The State Of Our Open Threads: After Indiana
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:
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.
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.
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
October 20th, 2013 at 4:31 PM ^
That's 8 more than me. I only understand "fuck"!
October 20th, 2013 at 9:28 AM ^
Excellent...best thread EVA!!! I actually read all the charts on this one.
October 20th, 2013 at 9:28 AM ^
I had typed my thoughts after our goal line fumble we'd be over the average for the week.
October 20th, 2013 at 9:32 AM ^
I'm assuming this doesn't include the liveblog?
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.
October 20th, 2013 at 12:46 PM ^
I wonder if mobile users are a fairly random sample when it comes to swearing preferences?
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?
October 20th, 2013 at 9:45 AM ^
I do include some of the major variants like that one, also things like "eff" and a few others, so really it is a close approximation of what would arguably be the true count if all were taken into consideration. Reasonably accurate all the same, I think, or at least enough so to draw conclusions.
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.
October 20th, 2013 at 9:48 AM ^
I don't spend more than 15 minutes updating this really, and it is nothing more than a fun mental exercise. You're absolutely right, of course, but it looks cooler in chart form as does everything. This is meant to be fun, not scientific in anyway.
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.
October 20th, 2013 at 11:11 AM ^
I would be willing to consider it actually. I might e-mail you later about this, if that is alright.
October 20th, 2013 at 7:31 PM ^
is Fucking great !
Go Blue!
October 20th, 2013 at 9:45 AM ^
Another reason why I love Michigan and this website! It's my heroin, lol.
October 20th, 2013 at 9:48 AM ^
Science!
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?
October 20th, 2013 at 10:01 AM ^
this is one great F*cking thread.
October 20th, 2013 at 10:05 AM ^
Does Nate Silver know about you? If not, he should. Excellent work! Impressive!
October 20th, 2013 at 10:21 AM ^
I would like to see how game start times (and by shoddy inference, intoxication) play into this data.
Hilarious!
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!
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)_/¯
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.
October 20th, 2013 at 11:25 AM ^
Also, it seems to me thst the Home/Away distinction may be important to look at as the season progresses (and we get a slightly better balance of home/away).
I would guess during home games, fewer people are on the open thread, which may have an effect on the parameters.
October 20th, 2013 at 10:48 AM ^
No other place like it on the web. Thanks for starting my Sunday off right!
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?
October 20th, 2013 at 11:39 AM ^
Need to have tempo free swearing stats, so we can account for a more accurate SwearsPerPossession and not have games skewed because of 4 OTs!
:)
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?
October 20th, 2013 at 1:00 PM ^
Fuck, shit, piss report.
October 21st, 2013 at 3:04 AM ^
Perfect combination of nerds, angst and stats.