Bits and pieces

So, first of all, correlation != causation. Everyone got that? Good. Let’s begin.

From the creator of booksthatmakeyoudumb comes another site (chart really), musicthatmakesyoudumb. This guy pulled data from Facebook (back when it still had networks) of the top books listed by students in different networks, and crossed that with freely available data of average SAT score at each college he looked at. The result, a very non-scientific chart of listening and reading habits correlated to “IQ” (ie SAT scores). A few “facts” gleaned from a glance.

Lil Wayne is Bad For Your IQ. Hip Hop too, but it’s not as bad as jazz (gasp), or, even, GOSPEL.

In other news, jazz is correlated with low IQ. Say what? Jazz seems to me one of the most intellectually demanding genres of music possible, requiring constant creativity and a determination to push the boundaries of what constitutes “valid” music. It must be because listening to jazz doesn’t imply you actually create it.

Classic rock is better than rock, which (surprisingly) is better than classical. In fact, the placement of classical music alone makes me doubt the accuracy of this chart, especially when propensity to listen to classical music is often correlated with deeper thinking and concentration capabilities. But a possible explanation for it is that people enjoy putting classical music down as their favorite music more for the appearance, rather than as a true reflection of their musical tastes. Cause if you care enough to put down actual composers, I bet the correlation with higher SAT scores will be much more significant.

It’s somewhat fitting that Ben Folds is coming to MIT. He’s listed as correlated with high SAT scores (relatively speaking), only beaten out by Guster, Counting Crows, Sufjan Stevens, and Beethoven.

What college was so indie that they enjoyed Sufjan Stevens en masse to the point that he’s on the top music list for the school? Exclusive small liberal arts colleges, I’m looking at you. Only y’all would perpetrate such a thing, which would explain how he’d be listed so high.

It’s a waste of time to comment on anything besides the tails of this distribution. The data for artists huddled in the center must be so rife with error that predicting their actual averages would be a bitch and a half (read: impossible).

Technically, it’s not the act of listening that makes a difference. Just be careful not to enjoy any of your music too much and you’ll be perfectly in the clear.

The moral of this story? There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Songs You Used To Love

The title says it all. They’re songs that you’ll hear and realize you listened to back in the day. For example, the most recent two are Queen - We Are The Champions and Vertical Horizon - Everything You Want.

But what I’m loving even more is the Copy Cats music blog. It’s a blog completely and exclusively devoted to covers and remixes of songs. I’m currently loving Damien Rice’s cover of Creep. The theme of the blog seems to be “hit or miss,” as some of these songs are just terrible. But I still really appreciate hearing artists take old classics and spin them in different ways. The downtempo cover of Danger Zone is unexpected, and yet it still works.

So right now I’m studying for my 21M.250 final tomorrow. Part of the final involves listening to different snippets of music, and being able to determine who composed the piece, as well as the title of the work, movement, and section (as applicable). So for the last 3 or 4 hours, I’ve been listening to romantic orchestral music nonstop, and at this point, Schubert’s “Great” 9th Symphony, Brahms’ 4th Symphony, and a number of other works are pretty well ingrained in my head. But the thing that makes this test so much easier to study for is the fact that so much of this music is simply breathtaking. And here it is, the piece that made me take a break from studying to blog:

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, by Claude Debussy

Just listen to it once, and then try to tell me that isn’t simply beautiful. The prevailing trend in music at this time was towards bigger and louder. Take, for example, the gigantic orchestras Mahler demanded. Lots of modulation was popular as well. In a sense, Debussy is rebelling against these trends, and instead says, “We don’t need a huge orchestra. We don’t even need most brass instruments, or percussion. And if you insist on having them, then give me tiny cymbals and horns. Nor do we need drastic key changes. Let’s just let the music guide what happens–if it happens to sit in one key, then that’s just fine.” And the amazing thing is, despite seriously bucking the trend, he creates a veritable masterpiece.

Hosed beyond all belief (6.854 due today, a makeup 6.UAT presentation I’m doing today, a 6.UAT dry run for Tuesday, a 14.32 analysis due Wednesday, a 21M.250 Final on Wednesday, 3 concert reports left and listening makeups, a 14.12 pset due Thursday, along with the 18.700 pset due Thursday). but hey, if you listen to this music, you can’t help but smile.

