I have a lot of pet peeves. So many that this is the second time I’ve written about them. The first was three and a half years ago, when I vented about a host of things. Click here.
I am not finished.
Other peeves involve people who don’t wait for their turn. Like those who drive on the shoulder of the road to bypass traffic or those who try to get on the plane before their group is called.
Another would be towns that allow trees and bushes to grow over road signs without trimming them, so a stop sign turns into a deadly game of Russian roulette, guessing whether cross traffic will stop, or not.
Major League Baseball eliminated several of my baseball “peeves” by adding the pitch clock, limiting throws to first base by the pitcher, and the thing no one misses: unlimited mound visits.
Dramatic overstatements bug me, like when someone refers to a book that sold three million copies last year and 500,000 this year, meaning “no one buys it anymore.”
I’ve received no counseling because pet peeves have become a hobby. A twisted hobby, but a hobby, nevertheless. Some people are into gardening, but I am into pet peeves.
One thing I really hate are “excerpted” graphs, where the vertical Y-axis is set to a narrow range of numbers to dramatize what otherwise is not dramatic at all. A relatively small daily temperature variance over a week in a simple line graph can make it seem as if the end of the world is near. The same works for the stock market, where we zoom in on one small piece of data.
Zoom out, and it is not worth the effort to give it any attention. Social media has trained us to inject drama into everything, even where none exists.
Book publishing makes sense only when viewed over a long period, from various perspectives and altitudes.
No one reads anymore, except for the hundred million people who do. Traditional publishers are not acquiring good books anymore, except for the hundreds of thousands they do acquire each year.
The one thing that never changes in book publishing is the time it takes to write, to build an audience interested in your work, and to make it all work well. Things are measured in years, so if you are in a hurry, you’d better think of a different way to communicate what is on your mind. Book publishing is a “zoomed out” industry where daily ups and downs have little influence on the big picture.
An individual publisher might have dozens, or even hundreds, of new books at various stages of publication at one time. For an author, one week of ups and downs with their manuscript might seem like a nerve-wracking experience; but zoom out, and it’s just another week for the publisher in what is a multiyear process.
In fact, you could apply a “zoomed-out” perspective to all of life, where big truths are omnipresent, regardless of whether you have a good or bad week.
Just don’t get me started on bicyclists and traffic laws.
NASCAR nurtured my pet peeve
with their upcoming TV plan,
and I think I’m gonna leave
just because I darn well can.
Now you’ve gotta pay to see
almost every single race.
Maybe that’s what has to be
in the modern marketplace,
but I can’t justify the cost
(there’s better uses for my cash),
and so what these folks have lost
is some Asian trailer trash
who once cared about their game
‘fore being kicked away in shame.
Yes, I’m Asian, and yes, I live in a double-wide. Proud on both counts.
Andrew, be loud and proud, right? haha!
Good article that triggered my quantitative sensibilities. Here it comes… 🙂
A zoomed-in X-axis in graphs (usually time) is just as bad. Any sense of context in time is lost. For example, political ads showing a couple months of gas prices, unemployment, or whatever. They should show a couple decades worth to know what today’s number means.
This also applies to things like our daily weight on a scale. Daily variation is normal and uncontrollable. Long term trends (weight loss or gain) reflect what our life choices are doing. Fasting or diet pills or unhealthy means can drop daily measurements. But better food choices, more sleep, less stress, and adding exercise can drop long term measurements. Meeting a daily word count goal is less important than developing an efficient process for generating edited words that makes the most of writing time. Putting in more time each day to meet goals will meet goals…to a point. But improving your process will generate more quality edited words in the long run for a given effort.
And don’t get me started on percentages. Is a month to month change of unemployment from 4% to 5% a 1% increase? Or is it a 20% increase? It usually depends on who’s quoting numbers and their political leanings.
Or when percentages are combined with statistically normal and expected random variation. City X with population of 100K had 10, 12, and 8 homicides in successive years for a 20% increase!!! followed by 33% drop!!! Makes for great clickbait headlines and political fundraising memes.
Or the initial reporting of cumulative COVID cases where every new case became a new record high. I’m sure addicting people to watching the rolling count on various news sources was from the media’s dedication to the public good and not to generate advertising dollars.
