Sunday, February 1, 2015

Worst Part About Numbers

I think the worst part about numbers is that sometimes they lie. I know the phrase that gets tossed around a lot is "numbers don't lie" and, for most things, that's true. If you look at the final score of a  Iowa v. Wisconsin game, the numbers don't lie - Wisconsin won because they had more points than Iowa. If you look at the final score of an awesome UNI v. Witchita State game, the numbers don't lie - UNI won because they had more points than Witchita State. Does that mean that Iowa and Witchita State are terrible basketball teams? No. Maybe it's not that numbers lie - they merely describe an aspect of whatever they are being used to describe something.

At least for sports. For Youtube playlists, though, numbers lie. It's a lie to describe a playlist as being the "Top 100 Beatles songs" (or "TOP 100 BEATLES SONGS", as shown below), but to then only have 89 videos in the playlist. It's a lie to describe a playlist as having 100 songs and to only have 90 as well as to describe a playlist as "100 best songs of the Beatles" and to only have 90 videos.


Editor's Note: Sometimes, when I enter labels in the Labels area of a post, I'm stunned to see that I've never entered the labels I enter for a previous post. For this post, the following labels are brand new to this blog:
  • The Beatles
  • youtube
  • playlists
How can I write a blog that is predominantly about music for 7 years, 2 months, 6 days (if I go back to this blog's first post in November 2007 or 6 years, 10 months, 2 weeks if I go to this blog's second post in March 2008 and never write about the Beatles?!? Now I'm thinking I need to revisit each page on this blog and look for where "The Beatles" should have been added as a tag.

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