Chris McGinty’s Math-a-Plenty: Nathan is Just Mean

by Chris McGinty

INT – METH LAB – DAY: Chris is looking at the camera sporting a lab coat. He looks like a deer in a headlight, and speaks as though reading from a teleprompter.

CHRIS: Hi. I’m Chris and welcome to my meth lab. Today we will… It’s “math lab”.

NATHAN (from behind camera): Don’t you know how to improvise?

CHRIS: Well…

NATHAN: Nevermind. I remember your bits on the “Whose Line” rip off we did. Oh, and speak up. I can’t hear you over the cat licking herself.

CHRIS: Well speaking of rip offs. Welcome to Chris McGinty’s Math-a-Plenty, our blatant rip off of “Bill Nye the Science Guy.”

(Crazy techno music cues up.)

NATHAN (sounding very surfer/valley dude): Math ruuuuulez. Chris! Chris! Chris! Chris!

CHRIS: Today on the show, we’re going to deal with Nathan’s comment that when Chris recently did reviews of the first 100 blog posts that he gave himself better reviews than he gave Nathan.

NATHAN: But first you have viewer mail.

(Chris barely has a chance to start asking what Nathan is on about when he is hit in the face by a heavy bag of mail. It’s ok though, he comes to pretty quickly, and Nathan starts recording again.)

CHRIS: As heavy as that bag is we’ll be here all day answering mail.

(Chris reaches into the bag and finds two letters.)

CHRIS: Two letters? Why is this so heavy?

(Chris reaches into the bag again and pulls out the shooting script for Season Two.)

CHRIS: Nathan, are you trying to kill me?

NATHAN: Turnabout is fair play.

CHRIS: Thanks. Well let me read the first letter. It’s actually a quote from one of Nathan’s recent posts. “Am I the only one around here that seems to be posting topics about ‘making of’ and such???”

(Chris folds the letter and throws it away. We hear the same cat sound from the Anti-Splish news story.)

CHRIS: In answer to your question Nathan, I personally wrote a making of post after the last night we were making of. In further comment on your post, it’s kind of crazy that we almost have a whole episode done already. Be sure to show me at our next meeting, and we can discuss how to end the episode. We can leave a minute or whatever open for the next episode teaser, which you can create after next ten-weeks when we’ve completed Episode Two.

(Chris opens the second letter.)

CHRIS: This one is the comment that Nathan left on Miguel’s rebuttal to the birthers debate they’re having. “I was expecting something great from Miguel, but after reading this I felt it was rather lacking (argument wise). You might want to check some of your facts.”

(Chris folds the letter and throws it away. It bounces off Nathan’s copy of Valley of the Pharaohs game, which tips and goes crashing to the ground. As it falls we hear, “Chuuuuuunk!”)

CHRIS: This has always seemed like a non-issue to me. My answer to the question is where are the documents that prove that Obama was born in Kenya? It seems weird to me that the entire theory is predicated on the idea that all the proof of citizenship is forged, and yet there is no proof of his alleged “real” citizenship. Oh well, let’s get onto some math.

NATHAN: Michael Moore lover!

(Chris pegs Nathan in the head with his copy of “Let Freedom Ring.”)

CHRIS: Let’s get to some math why don’t we? We can go about our statistics in a number of ways. Let’s start by defining them:

(The screen switches to show an animated Chris running around with animated numbers.)

CHRIS (voice over): Mean: This is the average of all the numbers in the sequence divided by how many separate numbers there are. In the case of Miguel’s two posts the mean is 5. Add 5+5 to equal 10, and then divide 10 by 2 to reach a mean of 5. In the case of Wade’s two posts we add 5+3 to equal 8, and then divide by 2 to reach a mean of 4.

(We see non-animated Chris again.)

NATHAN: Well, Miguel deserves 1-star for his birthers rebuttal.

CHRIS: Miguel’s mom deserves 1-star.

(Chris’s phone rings. It’s Miguel. Chris answers it, listens, and then finally responds.)

CHRIS: It was a general mom joke, idiot, not meant about your actual mom. Don’t get your “Hillary for President” t-shirt in a wad.

(Chris signals a screen change and we see the animations again.)

CHRIS (voice over): Median: This is where you line up the data from lowest to highest and then find the number right in the middle. For instance: 4, 7, 9, 9, 1439. The median would be 9 while the mean would be much higher (293.6). In the case of Miguel you would line up 5, 5. Since it’s an even number of data in the sequence the median falls between the two middle numbers making Miguel’s median 5. In the case of Wade you would line up 3, 5. In this instance the median and the mean are the same at 4. This will always be the case if you only have two pieces of data.

(We come out of the animation to see Chris with that deer caught in the headlight look again.)