Or survivor bias. Rather than define it and try to explain it, here’s a few examples. Writing a book titled “How 20 people won the lottery: And 10 steps you can take to win too!!!” Such a book does little more than say buy more tickets for more chances to win. Or “How to create viral YouTube content!!” I make this comment mathematically speaking as an analyst with a physics degree. The numbers of lottery winners and viral content creators follow a power law distribution—a few jackpot winners and a mass of non-winners. Most people don’t have an intuitive sense of how a power law distribution works.
Unfortunately, similar math applies to a book or course titled “How 20 authors wrote best-sellers: 10 steps to follow.” I don’t want to know about the person who became a best-selling author after taking a particular writing class (who might have accomplished this without the class). I want to know what the book or class does for the masses of average people taking it, not a few subjective testimonials and implied promises. Improving craft and learning the business definitely move one up the power law curve, but I’ve yet to see anything rigorous that explains how to write a best-seller that is not mathematically equivalent to buying more lottery tickets and hoping you win before you run out of resources (i.e. writing time).
In the long run, the development of efficient quality writing skills and process increase a writer’s reach. A writer can generate much more quality content for a given effort.
And then my final quantitative pet peeve for now, the so-called ratings systems like “The 10 best places to retire” or “The best 10 anything” lists. Or the damage to higher education inflicted by US News and World Report’s college ranking system. See the chapter in the book “Weapons of Math Destruction” by Cathy O’Neill for a good description of this. The book’s getting out of date now, but would probably be an eye opener for people without a strong quantitative background.
Haha! I love this! So good.
Yes! I was just sounding on Sunday about graphs.
Black sports cars with big “Be Kind” bumper stickers that cross the double yellow line to whip around you at light speed because you’re only going the speed limit.
I’m not sure that was as therapeutic as passing them getting pulled over by the traffic cop, but thanks for this group session anyway.
Hi. I’m a recovering little old man with a cap and I truthfully don’t mind being a curmudgeon. At my age, I think I’ve earned it.
Hey, Ken, I guess we’ve met!
So cool!
A good reminder the process of writing a book, getting published, and selling a book is a marathon not a sprint.
Count me in with the other data geeks with this addition: sample size (such as surveys of American opinion based on a thousand people out of 300 million, or even 175 million likely voters).
Add to that the fact that samples are based on phone interviews. Landline or cell?
And will you pick up from an unfamiliar number?
Since nobody has mentioned this, I will. I am getting more and more peeved by AI, especially all the fake videos and photos being posted on social media. So far they are easy to spot as fakes (just take a look at all the “tsunami” or mass demonstration videos), but I fear that soon they won’t be. And don’t even get me started on the horror of AI “creative writing”.
I can’t imagine the issues that higher education faces with AI and student work.
The AI videos get my pet peeve nerves boiling. I’m home schooling my daughter and like to use videos as examples of natural occurrences, like tsunamis, and it has become an annoying song and dance to find real videos rather than AI ones.
“A relatively small daily temperature variance over a week in a simple line graph can make it seem as if the end of the world is near.”
This made me snort, Dan. Goodness. What IS it with meteorologists?? Have they been trained in hyperbole and adjectives? Do they write their reports themselves or are they given reports to read on the teleprompter?
And don’t even get me started on newscasters and commercials, etc. who use words wrong. My husband is so tired of me yelling at the TV, “That’s not what that word means!!!” Do they really not know the proper definitions of the words they use?
Enjoyed reading your pet peeves. One of mine is cars that zoom past and directly in front of you on the freeway, then zoom over another lane to take the next exit. I feel I’ve seen so many near-misses and these drivers may gain 2 minutes in their rush.
Anyway, yes, writing is a long game. Thanks for reminding us!
*Banger alert* – That’s what the kids would say to warn the masses of primo content.
Brilliant: ‘Zoom out, and it is not worth the effort to give it any attention. Social media has trained us to inject drama into everything, even where none exists.’
hashtag resonate 😉
I think you should take it out on the internet with an open season vent comp, inspired by Chip MacGregor’s bad poetry comp. It might make the bitter pill easier to swallow than the aforementioned game of seriously ridiculously bad-looking roulette 😀