And an mp3 of the song:
Winter Wonderland by Jason Mraz

Posted here for your listening pleasure. I’ve listened through about half of it so far, and I’m loving what I’m hearing. The new cuts and mixes add a whole ‘nother level to the already-amazing Cross. Phantom Part 1.5 has the first infectious-as-hell hook, and the energy doesn’t let up through the entire set, even through the slow reverb-heavy D.A.N.C.E. remix. Grab it. And if you want Cross, just tell me and I’ll get you a copy.

I get why people have been saying that they’re going to post every day. This month is NaBloPoMo, which means I’m going to blog daily. Every day, at 12 midnight (unless there is some unforeseen circumstance), I will blog about something. It could be about my day. It could be about world peace. It could be about algorithms. It could be about some cute girl I met that day. You’ll have to keep reading to find out.

My thoughts are all over the place right now (possibly because it’s 4:48am and I should be sleeping), so this post will not be the most cohesive thing ever.

So right now I’m writing up my 6.854 pset (6.854 being advanced algorithms). I just did this problem where you can simply continuously increasing the parameters until the situation is optimized. It may not sound like much, but it’s rather amazing that this simple algorithm is able to solve this specific problem, when typically something a lot more complex (such as say, the Ellipsoid algorithm) is needed to solve the most general case.

I expanded my music collection further today. I finally got the entirety of Future Sex/Love Sounds, along with Air’s Talkie Walkie and Pocket Symphony. I now have more music to throw into my mix whenever I want. I’ve realized that listening to Air while doing problem sets is not a very good combo when you’re sleepy as well.

My weekend was pretty good. After getting up and going to a single 14.32 (Econometrics) recitation on Friday, I went home to Next House and bummed around a bit. I packed, making sure I had everything, and then began journeying to New York. So first, I walked downstairs and headed out the door of Next House to go and try to catch the Tech Shuttle. As I stepped outside, I realized that, hey, I have a bike. And I realized that being at the T stop that much faster more than outweighed the chance that my bike would get stolen if I parked it overnight outside. So I went up, grabbed my bike, and biked over to the Kendall T stop. The rest of my journey was relatively uneventful, except that I just barely made it onto the Chinatown Bus (good ol’ Fungwah). I got into the station just when they called out “Last call for 5:30,” and I looked at my cell–sure enough, 5:30. I just resigned myself to taking the next one. So I strolled through South Station towards the bus terminal, and then saw that the Fung Wah was still there, ran to the ticket booth, got the usual $15 ticket, and ended up being basically the last person on the bus. Not bad.

On the trip up, I said I’d do some 6.854, and read through my 6.UAT negotiation handout. Nope. I did neither. But I did read a fair amount of Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start, so I was semi-productive. The rest of the time I simply slept. Around 9:30, there was the customary McDonald’s stop that these buses always make. I had just eaten the two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I had packed myself, but I wasn’t going to pass this up. I might as well go down, grab some food, drink some water, and go to the bathroom while I was there. Turns out that the McDonald’s monopoly promotion is going on right now. I got a big Mac, peeled off the stickers, and realized that one of them was an instant win Medium Fries coupon, which I promptly used. Neither the big Mac nor the fries were particularly appetizing, actually, but at least they filled my stomach.

Travelling alone means I have a lot of time to my thoughts, and a lot of time just staring blankly into space.

Catch-22 is such a good book, by the way. I really like how the writing flips and writhes, never being quite what you expect. It somehow pops between absurd and real with equal aplomb, and at the same time makes you feel the tragedy of Yossarian’s hilarious situation. Hella strange, but it makes it work brilliantly. Read it! I basically worked my way through one chapter a day, buy especially towards the end, I was staying up to read through chapter after chapter after chapter because it was so enthralling. It’s one of the best $5.48 I’ve ever spent. Now I need to figure out what to read next. That’ll be another blog post. I realize now that this post has gone through several moods and several topics. *shrugs* The posts will ideally become more cohesive and less schizo as the month wears on. But it’s still easier than reading Ulysses, or The Sound and the Fury.