Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me! Taping in Seattle

Note: I had written this post a few days after going to the Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! taping at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle back on September 18, 2014. Unfortunately, it got stuck in the blog submission queue and didn’t get published until today.

When I heard that Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! was coming to the Paramount Theatre in Seattle, I knew that I had to find a way to get tickets to the show and go to the show. I decided to reach out to my Wait Wait contacts in Chicago and was able to pull the trigger on getting a pair of tickets as an insurance policy. Fortunately, my contacts came through with a pair of tickets, as tickets to the show sold out extremely quickly. Once I got confirmation, I promptly put in my request for a few days off of work and booked a hotel.

I started putting feelers out there to find out which panelists would be at the show. From the outset, I already knew that Luke Burbank would be on the panel and he had mentioned that Paula Poundstone would also be on the panel. It wasn’t until the week building up to the show did I find out that the third panelist would be Maz Jobrani. On the day of taping, Rick Steves announced that he would be the Not My Job guest for the show.

As I was walking to the theatre with my mum, after having dinner with friends, I ran into Brian Babylon and chatted with him for the first of a number of occasions that night. I picked up the pair of tickets to the show, which put me nearly in the center of the main level (thankfully with an aisle seat). As people were getting to their seats, I saw Brian sitting across the aisle and Rick Steves ended up sitting right behind me up to when he went on stage for the Not My Job segment.

During the “Who’s Bill This Time?” segment, the gang had to record two versions of the Scotland independence vote to cover both potential outcomes. That said, they didn’t record a version in the case that the vote when to a recount. The discussion of the Scotland vote caused all three of the panelists to hilariously discuss the peculiarities of what is the United Kingdom versus Great Britain, and whether something was part of the United Kingdom and/or Great Britain, throughout the entire taping of the show. There was another great moment in which there was a discussion about fanny packs and Paula mentioned if a fanny pack worn up front ought to be called a “dicky pack”.

Paula Poundstone autographed by Wait Wait notebook
Paula Poundstone autographed by Wait Wait notebook

After the show, Brian got both my mum and I into the after-show meet-and-greet for those with VIP tickets. There, I got to meet and say “hello” to Maz Jobrani, who I met in person for the first time. Both of us also got to meet and chatted with Paula Poundstone and Luke Burbank. Paula was kind enough to sign my little notebook that I have used to record notes and stats for that taping.

At the post-show meet-and-great, one of the directors from KPLU and Peter Sagal thanked the people there and Peter discussed the visit to Seattle and the taping. Peter also introduced me to the group as the Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me! “stats guy”. A number of those in attendance came to me and asked about the stats page and asked a couple of stats questions. I was also able to meet and talk to Rick Steves.

I want to thank the guys at Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me! for the tickets and for such an awesome show. I can’t wait for the gang to come back to Portland, Oregon!

Just a Few Site Updates for Version 3.2.2

Over the past several weeks, I have been testing out a few minor updates to the panelist statistics presentation and adding a few additional statistics. When the latest version of the site was launched, each panelist had their lowest, highest and average score listed in their stats information box (as shown below).

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The updated panelist stats information box not only uses more common statistical names (min, max and mean), I have now included the population standard deviation of the panelist’s scores and the sum of all of the panelists scores.

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The other minor addition to the site is the search page that allows you to search the site by way of a customized Google search. The link to the search page is found in the upper-left corner of the page and can also be reached via this link.

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New Graphs Are Now Here on the Wait Wait Stats Page

In the previous Stats Page update blog post, I mentioned that the next version of the Stats Page will include changes to the panelist graphs to improve how they look and to make them more interactive.

Below is a current example of the two graphs that are currently generated for each of the panelists, one showing the breakdown of the panelist’s scores and the other showing the panelist’s scores over time. The charting library used to generate the graphs have some serious limitations, including poor font rendering and the graphs are static (a scheduled job generates the graph image files on a regular basis).

Current Panelist Stats Graphs
Current Panelist Stats Graphs

The other problem with the graph showing a panelist’s score over time is it becomes harder to read as more data points are added.