CHRIS: Umm? Teleprompter!

NATHAN: There is no teleprompter! I’m writing on paperboard with a fat marker. And my hand hurts, so give me a minute.

(Chris calls up the animation again.)

CHRIS (voice over): Mode: I so want to link to the “Just Can’t Get Enough” segment on the word mode, but alas it’s not done yet. The mode is the number that appears the most times in a sequence. For Miguel the mode is 5, because the sequence is two long and both numbers are 5. For Wade the mode is both 3 and 5. A sequence can have more than one mode if they both appear the most. Wade has a 3 which appears once and a 5 which appears once, making his mode both 3 and 5.

(The screen switches and we see Nathan walking on with two plates, and a tub of butter holding two knives.)

NATHAN: I made bread products.

CHRIS: Yummy.

(Chris walks toward the camera, reaches toward it, and the picture cuts out.)

(The picture resumes, and we find Chris standing there again chewing something, and a glob of butter on his chin. Nathan runs out with a napkin and cleans him up, and then runs back behind the camera. Chris signals the animation.)

CHRIS (voice over): Range: The range is simply the lowest number subtracted from the highest. The “for instance” in the median description would have a range of 1,435. Miguel has a range of zero, and Wade has a range of 2. Obviously, the higher the range, the less likely that the mean and the median will account for the actual data. In the “for instance,” 80% of the numbers are less than 10 yet the mean is 293.6. This is how CEO salary skews the average earnings of men compared to women, because there are more male CEOs. Now I may be over simplifying that, because as I understand it the figures of men vs. women salary wise actually stretch across different job types and industries. Also I don’t feel like researching that right now so I’m just going to presume that the figures are right, even though it doesn’t speak to my own personal experience.

(The animation stops again, and we see Chris sniffing Nathan’s marker.)

CHRIS: It does not smell like cherry. That’s awful.

(Nathan grabs the marker, and starts writing off screen.)

CHRIS: So you can see how these sorts of statistical data are achieved and somewhat what they mean. With that in mind let’s examine the ratings given to Chris and Nathan’s posts.

NATHAN: Oh, this ought to be good.

CHRIS: Why? The suspense? Since I don’t even know what the outcome will look like?

NATHAN: No, because what you present will probably be as faked as the birthers claim Obama’s citizenship is.

CHRIS: Umm. Ok. Let’s go through the breakdown of the scores Chris assigned to each of the posts. The following is the ratings in order as they appear in the blog post.

(We see a set of lists that read as follows:)

Nathan: 4, 3, 3, 3, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 4, 3, 4, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5, 3, 4, 4, 5, 3, 4, 5, 4, 4, 5, 4, 3, 3, 3

51 Posts.

Chris: 3, 4, 3, 5, 4, 4, 3, 5, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 5, 5, 4, 5, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 1, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 4, 2, 3, 4, 4

43 Posts

CHRIS: This translates to the following tally.

(We see the following lists:)

Nathan: 5-stars: 7
4- stars: 21
3- stars: 18
2-stars: 5

Chris: 5-stars: 7
4-stars: 24
3-stars : 10
2-stars: 1
1-star: 1

CHRIS: As you can see each of them have rating in all the levels except that Chris has a 1-star rating where Nathan does not. This means that Nathan’s range is 3 and Chris’s range is 4. This is almost an irrelevant fact in this examination. We also see that the most common rating given was 4-stars, and for both Chris and Nathan the mode is 4. The second most common rating is 3-stars for both of them. The third most common rating was 5-stars for both of them and they each had 7. Now if you look at the following chart you see the median highlighted with an asterisk.

(We see the following chart:)

Nathan: 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4*, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2

Chris: 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4*, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 1

(The screen switches to show the figures from each section above to get a complete total and are divided by the number of posts each wrote.)

35 + 84 + 54 + 10 = 183

183/51 = 3.588235

35 + 96 + 30 + 2 + 1 = 164

164/43 = 3.813953

CHRIS: So the mean comparative is as such:

Nathan 3.588235

Chris: 3.813953

CHRIS: So you see, Nathan, it seems that Chris was very fair in his role as a critic. Your main problem was that early on you wrote some short, throwaway pieces that were low on the reread level and you got five 2-star ratings. If you removed those from the equation your average rating would be 3.76087. Neither this number nor the number above are a significant difference even if they are lower.

NATHAN: You’re right, Bill Ginty the Sci-math Gimpy. How could I ever have doubted a self proclaimed fence sitter and non-bullshitter like Chris? Clearly I just took a couple of my lower ratings personally, and some of Chris’s higher ratings personally, possibly while not agreeing with the explanations.

CHRIS: Clearly, whatever it was you just said. Thank you for joining us today.