Wednesday Open Thread

Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. I just this week would end. I’m tired of the debt ceiling fight. So, let’s talk about other stuff.

This is pretty cute. A web analytics firm demonstrates statistics using Star Trek, in this case the probability that a red-shirted crewman will die.

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.

Go read the whole thing to get the in-depth statistics about how the crew members died and how to improve crew member survival.

The title of this story might be amusing, but the underlying story is not: “Serial Butt Slasher Sought In Virginia.”

One man may be responsible for slashing at least five women on the butt, according to Fairfax County police.

In the most recent attack, an 18-year-old woman was shopping at Forever 21 inside the Fair Oaks Mall at 5:30 p.m. Monday when she was distracted by clothing falling over. She told police that she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her butt and realized she’d been cut through her denim shorts with a box cutter or razor.

The atttacks began in February. In each attack, the victims have been women in their late teens or early 20s at retail stores. In each case, the stabbing follows some sort of distraction.

Before the victim realizes what has happened, the attacker has calmly walked away without creating a scene, police said.

Right now he’s not causing much damage. Let’s hope he doesn’t escalate into really hurting people.