Deshawn from Survivor 41, the first player (hopefully the last) to ever participate in the “Do or Die” twist In season 41 of Survivor, there were a lot (and I mean A LOT) of new twists introduced into the game. One twist that sparked a lot of conversation, analysis, and mathematical breakdown was something called the “Do or Die” twist. The twist worked as follows. At the...
I recently participated in a white elephant party for work. This type of holiday event is also known as a Yankee Swap or Bad Santa gift exchange. As I was participating in this event, I started thinking about what’s the optimal strategy? Should I steal or open something new? How much does my position in the gift selection order impact my chances of getting a good gift? To answer these deep...
It’s time for another season of Survivor and that means I’ll be back each week to discuss what machine learning has to stay about the potential winner of the season. If this is your first time here, you can read all about the details of the project here. The quick and dirty version is that we use volunteers to collect data about player behaviors on an episode by episode basis, then...
In my last post, I discussed a large Survivor-related project that I’m involved in where we have volunteers code episodes of Survivor by the observed behaviors that player’s exhibit. You can read all about that project here. One of the potential applications of this crowdsourced data is using machine learning models to predict winners. All the nitty gritty details are in my original...
A little over a year ago, I was contacted by Angie Caunce about participating in a data project related to Survivor. If you are a fan of RHAP, you’ll likely know who Angie is. She is the creator of The System, or the Angie Caunce Character Types, which I have written about before. I also built a website for this system CaunceTypes where you can explore every player of Survivor based on her...
For the past three and a half years, each week, I’ve been listening to the Seinfeld Recap Podcast. If you are unfamiliar with the podcast, each week, the hosts, Rob Cesternino and Akiva Wienerkur, recap one episode of Seinfeld. Our Seinfeld Recap heroes, Rob and Akiva, are closing in on the series finale and I wanted to do something special to commemorate the occasion. Starting in episode...
I am a huge Harry Potter fan. In fact, I’m having a Harry Potter-themed wedding in just a few weeks. Like many things I love, I like to completely overthink and overanalyze every detail. In the spirit of this, I took a deep dive into analyzing how hard would it be to make it in the wizard sport of Quidditch? Quidditch as a Professional Sport Quidditch is the most popular sport in the...
News AF is a weekly podcast discussing the Internet’s best actual factual news stories hosted by Rob Cesternino, Tyson Apostol, and Danny Bryson. The best way to sum up the show is with this review from iTunes by Rogonalog: If you need news, look no further! News expert Danny Bryson and his two sidekicks, Survivor contestants “Boston Rob” Cesternino and Andrea Boehlke, break...
The Seinfeld Recap Podcast, hosted by Rob Cesternino and Akiva Wienerkur, is closing in on episode 150 of Seinfeld. At the time of this writing, they have released 147 episodes. With less than 40 episodes to go, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at some of the great “hot takes” that have come out of discussing Seinfeld for nearly 240 hours. These hot takes come from both...
It’s been a little while since I’ve written up any of my projects on the blog and after listening to the Seinfeld Recap Podcast this week, I thought I was overdue for a write up. If you are unfamiliar with the podcast (then honestly, I don’t know what you are doing here), each week, the hosts, Rob Cesternino and Akiva Wienerkur, recap one episode of Seinfeld. A listener recently...
