiable.” (Can you spell unidentifiable, boys and girls?) There are 111 people in the Unidentifiable category, and Josh is amazed that it’s that small!
But finally Josh is done with his data analysis. Josh’s figures don’t agree, but that is ok, he will fix them later.
But what is this? Josh’s findings contradict what he thought they were going to be! So Josh writes several paragraphs trying to explain what the f’ is going on.
Then Josh starts looking at what people came to Konstanz to do. This is listed in the “Profession” or “Notes” column.
Look, boys and girls! When Josh tabulates his data by the “Notes” column, he finds out that a lot of them are in the “Knecht” category. This means that they were apprentices. Apprentices are young people who are learning a craft, or else very badly-paid employees. Yes Billy, just like Grad Students!
Anyway, there are 615 of them. That is more than half the immigrants! Oops! I guess Josh should have taken that into account when he started looking at his data. Oh well, I guess he has to go through it all again!
Oh dear, what has happened now? Josh is not working. Josh’s brain has fried from too many weeks of staring at Excel spreadsheets and Mapquest pages that say “Your search for "Nuknach" did not match any locations. Please revise your search,” and trying to make a map on a version of Photoshop that has to be opened in OS 9! He is watching Harold&Kumar clips on YouTube instead!
Once upon a time there was a man named Josh. And he collected some data. The data was on people who moved to Konstanz in the fifteenth century. (These are called immigrants, or Einwanderer auf Deutsch).
But look! Josh’s database is over one thousand entries long! And he has no real database software: Just Excel. Do you know what Excel is, buys and girls? No?
Well, you should probably be glad of that.
So Josh has to analyze all this data by hand. Including finding where all these people are from. Some of them are from far away, so Josh has to look up their hometowns on Mapquest. And some of them are from so far away, that the town scribe had no f’ing clue how to spell the town. Not that fifteenth century German had standardized spelling anyway.
And some of them are from places so obscure (and/or badly spelled) that Josh STILL has no clue where they were from. He puts them in a special category of their own, called “Unidentifiable.” (Can you spell unidentifiable, boys and girls?) There are 111 people in the Unidentifiable category, and Josh is amazed that it’s that small!
But finally Josh is done with his data analysis. Josh’s figures don’t agree, but that is ok, he will fix them later.
But what is this? Josh’s findings contradict what he thought they were going to be! So Josh writes several paragraphs trying to explain what the f’ is going on.
Then Josh starts looking at what people came to Konstanz to do. This is listed in the “Profession” or “Notes” column.
Look, boys and girls! When Josh tabulates his data by the “Notes” column, he finds out that a lot of them are in the “Knecht” category. This means that they were apprentices. Apprentices are young people who are learning a craft, or else very badly-paid employees. Yes Billy, just like Grad Students!
Anyway, there are 615 of them. That is more than half the immigrants! Oops! I guess Josh should have taken that into account when he started looking at his data. Oh well, I guess he has to go through it all again!
Oh dear, what has happened now? Josh is not working. Josh’s brain has fried from too many weeks of staring at Excel spreadsheets and Mapquest pages that say “Your search for "Nuknach" did not match any locations. Please revise your search,” and trying to make a map on a version of Photoshop that has to be opened in OS 9! He is watching Harold&Kumar clips on YouTube instead!
no subject
Date: 2007-02-05 06:36 am (UTC)I have a terrible urge to translate this into Dr. Seuss Latin . . .
Would Josh like to be distracted on Tuesday and possibly Wednesday, since there is still that lecture on Tuesday that the author of this comment is hoping to attend?
no subject
Date: 2007-02-05 01:07 pm (UTC)For everyone's information: yes, better statistical packages do exist; yes, I've heard of them. They are just much less free. And figuring out how to apply them to my rather ornery data set (I've tried) is almost as frustrating as this method, since I'd have to hand-enter a whole @$$-load more data for any given line so the program would have categories it could interpret.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-05 02:51 pm (UTC)The thing about the apprentices is interesting, though. Sounds like, you know, an actual thing to write about.
-g