G'nite 2014

Nighty Night and Sweet Dreams

The end of another year and all was ok at the Alps ….. the nightly emails continue to flow and my grandma continues to be stupendous … I wish to share this stupendousness through graphical representation …. Up first as is appropriate, is the weather …. another good year which saw me move from Pierre to Rapid City … Thankfully the temps in Pierre were still reported so there wasn’t a break in the data …. looking at that data I’d say I made an upgrade in terms of climate …. so gates

Warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer

There were almost 600 fewer degrees in Rapid City

Throughout the range of the family the weather was lovely …. as usual Gold Canyon was the hotty and New Rockford was wintery with the others a variety in between

Rapid City's 58 degree average beats Gold Canyon's 88 any day

Granny Elaine’s days were often spent baking so everyone stayed fat and happy … sewing kept her busy working on quilts, dish towels, pillow cases, and table cloths …. of course all this work resulted in the occasional nappie ….

 

March 17th was a busy day

 

Someone learned how to make a Venn Diagrams

Evenings were often spent at a card table ….. Bingo brought home roughly $113 dollars … forty nights costing $2.00 each would mean a profit of $33 for the year … There were thirty three games of dominoes played …. she won three times but it’s still not her favorite game …. Pinochle playing was on the decline with only 14 matches played resulting in 13 wins and 15 losses …. Golf was played as a last resort only three times in the last year, and it’s still regarded as a stupid game …. I always enjoyed it when I’ve played it, but I was also playing with a girl I had a crush on during my math class instead of working on the assignment so my perceptions may have been skewed ….. Roughly half of the nights of the year were spend playing Hand and Foot …. the boys showed no mercy and won 117 out of 184 games … bummer dude …. Hate when that happens

A couple of bad streaks

 

Ouch

Speaking of bummer dudes, it was another great year for catchphrases …. so gates showed up 449 times at a new record of 1.35 time per email …. Vashislous also had a good year with 42 occurrences … just look at the graph

Dudes where bummered over fifty times

It was a good year for G’nite emails in general …. I received 333 in 2014 and I may have even missed a few due to a mailing list issue early in the year …. They were sent at a much more reasonable times this year with only a few popping up in my inbox after midnight

I wish I was this reliable

 

12:00 is actually noon this time

The closing quotes were plentiful and varied …. because of this, my method of recording them didn’t hold up very well … the categories I tried to sort them into ended up being arbitrary and asinine ….the most common subject was on the trials of motherhood, which is an understandable coming from a mother of 13 children …. I’ll leave you with two that spoke to me personally …. And now it’s time for this not very ole grandson to get to bed …. I hope you all have had a good year and all is well with all of you….Take Care and I Love You All So Very Much … Cob …

“GOTTA BE TOUGH TO GET OLD METHINKS”

“IT IS BETTER TO GET SOMETHING DONE LATE THAN NEVER.”

G’nite 2013

            Do you want to know who’s still great? My grandma, that's who! I already gave a summary of her general stupendousness last year, so I’ll just report on the things she accomplished over the last year. She sent 242 emails during the year, and I should admit that she became aware of my spread sheeting on February 26 so all my data is probably biased after that point. I didn’t really notice any obvious changes in the data, so like any crappy researcher, I’ll just ignore the problem. A good thing about having her read my statistical analysis was that she learned how much I love her homemade buns, so now she makes them especially for me (I can never say my writing never got me anything). I don’t have much information from the last three months of the year since she was on a marathon vacation, so my seasonal data is also skewed, but whatever. On with the analysis.

            The form of the emails remains mostly unchanged from last year’s, so the first thing reported is still the weather. Her descriptions of the local Rapid City weather break down as follows:

The worst description in there is probably Goofy, so it looks like Rapid City is a nice place to live (From my own experience, I’d say it is). Grandma is pretty stoic though, so her “Good” probably covers a broad range of weather. The “Ok?” days come from September when she wasn’t getting outside due to her sciatica (we also lost a whole month worth of card playing to that crap). Luckily my aunt healed her up so hopefully she feels better now. 

High temperatures were reported for 16 separate towns, from Wisconsin (Wicksconsin) to California, over 231 non-consecutive days. Gold Canyon, Arizona had the highest average temperature at 86.2°, they shared the highest temp of 109° with Dallas, Texas, and had the highest temperature of anyone in the family 173 days (that’s 74.9% of the time), and I will never forgive them for it. New Rockford, the origin point of the family, was consistently the coldest, with an average of 50.9° and the lowest recorded temperature of -16°. The average of all the local averages was 65.5°, which might be the most useless stat ever. Actually no, because I tracked the number of times my grandma’s friends had their hair done (23). More importantly (?), Rapid City had a mean error of 3.325° in the next day forecast, and was correct eight times out of 80.

Pierre (where I live) had an average of 60.5°, and a high of 99° and low of 1°, which has a nice symmetry to it. My temperature was only superlative in the family on September 22nd, and I still shared the high temperature (with friggin’ Gold Canyon). Let’s have a temperature graph to help me get over Gold Canyon and their warm weather.

