Take a standard deck of playing cards. Give it a good set of shuffles (six or seven should do). Congratulations! The order of your 52 cards has never been created before in human history. Of course, I can't guarantee that your deck's order is unique, but I can be pretty darn sure. The number of … Continue reading Do Something Unique Today

This one is part recollection, part historical sociology, with some number crunching at the end. When I was a kid, in my pre-teen years, I listened to KGB-AM radio in San Diego. It was a typical top-40 AM radio station (hey, I was 10 years old). Like other stations of this ilk, they had contests … Continue reading Cash Call Odds

Here's the last post regarding the year's worth of weather data at our house. Today I'll talk about sunshine. Specifically, UV index. The Tempest device reports the UV index each minute of the day. Here's the cumulative UV total for each day of the year (April 2023 - March 2024): The general shape of the … Continue reading Wrapping up Weather

Let's look at the rainfall that my personal weather station reported over the past 12 months (April 2023 - March 2024). For the year, we got 28.46 inches of rain. Here are the monthly totals: This clearly shows the rainy season in Santa Cruz: late Fall through Spring. But it doesn't always rain during those … Continue reading It’s Raining, it’s Pouring…

Today let's talk about wind. My Tempest weather station gathers three wind data points every minute: lull, average, and gust. That is: the lowest speed, the average speed, and the highest. From these we can get a picture of how the wind changes over the course of a day. Here's one way to visualize it. … Continue reading …To Know Which Way the Wind Blows

Last March, I purchased a personal weather station. This device sits in my backyard and captures all sorts of weather data - temperature, wind, rain, etc. - and reports it once a minute. Now that I've got 6 million points of data, what am I waiting for? I'll start with temperature. Santa Cruz has a … Continue reading A Year of Weather

After interacting with a business, I often get an online customer satisfaction survey. Sometimes I do them, sometimes I don't. Often, I'll be told ahead of time by the person providing the service to expect the survey. And sometimes this person will suggest that, if I liked the service, I should give the highest rating … Continue reading Survey says…

Welcome to Daylight Savings time. In the old days, you had to manually adjust all time-keeping devices to the new time. As clocks became more ubiquitous (in new devices like VCRs and microwave ovens, and added to existing items like stoves and cars), this became more of a chore. Then, the devices started getting smarter, … Continue reading Time to Make a Change

Today I'll cover the final three racial categories, starting with American Indian and Alaska Native. This category is different than the others: the other heritages represent people who immigrated to the US from other countries, whereas American Indians were already here when the other immigrants arrived. It's also different because of the system of tribal … Continue reading Heritage Enclaves, Part 5

This time I'll look at census respondents who specified Black when asked about their race and origin. There are two categories of responses here: those who listed "African American" as their origin, and those who indicated something more specific (a country, typically sub-Saharan Africa or the Caribbean). The former group makes up about 90% of … Continue reading Heritage Enclaves, Part 4