Living With Statisticians

In case you need an update, Tim Krall began college as a math major, took a semester off and went back the following fall to declare his new major of English (Creative Writing) and Theater. Never saw that coming. Lest you think he left math because he didn't like it, wasn't good at it, or has lost his lifelong interest in numbers, brackets, and statistics, let me assure you that is not the case. Most of the random facts coming out of his mouth are numbers related, and we hear a lot of them. When Caroline headed off to college, she was also focused on numbers, and has only a couple more classes left before completing her majors in Statistics and Government. To say she is in her element with the daily briefings would be an understatement.

Thanks to Tim's fascination with Worldometer, we get twice daily updates about the numbers and rankings, both US and worldwide. To keep it interesting, he refers to countries or states rising and falling in the "power rankings," or the upcoming "matchup"  between places with close case counts. He likes to provide details about numbers as related to population size, just in case we have all forgotten how percentages work. He also likes to pronounce it "world-oh-meeter" instead of "world-om-ehter." Which is making Sabine crazy. I'm sure he is doing it just to mess with her.

Caroline is much more interested in charts and graphs from daily updates. Yesterday, during the Gov. Walz briefing, she was thoroughly annoyed with the coverage.

"Ugh! Where's the graph? He is pointing to a graph!"
"You know, they probably only have one camera."
"They should have a split screen!!"

And then:

"Oh, look at that!  See that line? See how flat it is? This is so awesome."
"I do love a good Confidence Interval..."
"Watch this, are you watching this? See how the whole pink box moves over? Isn't that great?"
"I just love this guy..."

And this morning, randomly:

"The best part about the graphs yesterday? That thing where the line showed ICU beds now, then the line for a 24 hour ramp up, then the line for a 72 hour ramp up. That was so awesome!!"

Obviously, we all know none of this is awesome. But, if my kids can find a way to be interested and engaged in the process of getting through the dark days, I think I'll take it.