Grandma is still going to her exercise class, and Robbie is still teaching it. She attended 74 times with an average of 20 old goats jumping around (her words, not mine). That’s about 74 more times than I made it to the gym last year. Robbie busted out some new moods this year including; wondering, hurting, crazy, remembering elvis, razzed, gonna party, bad at fishing, questioning, missed, and ok. Some of those might not technically be moods, but that’s what I wrote in my note so I’m counting them. He was still happy 35 times which is 48% of the time (down nine percent from last year). That just doesn’t have them same impact without the pie chart, so here goes.

On the days when grandma doesn’t exercise she goes to the communal coffee hour (she still brews the coffee on the days she doesn’t go, because she's great). The size of the bunch averaged 13.0 people on 85 occasions. Conversation covered many diverse topics, including; Vivian’s pet deer, Vivian’s 102 birthday, bootlegging and home brew, new apartment owners, unwanted phone calls, Vivian’s immigration (multiple times), Jack's supplied paper work, farming in the good ol’ days, Janice’s Montana ranch, foreigners getting our money, and weather. Everyone’s blood pressure was checked twice (that I hear about), and grandma was 140/68 and 130/68 (I don’t know enough about blood pressure to understand if that is good or not). Sunday mornings are spent at Mass. I was prayed and lit candle for on 30 reported occasions. 

Reported mid-day activities were baking 26 times (buns five of those times!), sewing 76 times, shopping 44 times, and eight trips to visit Grandpa in the graveyard. She entertained guests 27 times, which resulted in at least eight trips to Ruby Tuesday (her favorite restaurant). I think I can make an asinine graph from this.

Evenings are still spent playing cards with the occasional game of bingo on Mondays. Hand and Foot is still the most popular with 141 games played. I like it because it’s graph friendly. See:

Pinochle is another favorite with 76 games played. Grandma took all the tricks a total of 14 times and got double pinochle in 38 instances. She also had a winning year with a record of 88-87. Let’s celebrate with some pie.

Bingo winnings came in at $61.00 this year. With 27 games, that's $2.26 a game, which isn’t bad (keep in mind that Grandma gets excited when she makes $3 for mending her neighbors pants). Her friends were also winners. Maxine won 11.5 times (split once), Vivian six times, and Chuck 14.5 times (he even won a blackout).

I had to change the way I recorded the closing quotes this year because we were just getting way to many new quotes. I divide the quotes into seven categories that I think cover everything anyone can say about anything; Advice, Quip, Commentary on Life, Relationships, Religion, Metaphysics, and Virtue. Virtue was the winner with 119 appearances, but Relationships was in a close second with 105. And because it is basically the name of the game, here is a graph about quotes.

Don’t worry, we’re not done (you were worried right?). Catchphrases, all the greats have them, and my grandma is no different. I still don’t know what it means, but “so gates” showed up 321 last year, or 1.32 times per email (up 0.16 from last year!). The “vashislous” count was down to 18, and we had eight “yah voult”s (can you pluralize a quote like that?). Some of my other favorite Grandmaisms, as I call them, where questionable Rip Van Winkle references (did he have a little yellow pup?), Majic, falling into all caps when talking about Hand and Foot during the long losing streak, mentioning a lady with a baby bump in a tight t-shirt, Harold going bananas, calling her car a red hotrod, being fat and happy, plugging my aunt and uncles vegetables, and getting excited about watching Rudy on TV (a football game show).

            Grandma didn’t go to bed any earlier last year. The average time sent for the emails came out to 2:48 am. I think some were sent the next morning, but there were still plenty of legitimate 2 am sendings. I’m still not really comfortable with doing math using time in excel, but I converted everything into a 24 hour time with midnight being 12:00. It works alright I guess (I did figure out how to do math in stationing notation, which has nothing to do with my grandma’s emails and is also pointless since I don’t work in engineering anymore, but I’m still excited about it). Anyway, here’s a graph:

            Finally, I was only mentioned seven times last year. I guess I need to give grandma some more rides if I want to keep getting name dropped.

“If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.” Alfred Nobel

“Never was anything great achieved without danger.” Niccolo Machiavelli

G'nite - A Statistical Exploration

Grandma's classy letter banner

            My grandma is great. I realize that almost everyone must feel this way but I have evidence. She has all the essential grandma stuff covered. She is an amazing cook (she makes the best bun in the freakin’ universe), sews like nobody’s business, she is super polite in that classy old people way, and she had 13 kids, so she has established a nice family dynasty (is it wrong to describe your grandparent as fecund?). She’s also a hardcore Catholic, cheats at cards, and can have a sharp tongue when she feels like it. My favorite thing about her though (other than the buns), is the fact that she sends out a nightly email to our family members. The fact that a women in her late 80’s can send out an email at all is impressive but I like her email specifically. It is a nice diary of her day and an excellent source of data on her life and habits. Given such a glut of data I did the only logical thing, and made a spreadsheet. What follows is a breakdown of G’nite emails from March through December of 2012.

