Like a fallen tree in the forest

[diatribein]

If you write a post on a Saturday night right before a fun communal party-type holiday so no one reads it does it really exist?

I'm putting that theory to the test. Mike likes it when I post on weekends anyway, so I'll write something despite not really having much to add to the blogosphere tonight. Well, except for the word blogosphere of which

Comments

[pebblerocker]

I add a lot of words to my spellchecker to get rid of annoying red squiggles. Names of Greek gods, mainly... I have noticed the red line has a hissy fit whenever I type "online" or "internet" (which it thinks should be capitalised) but for some reason I keep putting up with that hoping it will catch up with the times eventually.

I have a list somewhere of funny words the spellchecker gave me when I typed "tahini". It included "rhinitis" and "farthing".

[metawidget]

Likewise - StatCan and survey statistics in general have a lot of jargon that doesn't appear in the computer spell-check dictionary, and compounded upon that is the rampant bilingualism - my e-mails may be largely in French with a reference to a document written in English or vice-versa: the spell-checker gets a lot of exercise at work. Despite a detect-language feature, it often has some odd suggestions when the switching is mid-sentence.

I don't mind training my spell-checker though: I'd wind up doing it in my typical neatnik fashion for people and place names in any case.

[diatribein]

And here I thought StatCan dealt solely with numbers. What good is a mathematics degree with so much verbiage? I'm for more numbers in statistics.

[metawidget]

Hey, we have to describe what we did to the numbers (for reproducibility) and what they mean (for analysis) -- and we've got a few floors full of social science types concluding stuff the numbers :)

Still, if you want numbers, we have numbers. I test stuff on 2.6 million numbers at a time, with one of the projects I'm working on.

[paris365]

Word.

[diatribein]

The tree must have fallen!