Over the past week, I have been working on adding a few small touches and fixing a few lingering bugs on the soon-to-be-released Wait Wait Stats Page Version 3.0.
One of the small touches that I added was to the graph displaying each panelists’s point spread. The graph now includes the count of number of times a panelist has scored that amount above the corresponding score. Below is what the graph looks like for Alonzo Bodden:
Updated Panelist Information Block
You will also notice that I have also included the score for each panelist appearance listed below the graph when you view the detailed panelist stats and what position the panelist finished.
The other new addition to the each of the show details are arrows next to each host, scorekeeper, panelist and guest that links to their respective details page.
I still have a bit clean-up left to do within the code and last bits of optimization to complete before the site goes live the morning of January 31st.
For over a year, I have been dabbling with new design options for the Wait Wait Stats Page, as well as fighting with the original code to add a few new features that have been requested over the years. In the past two months or so, I finally sat down and started sketching out a new design and working in earnest on wireframes and prototypes. It was one of my New Year’s resolutions to get a new version of the site coded and published.
Looking at the current site, the design is very monolithic with one huge table per year all on one page. That designed worked fairly well when the page only had one or two years of data; but, is failing miserably now with 15 years worth of data.
Current Stats Page
The one design decision that I am thankful of making early on in the current site’s development was to normalize the tables and database. I think that saved my sanity by the time I needed to add additional tables to store additional panelist score breakdown and guest host/guests scorekeepers data. I was also stuck on choosing which web framework to use to build the new site. After a while, I settled down on using a very simple PHP framework and coded the data processing and abstraction on my own.
I would have to say that the biggest requirement that I had for the new Stats Page was to make it mobile friendly and as lightweight as possible. I immediately ditched the idea of using XHTML and embraced HTML5 and CSS 3, plus made all of the page elements modular. As you can see from the screenshots in this preview, the pages were rendered using Chrome running on an iPad.
So on with the tour of the new Wait Wait Stats Page! When you first land on the Stats Page, you’ll immediately see a few of the major changes up front. First, there’s a navigation menu on the left side of the page that will allow you to browse shows by year, view panelist information on its own page, as well as view information about the hosts and scorekeepers. Please note that the “Internal ID” numbers you’ll see in these screenshots will not appear on the live site and are used for debugging purposes only.
Stats Page Version 3.0: Home Page
Instead of inundating you with information from every single show on the main page, you will get to see stats for shows from the past month. You’ll also notice that on pages that display multiple shows at one time, there is now a way to sort the listing based on show date to your liking.
Due to a very recent Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! site redesign on NPR.org, and restructuring of the URLs for shows starting with January 2006, links for those sites on the Stats Page no longer bring up that specific show on NPR’s site.
Up until recently, the URL format for each individual show (starting with the 2006-01-07 show) on NPR.org was:
Until I can work out a way to programmatically generate links to individual shows after 2005 to include that unique identifier, those links will just end up redirecting to the main Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! site on NPR.org.
Ever wonder when was the last time that a panelist came in first place or tied for first after the Lightning Fill-in-the-Blank on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!? Right now, the current version of the Stats Page does not include that information in the “Panelists Statistics” section of the page; but, it is something that I am planning on adding to the next version of the page.
Until then, you can use this page to view that information, which will be updated periodically.
Last Time Each Panelist Has Finished the Lightning Fill-in-the-Blank Round in First Place
Panelist
Show
Adam Felber
2014-01-11
Alison Stewart
2009-01-31
Alonzo Bodden
2013-09-07
Amy Dickinson
2013-04-27
Brian Babylon
2012-03-10
Charlie Pierce
2013-11-23
Claudia Perry
2000-02-12
Evan Smith
2001-11-10
Faith Salie
2013-12-14
Jessi Klein
2013-10-12
Karen Grigsby Bates
2004-03-27
Kyrie O’Connor
2013-12-07
Luke Burbank
2012-11-03
Maz Jobrani
2011-12-17
Mo Rocca
2013-11-16
Nick Hancock
2011-12-24
P.J. O’Rourke
2010-10-30
Patt Morrison
2001-07-14
Paul Provenza
2009-05-09
Paula Poundstone
2013-09-21
Peter Grosz
2013-01-19
Richard Roeper
2005-05-28
Roxanne Roberts
2013-12-21
Roy Blount, Jr.
2013-03-09
Sue Ellicott
2006-09-30
Tom Bodett
2013-05-18
Last Time Each Panelist Has Finished the Lightning-Fill-in-the-Blank Round in First or Tied for First Place
Panelist
Show
Adam Felber
2014-01-11
Alison Stewart
2009-01-31
Alonzo Bodden
2013-09-07
Amy Dickinson
2013-04-27
Angela Nissel
2007-03-31
Brian Babylon
2013-08-03
Charlie Pierce
2013-11-23
Claudia Perry
2000-02-12
Evan Smith
2001-11-10
Faith Salie
2013-12-14
Jessi Klein
2013-10-12
Karen Grigsby Bates
2004-03-27
Ken Jennings
2013-06-01
Kyrie O’Connor
2013-12-07
Luke Burbank
2012-11-03
Maz Jobrani
2013-01-26
Mo Rocca
2013-11-16
Nick Hancock
2011-12-24
P.J. O’Rourke
2010-10-30
Patt Morrison
2001-07-14
Paul Provenza
2010-07-31
Paula Poundstone
2013-11-02
Peter Grosz
2013-01-19
Richard Roeper
2005-05-28
Roxanne Roberts
2013-12-21
Roy Blount, Jr.
2013-06-01
Sue Ellicott
2006-09-30
Tom Bodett
2013-05-18
The data in the above tables were last updated on 2014-01-14 and does not include ties. If a panelist does not appear in either table, it means that that panelists never came in first or tied for first after the Lightning Fill-in-the-Blank round.
First, I want to apologize greatly for not posting anything on this blog for months, particularly updates on the WWDTM Stats Page. Well, there have been several major and minor developments on the Stats Page.
With that said, I had the awesome opportunity to see the Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!special cinecast event at the source, from the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, on 2 May 2013. Thanks to the gang, I was able to score a seat with a direct view of the Wait Wait set, and just a few rows back. This made up for the fact that I couldn’t meet with Peter, Carl, Paula, Tom or Mo before or after the show.
Based on reports from friends that saw the cinecast screened at local theaters, they were able to see my distinctive blue jacket and ogreish build as the camera panned through the audience throughout the show. Due to the excessive amount of time required to get through the Not My Job segment, the Listener Limerick Challenge segment and post-show Q&A did not make it into the cinecast part streamed into the theaters. During the post-show Q&A, I raised my hand and Peter called on me and mentioned that I was the guy that runs the Stats Page. /swoon.
I am, still, very happy that I was able to travel to NYC and see the show. Below are a few photos that I was able to take and actually came out looking pretty good.
I want to thank to the Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! crew for providing me with a ticket and a great seat.
I have finished entering in show descriptions for all Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! shows from the very beginning up to the latest show; as well as, going back and cleaning up the description for the earliest shows.
The next set of statistics that I will start collecting and entering are the Not My Job and panelist scores for the shows that I have audio for. I will work on collecting Bluff the Listener information as well. The latter will be displayed in the next version of the Stats Page.
