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I love this site.Today's topic:http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=955
Quote from: Reginald McGraw on April 01, 2008, 03:29:42 PMI love this site.Today's topic:http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=955 hahahaha... Johnathan Swift was a badass.
In my seminars, I enjoy teaching analytics because the fun is in finding effective and memorable methods to help people understand the concepts. One of my favorites is an analysis of the Red-Shirt Phenomenon in Star Trek.What? You don't know about the Red Shirt Phenomenon? Well, as any die-hard Trekkie knows, if you are wearing a red shirt and beam to the planet with Captain Kirk, you're gonna die. That's the common thinking, but I decided to put this to the test. After all, I hadn't seen any definitive proof; it's just what people said. (Remind you of your current web analytics strategy?) So, let's set our phasers on 'stun' and see what we find...The basic stats:The Enterprise has a crew of 430 (startrek.com) in its five-year mission. (Now, I know that the show was only on the air for 3 years, but bear with me. 80 episodes were produced, which gives us the data to build from.) 59 crewmembers were killed during the mission, which comes out to 13.7% of the crew. So, that will be our overall conversion rate, 13.7%.Data Segmentation:However, we need to segment the overall mortality (conversion) rate in order to gain the specific information that we need: * Yellow-shirt crewperson deaths: 6 (10%) * Blue-Shirt crewperson deaths: 5 (8 %) * Engineering smock crewperson deaths: 4 * Red-Shirt crewperson deaths: 43 (73%) So, the basic segmentation of factors allows us to confirm that red-shirted crewmembers died more than any other crewmembers on the original Star Trek series.However, that's only just simple stats reporting - ready for some analysis?In-depth Analysis:Analysis involves asking questions about the data. Analysis attempts to bring reason and cause to the reported data in order to find why something is happening. With that data, one can improve the situation based on the intelligence gained from the analysis.Q: What causes a red-shirted crewman to die? * On-board incident - 42.5% * Beaming down to the planet - 57.5% There were also many fights during the mission; on the Enterprise, on planets, and various space stations. The fights were also divided between alien races or crazed crewmen (usually wearing red shirts). * There were 130 fights over 80 episodes. * 18 of the 130 fights resulted in a fatality. * 13 of the 18 fatal fights resulted in a red-shirt fatality. Q: what was the rate of red-shirt casualties? * 18 red-shirt fatality episodes: * 8 multiple fatality occurrences; involving 34 red-shirted crewmen. * 9 single red-shirt fatality situations. It was found that red-shirted crewmembers tended to die in groups. In 17 red-shirt fatality episodes, 8 were multiple incidents, 9 were single incidents. In a little less than 50% of the fatal red-shirt situations, multiple crewmen were vaporized.Q: What factors could increase/decrease the survival rate of red-shirted crewmen?Besides not getting involved in fights, which usually proved fatal, the crewmen could avoid beaming down to the planet's surface, which is inherent to their end. However, that could result in a court-martial for failure to obey orders.Besides not beaming down, another factor that showed to increase the survival rate of the red-shirts was the nature of the relationship between the alien life and captain Kirk. When Captain Kirk meets an alien woman and "makes contact" the survival rate of the red-shirted crewmen increases by 84%. In fact, out of Captain Kirks' 24 "relationships" there were only three instances of red-shirt vaporization.The caveat to this is when Captain Kirk not only meets the local alien women, but also starts a fight among alien locals. The combination of these events has led to the elimination of 4 crewmembers (3 red-shirts).Here are the statistics:Red Shirt Death episodes = 18Episodes with fights = 55Probability of a fight breaking out = 70%Kirk "conquest" episodes = 24Kirk "conquest" + fights = 16Kirk "conquest" + red shirt casualty= 4Red shirt death + fight + Kirk "conquest" = 3And the data trends;Probability of a red-shirt casualty= 53%14% of fights ended in a fatality (with a 72% chance the fatality wore a red shirt)Probability of a red-shirt "incident" when Kirk has a "conquest" = 12%The red-shirt survival rate is slightly higher when Kirk meets women than when a fight breaks out. This trend necessitates the question: How often did Captain Kirk "meet" women? In 30% of the missions.As the data shows, Captain Kirk "making contact" with alien women has an impact on the crew's survival. The red-shirt death rate is higher when a fight breaks out than when Kirk meets a woman and a fight breaks out. Yet the analysis shows that meeting Kirk meeting women only happens in 30% of the missions.Conclusion:We can reliably improve the survivability of the red-shirted crewmen by only exploring peaceful, female-only planets (android and alien females included).
