Archive for the ‘geekiness’ tag
The Predictions of Punxsutawney Phil: An Empirical Study
Punxsutawney Phil is, perhaps, the most famous rodent in the world. For over a century, the small town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania has celebrated the tradition of observing how their mascot, an actual groundhog named Phil, emerges from his home and (sometimes) flees from his shadow. If Phil flees, 6 more weeks of winter; otherwise, an early spring.
But is Phil a good weatherman? In this blog entry, I’ll do my own statistical analysis on this paradoxical prognosticator. Full disclosure: my middle name is Phil, named after the famed Groundhog Ambassador from Punxsutawney (he is also my father. And before you ask, the groundhog was named Pete when my father was born – so technically the rodent was named Phil after my dad.)
Getting Excited About Things
Many years ago, I started something like this blog. I had begun to learn a lot about the world around me that I wanted a place where I could write about it. That child-like wonder led me to begin writing long, detailed articles about cool (often Computer Science-related) things that I was learning about. I had high hopes for this site as being one of the most interesting sites on the web for cool facts and neat concepts.
Then I found Wikipedia and my heart sank. Who knew that millions of people editing a website 24 hours a day would be able to put out more information than my measly website? Defeated, I hung up my spurs. I almost came back to my writing, then a little thing called “grad school” crept into my life and sucked every ounce of energy I once had for writing about cool and interesting things.