Retrospective: What 2020 Meant For Wait Wait Stats (and More)

2020 has been a very challenging year for everyone and it has required things to adapt and change as the ongoing human malware event continues to have an impact on us. I have been fortunately enough to continue working from home and have been able to further improve and expand on the Stats Page, Reports and Graphs sites. Some of the changes are behind the scenes updates and others are more visible. Wait Wait in 2020 Due to the requirements of social distancing and limiting travel, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! canceled live tapings of their show and went back to their roots of recording the show from remote (home) studios. Before the human malware event, I had actually planned to travel to Chicago to attend a live taping on my 40th birthday in April. Part of the plan also included giving me the …

Interactive Wait Wait Stats Infographic

A couple of months ago, Erin Flachsbart sent me a message asking if I would be interested in helping out a project that she would like to start up. The project was to create an interactive infographic that was based on the Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me! panelist and show stats that I have been collecting (and continuing to collect) over the years. Over the course of the project, I provided Erin with database schema and database backups that she can go through and play with the data. I also provided some insights, and apologies for not having a lot of back data on panelist bluffs and show location information. With the project completed, Erin posted the awesome interactive infographic on her site at: mataglap.com/waitwait. I’m humbled to be able to assist in providing data and insights for the project. Thanks Erin!

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). 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 …

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. 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 …