#49 - Full of Nerd

Motto: Nerds rule the world.

The other day I hopped on the elevator at my apartment/condo complex and something statistically unlikely happened. Two more gentlemen followed me in, both of which were going to my floor, neither of which was accompanied by the other. First off, I would estimate that I ride the elevator by myself 80% of the time, with 1 other person 10%, with 2 other people 5%, with more than 2 for the remaining 5%. So, already, we are sitting at a one-out-of-twenty circumstance. No big deal. I won’t get into the fact that all of us were guys (12.5% chance of that; or possibly 25% depending upon definitions). I was going to the 5th floor of a 16 floor building. The bottom 2 floors don’t have housing. The top floor only has one or two high-rollers on it, so I’ll count them out. Assuming an even distribution of residents within the building, the chance of the first passenger following me living on my floor is 1/13, or ~7.7%. The chance of the second passenger going to the same floor is the same. To combine multiple independent instances of a statistical trail, you multiply them. So, it was a 1/13/13 (0.6% chance) occurrence. Multiply that by the original 5% estimate for the number of fellow passengers and you wind up with a 0.03% likelihood of said event. That’s 1 out of 3330 elevator rides. If I rode the elevator 6 times per day (a decent estimate), this would happen once every year and a half. You might say, “why write about something like that?” Well, people with personal blogs nearly always write about their birthdays, and those happen more often than my elevator scenario. So. Why not? It’s still not quite as weird as the time I got on the bus at KU with 24 females and 3 males. Using a binomial coefficient, that happens once out of 45886 bus rides. That was ZANY. Today I grew 3 additional chest hairs (chest hairs, if you didn’t know, are my standard unit of manliness). I cooked bacon for the first time. It brings me great shame to admit that I made it through life for 24.34 years without cooking bacon… but I can now proudly claim that streak has been struck down. This is another weird column. This one is nerdier, though. Speaking of nerdy and bacon – here’s a relevant XKCD:

XKCD: Stove Ownership I worked out this morning. So, I don’t consider that graph exactly accurate in my case. Today I watched 45 minutes of Ron Swanson monologues. He’s a character in the TV show “Parks and Recreation”, if you didn’t know, and he’s awesome. I’m a bit late to the “I love Ron Swanson” game, but I’m here now and I do. The next thing I want to talk about to round-out this nerd column: Videogames. Since my recent videogame acquisitions (PlayStation 3 & Android console emulators), I have had a recent resurgence of appreciation for them. My girlfriend is going to be gone for ~6 months here pretty soon. So, it’s time for videogames.

Google (or at least a small sub-division of it) has made its first foray into the world of gaming with a really interesting game called “Ingress.” The word “Ingress” is defined as “a place or means of access, an entrance.” Given my (admittedly limited) knowledge of the game and the situation surrounding the game, this works on at LEAST three different levels. I’m definitely all for words or phrases or symbols that work on multiple levels… it’s one of my “things”. Beyond the brilliant name, it is a brilliant and new concept for a game. It takes videogames from something you do alone in your room to something you team up with strangers to do in the real physical world. The more I learn about it, the more it intrigues me. For those who are interested: The Ingress Introduction Video. It also has a nifty symbol and some really interesting user-made artwork, surrounding said symbol(s) and the two factions in the game… like so:

(this image is lost to time)

The overall symbol and the symbols of the two factions… As symbolic metaphors, I prefer eyes to keys, personally. Lastly, looking at a few different “Top {whatever number} videogames of all time!” lists, I have put together the following Top 5(s).

Top 5: Videogames I’m looking forward to playing through

5. Bioshock – PlayStation
6. Earthbound – Super Nintendo
7. Portal 1 - PC
8. Drake’s Uncharted (the whole series) - PlayStation
9. Chrono Trigger – Super Nintendo

Top 5: Videogames I have played through and suggest

5. Hitman: Absolution (I liked it)
6. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (call of duty 4)
8. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
9. Portal 2

The quote today is pulled from a backlog of my favorite friend quotes of all time that I have saved on my computer.

Quote:

“Let’s go look at donuts” Jon, after he realized he was part of three guys standing around smelling different shampoo’s in Dillions