Statistics 101

 

Bear and Buster are social creatures. They particularly love interacting with our collegiate neighbors next door at Western Washington University. College girls love sloppy dog kisses, and college boys share leftover junk food. After months of lonely frolicking on the empty quad, Bear and Buster were glad to see a few students return to campus last month. 

 

So far classes are mostly online. Faculty and staff are still working from home, and only one of the dorms is inhabited. The dogs usually have the lawn to themselves. Nevertheless, these days as we walk through campus we often encounter a handful of students doing student things. Bear and I already have gathered enough data to make some observations.

I can report that Western has successfully socialized members of the community to follow at least two of the three “Ws.” (I can’t speak to their hand washing.) We’ve definitely watched a high proportion of earnest social distancing and mask wearing.

 

For example, if Bear and I time our evening walk correctly, we will encounter a jazz combo jamming on the plaza in front of the library. (Look, a tuba – that’s how you can tell you’re at Western.) 

Note the drummers have their masks on. And all the musicians are at least six feet apart.

The compliance rates for masks and social distancing remain high even when students engage in vigorous activities. Almost everyone wears masks as they walk through campus. In fact, we counted over 80% of cyclists and runners wearing masks. The number for trapeze stunts and games of “Four Square” approached 100% masked.

Of course, millennials are still millennials. If they’re not actually touching a ball, they’re touching their phone.

 

As Bear and I walked through campus on our last sunny warm day, we saw twenty or thirty students hanging out together or lying on suitably distanced blankets. Alone or together, busy or relaxed, at least half of them were staring at their smart phones.

 

I surreptitiously took the next photo at the park. As you can see, the masked photographer is taking a picture of the picture of the sunset on his phone.

Even at earnest WWU there are outliers. Me, for example. I have my mask ready in case Bear and I stop at a coffee shop, pub, or bookstore. However, because of the cumulative damage to my nose from PTSD and trichotillomania, I can’t breathe if I wear my mask while walking the dogs. 

 

Occasionally on our maskless walks through campus I’ll get confused glares from brainwashed students. If anyone asks, I tell them about my disability, and explain the situation would be different if I were indoors, or bunched together in a group. When I see others outdoors without masks on, I try not to judge. Unless they’re wearing MAGA hats. 

 

One final piece of data:  last week Bear and I saw a student zipping by on his skateboard. I wanted to flag him down and ask why he was wearing a mask but not a helmet. But he was too busy listening to his phone. 

Peak Mount Baker

Each night of this new plague, as I lay me down to sleep, here’s what I hope to ask while kneeling with the dogs beside my bed:

“How did we all survive both the continuing school closure and the border closure today?”   

Today was Bellingham’s first gorgeous sunny Friday of spring. Depending on your degree of introversion, you could leave home without a jacket or shirt. But you’re welcome to wear ether, or both. As always, in Bellingham certain wardrobe mainstays like fleece, shorts, flannel, nudity, and/or Birkenstocks are somehow de rigeur yet optional. And in each instance an absolutely individual choice. 

Here at Chez Leishman, exactly one other member of the family has been outdoors today, counting Bear and Buster. The other two children are vampires.

It’s been four weeks since Papa last crossed the border for Vancouver Men’s Chorus, or for anything else. That’s the longest hiatus at the Peace Arch since they began keeping records. 

Papa can tell. His parents can tell. His writing can tell. The dogs can tell. Even the children can tell. They’re the ones who pointed out the previous No Canada record was barely twelve days. The kids are getting worried about having to explain something to Child Protective Services.

Here’s my best “lemonade” plague insight so far. It came to me this afternoon, during the fourth of my walks with our happy but exhausted dogs.

We quant types secretly love pandemics. There’s always more interesting data to pore over. For example, last week Bellingham was listed as the fourth most dangerous city in the world, based on the number of coronavirus deaths per 100,000 population. We had one of the country’s first tragic nursing home moments. 

Fortunately, like the rest of Washington we promptly followed Governor Inslee. In fact, here in Bellingham we may have achieved the most effective social distancing in America. 

During our walk, Bear, Buster and I were discussing another one of those Rabbi-Kushner-bad-things-to-good-people moral dilemmas. Here’s what I asked the dogs:

“On this lovely sunny Good-ish Friday, where can Bellingham find the silver lining in what is a merely metaphorically dark cloud today?”

If I can’t personally take all the credit for yet another poorly targeted biblical plague, I’d prefer to blame some interesting statistical anomaly. A hypothesis that’s capable of explaining why a classically just God would smite poor charming Bellingham of all places with an extra dose of coronavirus. 

