The State Of Our Open Threads: After Indiana

Submitted by LSAClassOf2000 on

First and foremost, despite some interesting moments, let me say that the MGoBlog community cut its production of cursing by about 84% over last week. In other words, we only managed 164 incidents along the tracked metrics, down from 1,023 in the week previous. We showed relative restraint throughout most of the Indiana game. 

The overall summary now looks like this:

  TOTAL AVERAGE STD. DEV. %  OF TOTAL
"fuck" 1099 157.00 175.51 51.86%
"shit" 261 37.29 22.44 12.32%
"damn" 247 35.29 52.25 11.66%
"fire" 79 11.29 12.57 3.73%
"suck" 289 41.29 37.98 13.64%
"ass" 144 20.57 27.81 6.80%
"put in Morris" 70 10.00 13.55 3.30%

We still rely heavily on "fuck", and indeed, 57% of the swearing along the tracked words can be explained with that word. There was a relatively even split between the interjection "fuck" and the adjective usage of the word. Those clearly dominated the Indiana game, and I am still working on tracking backwards and taking a look at previous games.

Even better, the Indiana game produced only one reference to Shane Morris coming in, and it was merely because of Gardner being slow to get up on one play. No actual calls for Morris to come in out of blogger preference came up. 

Here is the updated chart:

 photo Week7Bar_zpsd4491d54.png

Here is a chart of the normalized values for the same metric. It definitely puts the Penn State game in perspective when it comes to the blog's collective passion for Michigan football. Granted, this is not exactly a scientific assessment of the board's mood.

 photo Week7Normalized_zpse040af85.png

So, as you'll note, the z-values for Penn State were basically off the charts when compared to other games, including the nailbiters against Akron and UConn. It seems to me that one conclusion you can draw at this point is that aside from one game, our relative feelings about the season have not been all that vitriolic in comparison or even terribly negative. Others may disagree, of course. 

KC Wolve

October 20th, 2013 at 9:21 AM ^

This is just great and I appreciate the work you put in to this post every week. I can understand about 9 words of it, but it is great.



Go Blue

LSAClassOf2000

October 20th, 2013 at 9:37 AM ^

This is strictly in the open thread for the game. Blyve allows access to the right information to attempt this for the liveblog, but I'd have to pay for the premium account to get the analytics for it. This is a budget analysis, in other words. 

Red is Blue

October 20th, 2013 at 9:41 AM ^

How are variants of the words counted?  If some says "a$$" does that count.  As an aside, I don't get why people do that.  I you feel compelled to swear, then why not let fly?  Everyone knows your intent if you say "a$$", so what is the point?

mGrowOld

October 20th, 2013 at 9:45 AM ^

So in a nutshell the charts tell us the following:

1. When we lose we swear more.

2. When we win we swear less.

3. When Gardner has Michigan-school record setting performance fewer fans want to see him replaced.

Got it.  Um.....not sure how much time you're putting into this analysis but I'm pretty sure I could've predicted the outcome here in advance.

Seriously though - you guys should do a "win a T-shirt" thing for predicting these in advance instead of the final score.  That would be funny.

 

mGrowOld

October 20th, 2013 at 10:02 AM ^

Ok that's good.  Cause you're obviously a really smart guy and if you the time to spend pouring the posts to accumulate the data was as long as I thought it might be I was going to see if you'd be willing to do some "pro-bono" statistical analysis for my firm on the side.  You're obviously very good at it and we need the help!

All kidding aside.  Thanks for all your hard work on the board.  Might go unappreciated - doesn't go unnoticed.

falco_alba15

October 20th, 2013 at 9:56 AM ^

So when we lose, we swear more and when we win, we swear less.



I wonder if there is a correlation of swearing in regards to big games vs small games. I.e., the Notre Dame game vs the Akron game. Or perhaps, rivalry games. Care to analyze MSU and OSU based on outcome?

DonAZ

October 20th, 2013 at 10:39 AM ^

"There was a relatively even split between the interjection "fuck" and the adjective usage of the word."

As I was reading your OP I was thinking about this ... then you answered my unasked question!  Brilliant!  No, not merely briliant ... fuck, it's fucking awesome!

Wisconsin Wolverine

October 20th, 2013 at 10:41 AM ^

Hey LSAClassOf2000 - it looks like you normalized by standard deviations.  Would you consider an additional normalization to account for the different sizes of each game thread?  I don't know if our game threads pick up steam as the season progresses, but if that's the case, we could have had a larger sheer volume of comments in the PSU thread (compared to say, Notre Dame), which could inflate the counts of shits and fucks a little bit.  Maybe a proportional measure that tells us what percent of the thread's comments were sucks and asses might give a truer reflection of "mood?"



I don't know why I'm thinking about this.



¯\_(ツ)_/¯

LSAClassOf2000

October 20th, 2013 at 11:09 AM ^

That's actually part of the end-of-season checklist for this analysis. I keep the comment totals, and I plan to take it a step further and normalize these for thread size and a few other factors as well. Perhaps not the best way to it, but I was hoping to save the diary version of this for the season's end. That's part of it though.

allintime23

October 20th, 2013 at 11:22 AM ^

I never swear on here, very rarely and since these break downs came out I've found myself swearing more. I apologize. Also can you do a breakdown and maybe analyze if more swearing has occurred since you started monitoring it?

MGoManBall

October 20th, 2013 at 12:14 PM ^

I wonder if there is any correlation between the time the game is played and the amount of swearing. Later games=more time to consume delicious alcohol=less constraint on the open thread?