Fun

I vividly remember my stats professor, back when I took my undergrad degree. He had a nearly unintelligible Croatian accent, barely spoke above a whisper, and liked to write on the overhead with squiggly scribbles as he spoke/whispered. In short, I could hardly understand him, hear him, or read what he was writing, but he instilled in me that statistics are among the most misused metrics out there.

I’ll explain why. It’s easy to say that “a majority of people believe in aliens.” Or that “the average weight of hamsters in Slovenia is 200 grams.” Or “90% of survey respondents agreed that a Provincial Task Force on Walking While Texting” is a good idea. What do these numbers really mean? What constitutes a “majority?” How many hamsters were weighed in Slovenia? Did the researchers take into accounts things like breed, age and sex of the hamsters? Of this “90%” did the researchers consider things like: how many people did you ask? What was the survey return rate? Are the responses liked to other influencing factors? It’s just to easy to use words like “average” or “majority” and not give the context of sample size. It makes a pretty big difference if you asked 10 people in a survey versus 1000. How would you know if those 10 people were representative of the general population?

We are working away on “Goal Buddy,” our goal app (also known as “your little goal-achieving friend). I’ve noticed that the most popular apps have short and catchy names (which are certainly more effective and memorable than something like thesuperbestappeverthathelpsyoubeyourverysuperbestself). Goal Buddy’s name came about back in November when I was working on some concept sketches, sitting at the dining table and hoping that some bolt of inspiration would find me.

It’s almost time to put the Christmas decorations away, take down the lights, and finish digesting that turkey we’ve all been working on. We hope you’ve all had wonderful holidays surrounded by those you love as well.

We’ve been working on something else too (aside from that turkey, and I think I’m nearing the bottom of the roaster now) - our goal app. We’ve written about it a bit already, touching more on the technical aspects of things but also about its inception. So where are we now in the process?

I was a little late to jump on the smart phone bandwagon. I resisted for years, scoffing inwardly at those who wove their way through society, heads down, engrossed in their imaginary worlds of bright screens and black plastic cases. Curiosity got the better of me, though; two years ago I finally caved and acquired an Android. It met a prompt and sudden death when it went sailing off a counter and onto an unforgiving and indifferent concrete floor. I caved and bought a shock-proof case for my next phone the very next day.

Migratory animals keep finding me, no matter where I find myself in life. Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Liv, and I am a new member of the Saturday Morning Productions team. I have never taken a computer class in my life, other than keyboarding on a rickety Apple with “Alphaworks” on one of those giant black floppy disks when I was in junior high, but I somehow found myself sitting at a table with a rather techno-savvy crowd.