Statisticazzi
Statistics is the nightmare of students from all around the world and a monster for people who are convinced they are not good at maths. Most of us truly believe that statistics is a restricted access discipline because dealing with numbers makes us feel uncomfortable and confused.
Lol by Jisoo the Visual
You don’t judge books by their cover, nor should you with science
It is true that understanding pure data can feel overwhelming, but numbers are actually meaning looking for an appealing shape through which to express themselves. And statistics, so to speak, is a stylist aimed at turning the complexity of significant numbers related to trends into useful information; more at hand than we are used to believing. For example, the weather forecast we check before going out relies on statistics. The Spotify wraps we love are determined by stats. Even deciding whether traveling by train or car is a statistical choice. In our collective imagination, though, statistics is regarded as something out of reach. But even numbers, graphs, and data can become friendly when disguised as familiar topics.
There are several kinds of statistics, each of which serves a different purpose that helps the world turn around. And these data can unexpectedly become funny if they are referred to everyday life and hilarious habits people have. That’s exactly what Statisticazzi, an Instagram page born in May 2023, decided to do. Investigating phenomena for their own sake, it posts universally relatable statistics, giving the numbers a voice that creates a deep connection between the data and their audience.
Statisticazzi
Have you ever wondered about the mystery behind the space-time wormhole swallowing your socks after a washing cycle? Maybe not so seriously because you thought to be alone in this battle against a socks-hungry washing machine. But the truth is – according to statistics – that 261,000 socks are left alone every year.
PATH MarenDemant, Fuckingyes.es
41% are lost in the meanders of the washing machine, 16% fall into the balcony of those downstairs, 13% are stolen from a partner who’s trying to reform a pair of similarly colored socks, 7% are dispersed in gyms and dressing rooms, while 23% ends up in those trousers that you’re not going to wear until next winter. It might look useless, but knowing statistically where your socks are likely to end up after a tour in the washing machine not only allows you to feel part of a wider community sharing the same inconvenience, but also it prevents you from being forced to wear odd socks every single day.
Let’s now make another example where a statistical approach to everyday problems can be useful. What about the time we spend looking for things? It might seem negligible, but statistics show us that it’s not the case: we lose 1 day and 17 hours searching for things in vain each year. 73% of which is spent looking for keys in our handbags. Could it be the warning sign of a latent need for more practical bags?
Similarly, statistics reveal how inefficient some parkings are, since we walk on average 4.7 km empty every year to find where we parked our car (especially in shopping centers).
Statistics talking about ourselves
Sometimes statistics also manage to tell us nuances of our everyday lives that go unnoticed when experienced as insiders, but that look hilarious from the outside, telling a lot about us. Did someone ever honk you the horn at a traffic light? If so, what were you doing? If not, were you the horn honker? How much time did you wait before honking? Statisticazzi answered these questions, stating that the average time people wait to honk the horn to the driver in front of them when the traffic light turns green is 1.13 seconds. And that the drivers who don’t immediately go ahead are for the 7% of them sneaking a look at other drivers to judge them, 11% trying to spot the driver who cut them off the road just a few seconds before, 14% thinking about the meaning of their lives, 4% air-drumming or headbanging while listening to music, and 64% overestimating the duration of a red light.
Ariane via Pinterest
This denotes that when we are driving, there are often two moods: we have our heads in the clouds, or we are in an anxious hurry that makes us irascible. Should we just calm down? Statisticazzi also warns us about our monotony. For instance, last Christmas it predicted that 47.9 million terrible pajamas would have been bought as presents, anticipating also the most common circumstantial answers formulated while unwrapping another ugly present. Something like “nice one.” Or “I didn’t have it in this color yet, you know?” “You shouldn’t have…”
So what?
This is to say that statistics can truly help us see things differently, changing the perspective from a first-person point of view to a third person one. Giving us the knowledge an omniscient narrator would have over the story of our lives. And letting us laugh at our strange yet distinctive habits, embracing the funny side of numbers and maths.
