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The Definitive Halloween Candy Hierarchy

A HISTORY It began, as all things do, with a geology joke. We ranked candy based on their ability to elicit “joy” or “despair” and then worked in that ranking in various geological strata, both real and imagined. The strata, not the ranking. This started in 2006, and grew from there. At the beginning, we…

2016 CANDY HIERARCHY: SUPPLEMENTAL RAW DATA AND NEW ANALYSES

PREAMBLE: This is for you data nerds who might want to dig into the data a little deeper (we didn’t have a lot of time to play around with it). We’ve provided access to the full excel spreadsheet (which also includes data that was cut off from our analysis due to us having to get started earlier for today’s piece on BoingBoing). We’re essentially hoping that with more rigorous analysis of the data, we might be able to find out whether there are statistically relevant differences in how different folks rate their candies For example, do people who see the…

STRATIGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF FRIDAY-SUNDAY IDENTIFICATION IN RELATION TO SUGAR CONSUMPTION PREFERENCES AND RELATED DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES

Advanced online publication. Download pdf. *Data Analysis report for the 2015 Candy Hierarchy (raw data | source reference) ABSTRACT The 2015 Candy Hierarchy defines the quality ranking of all known candies (minus those that were not ranked). It’s really easy to analyze too. We did it. Here are the results. They reveal a natural law of those who identify as Friday people and Sunday people, which holds across time and space at a stable 2-to-1 ratio or, 66/33, or, .5/.25 depending on how many characters are left In your tweet. It confirms that Friday people are better. Suck it Sunday.…

A COLLECTION OF WORTHY SCIENTIFIC EPONYMS (ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY)

The Science Creative Quarterly is happy to present a growing list of scientific eponyms as first initiated by the efforts of Samuel Arbesman and The World’s Fair. Please feel free to email us if you wish to add to this list (tscq@interchange.ubc.ca). – A – Arbesman Limit (keywords: science, eponym, immortality) … the maximum number of concepts or ideas that can be named after a single person link – D – Drugmonkey Scale (keywords: drugs, reaction to blog post, neuropsychology) link – F – Fox Paradox (keywords: genomics, ethics) Just because we’ve sequenced your genome, we don’t necessarily know your…

METRICS: THE RICHTER SCALE

Measures: Earthquake magnitude. This is a logarithmic scale, plotting greatest displacement from 0 on seismometer after event occurs. Range: 0 to 10+ Reference measurements: 0 – 3.4 This is normal. The first step in assessing earthquake severity is determining whether other people are noticing the Earth move as well. If only you seem to be experiencing the Earth moving, you are likely drunk or having an orgasm or both. 3.5 Not usually felt, but will be recorded. Earthquakes of this magnitude are often the result of office horseplay occurring too close to the seismometer (“Dude – careful!”). 3.6 – 4.5…

METRICS: THE CELCIUS

Metric: Celsius Measures: Primarily the vibrational and rotational kinetic energy of atoms (you know, hotness). Range: -273.15oC. This is known as absolute zero, a temperature at which nothing could be colder. Some Irishman named Kelvin came up with a scale that started 0 from this value, but basically had the same increments as the Celsius scale. He then substituted “degrees Celsius” with “Kelvins”.** -40oC. Where the Celsius scale intersects with the Fahrenheit temperature metric (i.e. -40oC = -40oF). This temperature is as frosty as Canada/U.S. relations. -20oC. Witch’s teat territory. 0oC. On a day where the freezing mark is reached,…

pH – A SCIENCE CREATIVE QUARTERLY PIN UP (NO. 2)

(CLICK HERE FOR PIN-UP POSTER – pdf file ~140k) – We suggest photocopying at 129% – LTR to 11×17 – Metric: pH Range: 0-14 (no units) Measures: Degree of acidity or alkalinity. It is a logarithmic scale expressing the concentration of Hydrogen ions in solution. pH = -log10 [H+] A solution is “acidic” if pH is less than 7 (Hydrogen ion concentration is greater than 10−7 M), “neutral” if pH equals 7 (Hydrogen ion concentration equals 10−7 M), and “alkaline” if pH greater than 7 (Hydrogen ion concentration is less than 10−7 M). As was pointed out here, pH measures…