Wednesday TigerBlog: Thoughts On A Story TB's Friend Todd Sent Him.

Wednesday TigerBlog: Thoughts On A Story TB's Friend Todd Sent Him.

That's a good title, no?

It was yesterday morning when TigerBlog got a text from his friend Todd. The story was from a website called "towardsdatascience.com," and it was about how nearly half of Princeton's senior thesis all-time have a colon in the title.

The story even used a term for this that may or not be made up: titular colonicity. You can insert whatever punchline you wish to insert.

Seriously, here's what it said:
Princeton’s thesis database lists nearly seventy thousand titles, dating from when first establishing the senior thesis in 1926 to the class of seniors who graduated in June. We can use this huge dataset to discover how titular colonicity (yes, there’s actually a term for it) got its start.

The basic premise of the story is that someone or a handful of someones took the time to analyze the Princeton senior thesis database to to see what percentage of the time the author used a colon in the title. This is also broken down by majors.

HERE is the story. It fascinated TB, for some reason.

At first TB thought it was a gag, some sort of parody of a science website. Here were the two main headlines yesterday afternoon:

"Conversational Sentiment Analysis ... Methods for determining sentiment towards named entities" and "Top 5 Mistakes With Statistics In A/B Testing ... A/B tests (a.k.a. online controlled experiments) are widely used to estimate the effect of proposed changes to websites and mobile apps"

Seems on the level.

According to the story, 43 percent of Princeton's all-time senior theses - and there have been 67,359 of them - have had a colon in the title. That's a lot.

TigerBlog has never liked using colons. He much prefers semi-colons, but there's probably not a lot of those in titles.

TB has always loved the senior thesis database, which you can find HERE.

Whose thesis do you want to know about? Bill Bradley?

"On That Record I Stand" – Harry S. Truman's Fight For The Senatorship In 1940. Wait. That's a long dash, not a colon.

Bradley and Truman were both from Missouri. Between them, they'd serve five terms in the U.S. Senate, which is something Bradley couldn't have know when he was figuring out what to write about in 1965.

It would be 13 years between when Bradley would graduate from Princeton to when he was elected to the first of his three terms in the Senate. In between, he'd win two NBA championships with the Knicks, who haven't won one since.

Who else?

How about Rachael DeCecco, who was Rachael Becker when she won the 2003 Tewaaraton Award and led Princeton to its second straight NCAA women's lacrosse championship (and third overall). She's also two weeks away from getting into the US Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

Her thesis?

Depression and the Elderly: A Function of Loss. She's one of those colon people.

When TB went to check on Rachael Becker, he also saw Max Becker, who scored the game-winning goal in overtime against Clarkson in the 2018 ECAC men's hockey championship game, sending the Tigers to the NCAA tournament.

His was this: "Bitcoin: Financial Instrument or Speculative Asset? An Analysis of Bitcoin in the Foreign exchange Market."

You're seeing the trend. 

She's one of three Princeton alums who are going to be inducted in Baltimore on Oct. 18. The other two are Ryan Boyle and Matt Striebel. Colons? Hmmm.

Here's Boyle's: "An Investigation of Meditation: The Influence of Meditation on Stress, Risk-Taking, Creating Thinking, Framing Effects, and Locus of Control."

Here's Striebel's: "Green Lights and Other Forms of Earthly Transcendence: "Anguished Yearning" and the American Dream."

That's a lot of colons for the Hall of Fame.

Surely some random Princeton athlete must not have had a colon.

Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan: "The Social Construction of Sport and Gender: A History of Women in Golf, 1890-1955."

Colon.

Men's soccer head coach Jim Barlow: "Deepening the Chasms: A History of Race Relations in the One Square Mile Paradise of Hightstown, New Jersey."

Colon.

Wait. He finally found one.

Caroline Lind, like Bradley an Olympic gold medalist. Actually Lind won two gold medals, in rowing.

Her title?

"Flow In Rowing."

No colons.

That was fun.