In the collectable card world there's a thing called a "superfractor". Besides having a cool reflective coating, these cards are rare because only one of each is produced. This scarcity creates a high value. Recently a sports card memorabilia dealer offered $250,000 for any who found the superfractor autograph card of Druw Jones, a up-and-coming … Continue reading An Easy Choice

The University of California publishes a trove of data regarding applications by high school seniors. For each high school in the state (public and private), it lists the number of applications to each UC campus (and to the UC system as a whole). The data also include the admission rate (how many applications were accepted … Continue reading Enrollment Rate at UC

Let's talk about education. The US Census' American Community Survey (ACS) provides lots of data about education attainment. The most detailed survey categorizes seven levels of education:         Less than 9th grade         9th to 12th grade, no diploma         High school graduate (includes equivalency)         Some college, no degree         Associate's degree         Bachelor's degree         Graduate or professional degree I've … Continue reading A First Look at Education

An interesting story came out of this past weekend of NFL games. In the second quarter of the Chargers-Jaguars game, with the Chargers winning 27-0, a gambler placed a live bet on the Chargers to win. Since the Chargers were pretty much a sure thing at that point, the moneyline he got (in real time, … Continue reading Shoo-In of the Week

Soccer's World Cup tournament starts in less than two weeks. Thirty-two national teams will vie for the title; some having a realistic chance of winning, while others are just happy to be there. As with any sporting event, there is gambling involved. Gambling involves odds, and odds involve numbers, so here we are. The favorite … Continue reading World Cup Odds

This week the Washington Post published an article about restaurants across the US, which uses a dataset (and interactive map) gleaned from marketing data. The dataset contains the location and type of over 700,000 restaurants. There are lots of ways to slice this data, but I'll start with cuisine popularity by state. Here is the … Continue reading What’s for Dinner?

A report released today by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimates that there are 200 quadrillion ants on earth. That's 20,000,000,000,000,000. A number that big, it's kind of hard to get your head around. Here's some help. There are around 7.8 billion humans on earth. That works out to more than 2.5 … Continue reading I’m Still Searching for the Ants’ Invasion

In a given location, the daily high temperature can fluctuate significantly. On the whole it's colder in winter and warmer in summer (of course), but in a single year, there's lots of variation day-to-day. For example, here are Chicago's temperatures in 2021, from January through December: Warmer in summer, colder in winter, but there are … Continue reading 102 Years of Temperatures

My friend Paul, who lives in Kalispell, Montana, introduced me to the concept of a "tall thermometer". This represents the difference between the high and low temperature on a given day. So if the overnight low is 50, and the high that day is 70, your thermometer is 20 degrees 'tall'. What happens when you … Continue reading How Tall is Your Thermometer?