Category Archives: stats

The Puzzling Nature of Success in Cultural Markets

Matthew Salganik gave a talk in the EE department with this title. He got his PhD in sociology last year under Duncan Watts, studying the (un)predictability of hits, blockbusters, best-sellers, etc. You probably read about it. If not, the basic … Continue reading

Posted in research, stats | 2 Comments

Zipcode demographics

During my meeting with Dan this week, we stumbled upon a website that will tell you more that you ever wanted to know about any zipcode. Mine, 10001, seems to have a very interesting breakdown of population by age and … Continue reading

Posted in stats | 1 Comment

Violence

The world is a violent place and American society is violent. Being at a shooting and hearing about other shootings, these are the thoughts that make me the most sad. According to the violence policy center, in 2003, there were … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized, stats | Leave a comment

Birth Control Stats

Yesterday Graham was wondering about the popularity of various birth control methods. I found a paper about it on the CDC’s website. I got these numbers from table 6 in the paper. These are just the most popular methods (and … Continue reading

Posted in stats | Leave a comment

How do People Die?

This whole mine collapse incident got me wondering, rather morbidly, in what ways and how many people die in the US every year? Really what I’m concerned with are deaths not from disease but from accidents, homicides, or suicides. From … Continue reading

Posted in stats | Leave a comment

What Do People Eat?

It took a bit of digging, but I found stats on what people all over the world eat. These numbers come from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Specifically, I got them from the Food Supply sections … Continue reading

Posted in food, stats | Leave a comment

Crime in NYC

I thought that I’d seen a cool GIS visualization of crime in New York’s various police precincts, but it appears to be MIA. I’ll have to settle for text versions. To wit, the stats for south Manhattan: 1990 1995 1998 … Continue reading

Posted in stats | Leave a comment

Calorie Stats

I recently read here, citing Marion Nestle’s book Food Politics, that the food industry produces 3,800 calories per American per day. This is a very interesting way to measure how much people eat on average. Assuming that we’re not amassing … Continue reading

Posted in food, stats | Leave a comment

Romance Novels

Reading through the NYTimes book review, I noticed an add from the “Romance Writers of America” with some interesting statistics: romance fiction totaled $1.2 billion in sales for 2004 54.9% of all paperback sales in 2004 was romance — more … Continue reading

Posted in books, stats | Leave a comment

What do people do?

As a graduate student, taking classes on interesting but nevertheless esoteric topics, conversation often turns to “What do real people actually do for a living?” Fortunately, the US Department of Labor, specifically the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is on the … Continue reading

Posted in stats | Leave a comment