Study: Chocolate is better than #sex, and sci movies are better than both

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Grandmah Jones

Being an engineer, I tend to disregard most things that most people say most of the time. If they can’t whip out an excel sheet to ’support’ their opinion, then I don’t care. The reason for this is not just because I tend to think my opinion is the best (otherwise, why would it be my opinion), but because data is what we use to test scientific theories. If you can’t test something then it’s not science.  And if it’s not science, then it’s not true.  As serious as this sounds, don’t worry, where I’m going with is anything but.  Unless you take Chewbacca seriously.

The Hypothesis

So I set out to use science to prove once and for all, among other things, that ‘chocolate’ and ’sex’ are awesome, while ‘homework’ and ‘people that are late,’ are awful. That’s a pretty tough thing to do right? Think about it for a second.  Do you love chocolate?  Do you hate homework?  These are, of course, rhetorical questions, because, as I mentioned above, I don’t care what your opinion is.

What I decided I did care about, however, was the cumulative opinion of the world’s population.  So I did what any engineer would do.  I wrote down my hypothesis, drew up plans for a complex experiment, and gathered over 700,000,000 data points… that’s right, seven hundred million data points.  What I’ve created I’m calling The MoviesMusicMayhem Love-Hate Index.

The Background

What I’ve discovered from my experiment is actually quite interesting.  But, first, let me explain in detail (sort of) what I did.  First I went to Google and did an exact phrase search.  An exact phrase search is one in which the phrase you enter into a search engine must appear exactly as typed to show up in the results.  You do this simply by putting quotes around your search.

If you enter just the three words, I love movies, into Google, you get 1,330,000,000 results because google looks for pages that include all three words anywhere on the page in any order (how google actually works).  These results are rather meaningless.

Now, if you put quotes around those three words like this, “I love movies,” Google only returns only 8,000,000 results, presumably from eight million people who love movies. Why else would they have written “I love movies” on a website?

The Experiment

And that brings us to my little experiment.  Assuming that, most of the time, when someone writes the phrase “I love ___,” or “I hate ___,” that they actually do mean they love or hate something, we can start to generalize about how the entire human population feels… about anything.  We can make these gross generalizations because we’re working with the dataset of 700,000,000 webpages where people wrote “I love,” “I like,” and “I hate” on webpages that Google searches.

Now the last thing I have to explain is how I ran my experiment.  First, I searched for “I love,” “I like,” and “I hate.”  I didn’t include a thing that people love or hate, because I just wanted to get an idea of how people feel about the world in general.  How much do they love, like and hate everything.

I wrote down the number of results that Google returned and learned the first surprising thing. There is an overwhelming sentiment of Love on the internet. Of the 700,000,000 results from those three searches, 57% were for “I love,” 31% were for “I like,” and only 12% were for “I hate.”  That’s pretty cool, a little surprising, and a great starting point.

This data is what I’m calling our control, and I’ve used it as the basis for the MoviesMusicMayhem Love-Hate Index.  Simply put, if more people said they “loved” something and fewer said they “hated” that same thing, then that thing will score well, otherwise it scores poorly.  If anyone else finds this interesting, then I’ll clean up my calculations and report them in a later post.

The Data

The Conclusions

Based on the indisputable conclusions drawn below, I am going to try and alter my views of the world. I think this is evidence enough for you to do the same:

1. The “Counting Crows” are loved more than anything else we tested, scoring 85.4 out of a max love of 100.  They are clearly one of the greatest bands of all time.  A later post will review more bands and artists.


2. People really enjoy “Life.”  I have to point out that this data point is misleading.  My intention was to test how people feel about being alive, versus all the other things we experience in the world.  The problem… Life the board game (and maybe Life magazine, but that’s boring).  The only reasonable conclusion we can draw here, is that people really love living and playing Life the game.


3. “Air Fresheners” are fucking awesome, scoring almost as high as the Counting Crows, and coming in just behind “Life”


4. “Sci-fi movies” are equally amazing, and everyone loves them.  They scored the highest of all types of movies on the index, coming in at 62.8.


5. “Chocolate” is apparently enjoyed more than “sex.”  This seems odd, but the data clearly shows it.  I think fatties need to spend a little more time gettin’ it on, and less time stuffing their faces.


6. “Picking [your] nose” while watching “sci-fi movies” is not only loved, but I think it’s fair to say, also ok to be proud about.  Go for it.  Reach in there and dig out some magic.


7. “Movies” in general are enjoyed.  ”Sci-fi movies,” “romantic movies,” and “horror movies” all scored in the love region of the index.


8. “Good movies” scored high with a 61.9 while “bad movies” scored almost average at -5.7.  I didn’t explain this at the beginning but I theorized that “bad movies” would actually score well.  How often do you go to a bad movie on purpose?  All the freakin’ time.  Average seems like an ok place for ‘em.


9. Chewbacca is not loved as I had hoped he would be.  This does not mean that I’m going to stop making the Wookie noise all the time.


10. “Dramatic movies” are stupid, as are “stupid movies” like the new Superman.


11. “Apples” may keep you healthy, but no one really likes them.  Can science please figure something else out.  Is it really too much to ask for something that tastes really fucking good AND lowers your blood pressure and increases lung capacity… or whatever happens when you are healthy.


12. “Lady Gaga” is generally hated, but I’m willing to predict that when we retest in a few years, she will be loved, so ignore this data point for now.


13. “Homework” is just as dumb as we all thought it was when we were kids.


14. “George Bush” is a huge dick.


15. Get a fucking watch.  People that show up late to shit are the worst mother fuckers in the whole world.  They scored a perfect -100 on the Movies Music Mayhem Love-Hate Index.  Seriously.  Please stop being late for things.  You are a god damn loser and everyone wants to kill you.

Rebuttals to my conclusions:

• Data gathered from Google exhibits an intrinsic selection bias because only nerdy losers use the internet. 1) You are currently using the internet and are a nerdy loser. 2) I bet your mom pokes you and your friends on Facebook.


• You didn’t follow proper statistical methods to build your model. 1) There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.  Someone famous said that, so it must be true.


• You are an idiot.  What do you know?  1) I’m certainly bigger than you. 2) I published this first, therefore it’s correct.


• Chewbacca is awesome.  Your index must be broken.  1) I totally agree and am looking into it.


• The Goo Goo Dolls scored a 26.6, suggesting that they are loved, when, in fact, everyone knows that they suck dick.  1) The Goo Goo Dolls do indeed suck dick, so I checked “Sucking Dick” on the index and found that it scores a whopping 72.0, almost as high as picking ones nose, and air fresheners.  As much as I hate them, I guess I have to listen to the Goo Goo Dolls now.  Fuck me.