To solve all of the problem with the current graphs, I went back to the drawing board and started to research various charting and graphing libraries.Continue reading“New Graphs Are Now Here on the Wait Wait Stats Page”

Host and Scorekeeper Updates on Wait Wait Stats Page

I have updated the Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! Stats Page with a couple of minor changes that correct how some of the hosts and scorekeepers are displayed. Originally, the code would highlight the listed host and/or scorekeeper if the host was not Peter Sagal and the scorekeeper was not Carl Kasell.

That code needed to be changed to reflect that Dan Coffey was the original host of the show prior to its reboot, where Peter Sagal took over hosting duties. Also, with Bill Kurtis becoming the official judge and scorekeeper of the show after Carl Kasell becoming “Scorekeeper Emeritus,” the code also needed to reflect that change. The code also had to handle the fact that Bill Kurtis was a guest judge and scorekeeper for a period of time before becoming the official judge and scorekeeper.

So, to handle some of those exceptions to the rule, the database tables listing who was the host and scorekeeper of each show were modified to include a new field denoting whether or not the host or scorekeeper for a particular show is a guest or not. The code for the page was updated to use that flag to determine how to render the name of the host and scorekeeper for each show.

This change has been something that I had been considering a bit before Carl Kasell’s final show as official judge and scorekeeper. I finally had some free time to think about how to implement and make the change public.

The next major version of the Stats Page will see another major change in the panelist scoring charts. The goal is to make the charts more interactive and more useful as more and more panelist data is entered into the database.

Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me! at the Warner Theatre

On Thursday, May 15th, NPR and WBEZ held a very special live taping of Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! at the Warner Theatre in Washington, DC. The live taping marks Carl Kasell’s final show as the the official judge and scorekeeper of Wait Wait. With huge thanks to Ian Chillag and the Wait Wait team, they had set aside two tickets to the show for me.

Originally, a friend of mine that works for a certain automaker with US headquarters around Herndon, VA with a logo that contains a set of four rings, was going to go with me. Unfortunately, work beckoned and he was not able to attend. So, I put the call out to DC Tens fans (for those that don’t know: Tens are fans of a certain podcast called “Too Beautiful To Live”, hosted by a certain Wait Wait guest host and fairly regular panelist: Luke Burbank) and one of the fans called dibs on the ticket.

With that set, I then planned my visit to Washington, DC to coincide with the Wait Wait taping. I landed in DC on Tuesday afternoon and used Wednesday as the day to do the “touristy” thing, including visiting the National Mall and visiting most of the Smithsonian museums surrounding the Mall. After coming back from the Mall, I stopped by the Warner Theatre to pick up the two tickets at Will Call and saw that they were for the Pit section, row BB. Not knowing the venue very well, I thought that the seats would be around halfway back in the lower level.

So, after scouring the Interwebs for seating charts, my jaw dropped to the floor and my heart started to race: it was two rows back from the stage!


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Continue reading“Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me! at the Warner Theatre”

Wait Wait Stats Page Version 3.1 is Now Live

I have been working on a couple of changes and new features for the Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! Stats Page over the past weeks and decided to publish the changes the weekend that Carl Kasell’s farewell show airs. Now that that day has arrived, I have finished making last minute changes and pushed out the new version.

The first change to the Stats Page now includes Carl Kasell’s new title, SE for Scorekeeper Emeritus, included after his name on the Stats Page. Once an official announcement has been made on the long-term replacement for Carl, I will make the necessary code changes to reflect that.

Carl Kasell, Scorekeeper Emeritus
Carl Kasell, Scorekeeper Emeritus

The new feature that I have added to the Stats Page is the addition of a new graph for each of the panelists. The existing graph displays a scoring breakdown for each panelist (if the panelist has any scoring information available) and the new graph provides a scoring timeline for each panelist. The leftmost point on the graph represent’s the panelist’s first appearance on the show and the plot continues to the right to the panelist’s most recent appearance. At this point, if a panelist has not appeared on Wait Wait for at least three times (and scoring information is available), a graph is not displayed.

Example of a Score Graph for Mo Rocca

Along with the new graph, the graph generation scripts creates two sizes for each graph: the normal size version and a larger version. The larger version is available when you click or tap on the graph on the Panelists page and will open in a new window or tab.