Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Some States Are NOT for Lovers

So there's this study out that ranks the states in terms of attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. Virginia is for Lovers? Not so much.

Here are the Top Ten in terms of attachment anxiety. The list for avoidance is similar, but not a perfect match. Virginia, FYI, is in the middle of the pack.

  1. North Dakota (surprising given it's so cold)
  2. West Virginia (unsurprising)
  3. New York (insert NYC joke here)
  4. Kentucky (meth?)
  5. Kansas (what's wrong with Kansas? Now we know)
  6. Connecticut (I got nothing)
  7. Missouri (see Kentucky above)
  8. Ohio (I blame THE Ohio State University)
  9. Texas (of course)
  10. Rhode Island (I doubt its existence)
Who is the most cuddly, or the least anxious?
  1. Mississippi (you're kidding, right?)
  2. Alaska (colder than even North Dakota)
  3. Vermont (ditto)
  4. Utah (Mormons cuddle?)
  5. Wisconsin (after all that beer)
  6. Louisiana (my wife is Cajun. No comment)
  7. Minnesota (nothing else to do)
  8. Arizona (old folks cuddling?)
  9. Oregon (I got nothing)
  10. North Carolina (but in separate bathrooms)
If you look at the actual study you'll see the numbers and rankings. There's a decent correlation between the two scores (r = .58), and North Dakota leads on both.

Georgia, by the way, ranks 25th in attachment anxiety and 16th in attachment avoidance. For what that's worth.




Cheating

Image result for cheatYou know, all those online knowledge tests. Do you ever cheat? Of course you do.

It only matters, truly, when we're analyzing the data for some more serious purpose. This study looks at ways to reduce such cheating on line political knowledge tests and finds that telling people to not search for answers online can help.  Apparently, telling them how important it is to have honest data can make a difference.

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

UGA Milestone of Sorts

We spend a lot of time talking about UGA's lack of African-American students compared to the state population, but I just noticed that in Fall 2016 the school reached a different milestone of sorts, this involving Asian students. For the first time, the percentage of Asian students at UGA topped 10 percent (actually, 10.1 percent if you want to be persnickety).

This number represents undergrads, grads, and professional students. In other words, everyone who is a student and indirectly pays my salary. There were 3,706 total Asian students in Fall 2016, up from last fall's 9.8 percent and, if we reach back into the dark ages, higher than the 3.7 percent seen in Fall 1998 (as far back as my data go). I could graph it out over time, but you get the idea, that it's inched up steadily. Factoid: You have to dig back to Fall 2008 before, in a fall semester, you find a higher percentage of black students than Asian students. by Fall 2009 Asians had passed blacks on campus.

What's this all mean? That I need another hobby than staring at numbers in a desperate search for story ideas. But it also reflects what we're seeing at other major universities, though of course here it's nothing like what's seen at West Coast schools.

Factoid II: Asians made up 2.1 percent in Georgia, based on 2000 Census numbers and in 2010 were only 3.2 percent, so the numbers at UGA far outstrip the general population.

Factoid III: In Fall 1998, 63.4 percent of UGA students were listed as white. Back in Fall 1998, it was a lilly-white 83.9 percent.

There's also interesting stuff if you dig into the "not reported" race numbers, or the multiple race numbers. In Fall 2016, 2.4 percent listed two or more races. That was 1 percent in 1998. Also, 4.6 percent did not report a race 2016, up from 3.7 percent back in 1998.

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

It's 2017

It's 2017 and it just occurred to me I forgot to write my annual Year in Review of the blog, the usual compilation of stuff nobody really cares about -- how many posts, how many pageviews, how many people insulted, etc. Sadly, it's not easy to do any more, not with the stats made available via Blogger. I can't just separate out the year easily.

The top post, in terms of pageviews, is this one from Sept. 20 on data about various colleges and it is the 10th overall in the history of the blog, which goes back to the dark days of the early 2000s. However, December 2016 was the single best month in terms of pageviews. As is typical, Google and Twitter dominate in terms of referrers to the blog.

So not much of a review. I could do all time, but let's face it ... who cares?