The State Of Our Open Threads: After Northwestern
Well, it might not have looked pretty, but we did win, folks.
We were very productive from a swearing standpoint, even accounting for several attempts to inflate the numbers a little bit. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of those attempts involved the word "fuck", so it was relatively easy to come up with the adjusted totals. That being said, a special shoutout should go to MGoBlogger Gameboy who had a post which contained almost 140 instances of the word "fuck", and although this was removed from the grand total, I have no doubt that many of us were thinking that very post during the first half of the game.
How productive were we specifically? Along the tracked metrics, we managed 624 instances across almost 2,200 posts in two threads, which is a 33.97% increase in overall swearing from last week. This also represents a slight increase in the relative frequency of swearing - an instance every 3.50 posts this week, compared to one instance every 3.76 posts last week, or about a 7% increase in frequency. I consider that a significant increase.
Here is the overall cumulative picture as of this morning:
TOTAL | AVERAGE | STD. DEV. | % OF TOTAL | |
"fuck" | 1688 | 168.80 | 154.78 | 47.83% |
"shit" | 417 | 41.70 | 20.83 | 11.82% |
"damn" | 361 | 36.10 | 44.52 | 10.23% |
"fire" | 289 | 28.90 | 32.79 | 8.19% |
"suck" | 423 | 42.30 | 31.87 | 11.99% |
"ass" | 227 | 22.70 | 24.43 | 6.43% |
"put in Morris" | 124 | 12.40 | 13.63 | 3.51% |
Not much has changed from last week - we still clearly prefer "fuck". Indeed, when we try to inflate the numbers and confound the metrics, we stick with "fuck", so I post this also to show you where there is clearly some room to make more impact in the relative frequency of tracked words. Once again, "shit" and "suck" are a distant second and third, but the most significant jump actually belongs to references to firing people, most notably Al Borges. The frequency of these references jumped from 6.23% to 8.19%, so clearly the discontent with coaching and coaching decisions is beginning to rise significantly even from what it was.
Here is the game-by-game bar chart - you can click on the picture to go to Photobucket and see it at full size:
The normalized values show the relative trend in calling for heads, but again, for overall rage, we still have Penn State:
It should be noted here that I did adjust for some attempts to inflate the "fire" references too, but even after that, the Z-score for this metric was 2.41, which is VERY impressive and speaks to the lack of satisfaction with recent games / decisions. Even the "shit" metric, which typical was steady and in the background, jumped to a Z-score of 1.21, much of it used in a simile describing the overall quality of play.
Here is the "Fuck-Fire Relationship", which shows "fuck" starting to lag a little bit when compared to the overall trend of wanting people fired:
Here is the Mood Chart, which made an appearance on Twitter after the Nebraska game. The shift in normalized values that the Northwestern game caused may result in the quadrants being renamed, but it made sense when I created it. If you have suggestions, do post them.
What you can see, however, is that we have more confirmation that PSU is still the watershed moment of the season for both comments and cussing, but we were just as verbal if not as profane for yesterday's game.
November 17th, 2013 at 9:12 AM ^
November 17th, 2013 at 9:16 AM ^
Can we once and for all get rid of it. Keep one thread throughout the game.
November 17th, 2013 at 9:24 AM ^
I kind of like it split in two. It's much easier to load via a mobile device.
November 17th, 2013 at 9:59 AM ^
November 17th, 2013 at 10:06 AM ^
Blue Tuesday makes a good point, for those using smart phones it may be a good idea to have two threads.
November 17th, 2013 at 9:19 AM ^
Is there data to look at "Fire Borges" to "Fire Funk" ratio? I noticed a significant uptick in the latter sentiment recently.
November 17th, 2013 at 9:38 AM ^
Yeah, although that spreadsheet is the one I left at work so it won't be updated until early this week. I have been keeping up with it, however. As the offensive line issues have continued, people have focused their irritation - it was pretty even after Penn State and even through MSU, but Nebraska and probably this game have seen exactly what you mention.
November 17th, 2013 at 9:25 AM ^
A question for the computer geeks out there...........Is there anyway to make it unnecessary to hit refresh keys to see new postings?
November 17th, 2013 at 10:34 AM ^
Not on the client side (unless you want to write an app/chrome extension that will just simulate hitting F5 instead of actually hitting it...).
Seems like there might be a Drupal plugin that would do auto refreshing, but that would be something for Brian to set up.
November 17th, 2013 at 2:28 PM ^
If you're using Google Chrome, there are quite a few auto-refresh extensions available. I'm sure Firefox has them too.
November 17th, 2013 at 9:29 AM ^
November 17th, 2013 at 9:31 AM ^
Some of the board's 'fucks' didn't count? That's fucking bullshit, man.
Good work by the way. I like the mood chart.
November 17th, 2013 at 9:36 AM ^
I LOVE THIS FEATURE.
Also, fuck and fire.
November 17th, 2013 at 9:51 AM ^
November 17th, 2013 at 10:31 AM ^
Just curious LSA, were you the one who "was too chicken" to post this originally after the UConn game and instead had CooperLily post it? Sorry if you answered that before
November 17th, 2013 at 10:35 AM ^
I was the force behind the idea, but yeah, I was a little squeamish about posting it initially. CooperLily was very kind to post the first one and I am endebtted to him for it.
November 17th, 2013 at 10:48 AM ^
what gives?
November 17th, 2013 at 10:53 AM ^
Once the charts started making their way to other sites when we lost - such as TWIS - I did that to help the people utilizing the data for other outlets a little.
November 17th, 2013 at 11:39 AM ^
The data clearly indicates that 'damn' is on the decline and 'shit' is holding steady.
I also see that the number of fucks are correlated to the overall length of a game - case in point, the 2 OT games.
November 17th, 2013 at 11:45 AM ^
November 17th, 2013 at 12:16 PM ^
I know I shouldn't bring up the Penn State game, but seeing the amount of "fucks" that were given makes me laugh a bit.
November 17th, 2013 at 12:34 PM ^
Probably would take a closer reading of each comment, but is there a way to see how many of each word were used in a positive or negative connotation?
Seems, "shit" and "fire" might always be used negatively, but something like "that catch was so fucking awesome!" comes up pretty often (although probably not in the previous two games.)
November 17th, 2013 at 12:46 PM ^
I believe you were the one who brought it up last week or perhaps before that, and it was an excellent suggestion. As part of the season-end report, I might give a brief discussion of this - I have the approximate positive negative split figured out only as far as Akron right now, but there is time to finish yet.
November 17th, 2013 at 12:43 PM ^
:-)
I am serious though
Go Blue!
November 17th, 2013 at 12:58 PM ^
November 17th, 2013 at 1:28 PM ^
November 17th, 2013 at 2:55 PM ^
I read the game thread for once- the 3 things that I found most common among statements were: 1. we can't block 2. Borges playcalling is terrible 3. DG is not a very good/smart QB. Strangely, while there have been multiple threads on the first 2 subjects there hasn't been much discussion about the third. There seems to be no serious QB controversy.
November 18th, 2013 at 8:09 AM ^
This is hilarious and sad at the same time.
The chart made me laugh.