And then the answer came to me. All three answers: 

First, Bellingham is not only home to the nation’s highest proportion of introverts, but the combined introvert-extrovert population of Bellingham also contains the highest percentage of hippie health nuts anywhere outside Berkley, California. That means a freakishly huge number of human beings of all ages are outside exercising, right now.      

Second, Bellingham has a marvelous public park system, with an amazing network of trails. Miles of these trails are sufficiently long and wide to maintain perfect social distancing for everyone at all times, regardless of your unique medical or introversion needs. If you happen to be stuck in an extra infectious community, you want to be where the highest percentage of the population can get exactly as much exercise as they need. This keeps everyone from climbing the walls beyond their capacity.

Third, the little extra oomph that makes optimal community outdoor time possible here is that Bellinghamsters have a unique ability to maintain exactly the perfect CDC-mandated social distance at all times, even on a forest trail crowded with runners, hikers, bikers, skateboarders, stoners, and strollers. 

It takes an inner Pacific Northwest gyroscrope. We all have it. As Pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist David Horsey recently observed, “Suddenly, the notorious ‘Seattle Freeze’ seems quite prudent….”

Click here for more entries from Roger’s Plague Journal

Common Tragedies

Lawyers are terrible at statistics.

It’s not just because most attorneys majored in soft subjects like political science and philosophy. I love mathematics, even though I'm a lifelong English Major. (At least I love mathematics in the abstract.) Good math skills are an important part of thinking like a lawyer.

But statistics are seldom useful when it comes to the fundamental purpose of any legal system:  deciding exactly who to blame for everything.

It’s not just lawyers. Every human brain is terrible at making decisions that involve very small probabilities. Especially my children’s brains.

After three days of school closures and social distancing, my kids still lack empathy about the global impact of coronavirus. So I resorted to Ritz cracker analogies:

Suppose I give you a box containing one hundred identical-appearing Ritz crackers. Assume four of the crackers are coated with an invisible poison that’s fatal after just one bite. How many crackers would you eat?

My son’s immediate response was “I’m young, so I’ll be fine.”

I had to acknowledge the four percent fatality rate is based on the general population. So I gave him a more focused analogy:

Suppose I give you a box containing one hundred identical-appearing Ritz crackers. Assume one of the crackers is coated with an invisible poison that’s fatal to healthy children after just one bite. How many crackers would you eat?

After thinking for a few seconds, he responded “Probably one or two. Considering how many dodgeball games I’ve won.”

Next I tried my analogy on one of my daughters. She stared dreamily off into space, then answered, “I dunno, it depends how hungry I feel.”

My other daughter is addicted to Grey’s Anatomy. She quickly answered “None” in response to my initial question.

When I gave her the one percent fatality version, however, she paused. “I’d eat some, but I’d have Buster lick them first.”

Click here for more entries from Roger’s Plague Journal

Letting off steam

This week I heard complaints about the blog from two loyal readers.

The first (and younger) critic said the posts had all gotten too long. I went back and crunched the numbers, and we have indeed gone from average lengths of 770 and 1,260 words each in May and June, to 1,972 and 1,239 in November and December. Looking at blog traffic statistics, I also realized most people read on tiny phones. 

The second reader said she had no objection to thoughtful pieces about brains, books, and authoritarianism. But she misses the cute anecdotes about single gay dad life I used to post on Facebook more regularly.

Ever the accommodating codependent, I agreed to publish more short notes. Starting with my recent post about the various Star Wars Life Lessons I’ve picked up from forty years of faithful movie attendance. 

You should still expect a couple of more substantial posts to pour out most weeks. Longer essays generally need extra time to percolate.¹ But it’s hard to predict when each will build up enough of a head of steam to propel a final draft to the obviously inept copy editor.²

¹I’ve settled on hydraulic flow as the primary metaphor both for the writing process and for writer’s block. (My favorite author’s farming analogy wasn’t working.) But let’s save that story for later.

²Fortunately, the real editor will wander by to fix everything eventually – but not until after the piece is already published. Anyone with a low tolerance for typos should check back after a couple of hours before reading anything new. [Ed. note: we recommend weak readers wait 24 hours. At least.]

Other essays from "Roger On Writing":

"Watch for Quiet Explosions"  (10/15/19)
“Blaming the Children”  (9/21/18)

“Lilies That Fester”  (3/25/18)

“Steam Heat”  (3/19/18)

“Super Fuzzy Things”  (9/8/17)

“Dear Reader”   (7/22/17)