            Each email starts out “Nighty Night and Sweet Dreams… The end of another day and all is ok”. I have suspicions that Grandma uses a form letter, but small changes between letters gives me doubts. She is amazingly consistent if she doesn’t. The next thing in the email is a description of how the day was, weather wise. It breaks down like this.

121 Goods to only two Not So Nices

            I think this is a good intro to the quality of the data present in these letters. I took data from 235 days, and only 18 days had unique descriptions. Even better than this is the fact that she lists a high temperature for all the towns where members of my family live. Talk about a statistical goldmine. The towns regularly reported are Rapid City, SD; Dallas, TX; Forney, TX; Denver, CO; Evergreen, CO; Billings, MT; Pierre, SD; Gillette, WY; Moorcroft, WY; Fargo, ND; New Rockford, ND; Ogdensburg, WI; and Henry, NE. Now let me throw some numbers at you (note that January and February are not present, and there are also frequent gaps from Grandma’s vacations, including most of October). The average temperature across all towns was 70.82° (comfortable), the average high was 101.69° (not comfortable), and the average low was 16.15°. In Rankines those are 530.49 R, 561.36 R, and 475.82 R, respectively (I love the Rankine scale). Dallas had the highest average (84.61°), high (109°), and low (36°), so kudos to them. The lowest average was New Rockford (61.35°), lowest high was Evergreen (91°), and the lowest low was New Rockford with the only negative temperature (-1°, on December 31st).

            Pierre didn’t show up in any of those so let’s take a look at my hometown stats. An average of 71.27°, high of 107°, low of 12°. We had eight days over 100°, were the high for the family 21 times, and the low once. How about a scatter plot.

I threw in a trend line for good measure

            After the weather report Grandma gives an account of her day. Her mornings are almost always spent in one of three ways. First is her exercise program (Grandma is fit too). The attendance is also always reported and the in 87 trips, the average was 22.94, the high was 32, and the low was only eight. Robbie the instructor’s mood is also often mentioned, and he seems like a pretty happy guy. Here’s a pie chart to show what I mean.

Exercise Instructor must be a low stress job

Other moods include busy, funny, excited, shook up, snazzy (not really a mood but whatever), upset, cooked (that day was a hotty), nervous, ready for 30 (as in attendance), and concerned. I feel like I know this guy. The second activity is a coffee hour in her apartment building. Coffee hour only has an average attendance of 9.11, with a high of 30, and a low of five. Grandma also brought a baked good 40 time out of 87 events. The last thing Grandma does with her mornings is Sunday mass. She “prayed for all my loved ones and lit candles for all of us” a reported total of 33 times, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

            Evenings are normally spent playing some sort of game. The favorite was Hand and Foot. She played that 146 nights. LET THERE BE GRAPHS.

71-75 record isn't bad

Positive are win streaks, negative are loses

  

            Also popular was pinochle, played 80 times. More pie.

98-115 this time

            She also played Whist twice, Dominos three time (she didn’t like Dominos), and Scrabble 11 times. I estimate her Bingo winnings at $57 (she didn’t always give a dollar amount for her winnings). She played that 29 times, so I hope it didn’t cost her $2 or more per game or she lost money.

            The finish of every letter is a quote. I’m not sure where she got them from or how she picks them, but the same quotes often turned up multiple times. Her favorite, with 43 appearances, was "The most powerful and predictable people-builders are praise and encouragement" paired with "Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. No involvement, no commitment." I’m not sure what she was trying to tell us with that (did she want praise for her commitment?). My favorite was “Three retirees, each with hearing loss, were playing GOLF one fine day.  One remarked to the other, ‘Windy isn't it?’   ‘No’, the second man replied. ‘It's Thursday.’ and the third man chimed in. ‘So am I.  Let’s have a beer.’” We only got that one once, and it isn’t really a quote, but I enjoyed it.

            Other than discussions of sewing and napping that covers most of the info. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t able to find a few extra bits. Grandma has a few sweet catchphrases that I kept track of. She used vashislous a total of 30 times, which isn’t nearly enough. It is “shlurman” as we call it in the family and comes from “was ist das”, which is German for “what is that”. She also used “so gates” 279 times. That is an average of 1.16 times per email, and she used it a maximum of four times in one letter. I have no idea what it means, and she doesn’t use it when she speaks, but I think it is something like “so it goes”. The time she sends the emails is also very interesting. Grandma is a bit of a night owl, because the average time of sending is 12:48 AM (0:48). The earliest time she ever sent it was 10:24 PM (22:24), and the latest was 4:18 AM (still 4:18). Tangentially, trying to do math with times is somewhat difficult in excel (it was also converting all my dates into a number of days since 1/1/1900, which is weird). Grandma stays up later than me almost every night, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Here is a scatter plot of her sent times

            The best stat is that I was mentioned ten times. Mostly for giving her rides (she still drives, but only around town), or for my computer expertise (which is impressive to her). Thanks for being stupendous Grandma (also thanks for your superior DNA).

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Isaac Newton

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” Friedrich Nietzsche