Notice anything different about my report on The Price Is Right for this month? No, I didn't think you would, but there's actually a substantial change behind the scenes. I figured out how to organize a spreadsheet which keeps track of all the data I want in my Showcase Showdown tracking, and now instead of scrawling out my numbers on grid paper I'm entering it on my iPad. I'll explain later why this could be at all any kind of effort. There's all kinds of neat things like colored cells and the automatic adding of spins together so as to reduce slightly the number of typos I make. It's all exciting, but only to me. So for March, which here runs from the 28th of February through the 1st of April, with two episodes lost for the start of March Madness, the Showcase winners were:
| First | Second | Third | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Month | 15 | 18 | 13 |
| Season | 81 | 89 | 78 |
On the one hand I'm pleased to see my ancient and long-discredited hypothesis that being the second spinner is advantageous getting some support. On the other hand, I thought that hypothesis was discredited; what is it doing here standing out reasonably intact? You know?
| No Overspins | One Overspin | Two Overspins | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo Win | 60 | 30 | 5 |
| Tied Win | 65 | 55 | - |
| Triple Tie | 80 | - | - |
The lowest-winning-spin totals, as you see, barely moved down this month, with only the lowest solo win, untied, dropping at all, and that by a nickel. The lowest winning tie, against one overspin, stayed stable, for what that's worth.
Trivia: In 1897 Guglielmo Marconi demonstrated for the Italian navy the use of his wireless telegraphy; however, the spark gap equipment he had took five seconds to clearly register a single dot or dash, with the result that a letter such as ``H'', dot-dash-dot-dot-dot, took more than half a minute to send. Source: Signor Marconi's Magic Box, Gavin Weightman.
Currently Reading: Great Science Fiction Of The 20th Century, Editors Robert Silverberg, Martin H Greenberg.
