On December 1, 2022, Sight and Sound Magazine released the results of its decennial Greatest Films of All Time Critics’ Poll (“SS Poll”). The key result is that Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles dethroned Vertigo as the “greatest film of all time.”[1] Vertigo had itself dethroned Citizen Kane 10 years earlier. I … Continue reading My 100 Favorite Films…Probably
Category: Measurement
2022 Elections Update: Should I adjust my adjustments?
On September 26, 2022, I published an updated set of projections for who will have the majority in the United States House of Representatives (“House”) following the 2022 elections, as well as who will win the 35 elections for the United States Senate (“Senate”) and 36 elections for governor. Since then, an additional 14 generic … Continue reading 2022 Elections Update: Should I adjust my adjustments?
2022 Emerson College polling: A story in three tables
I first observed an arithmetic Republican lean in Emerson College (“Emerson”) polling in November 2019. Specifically, Emerson College polling of hypothetical 2020 matchups between leading Democrats (Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren) and President Donald J. Trump had shifted 4.7 percentage points (“points”) Republican since September 1, using the Democratic percentage minus the Republican percentage … Continue reading 2022 Emerson College polling: A story in three tables
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part III
In June and September of 2021, I wrote the first two essays in a series on the evolution of the methods I use to rank my favorite tracks (a term I prefer to “songs”). These essays presented the history of the 309 individual “mix” cassettes, videocassettes and CDs I constructed between August 1981 and August … Continue reading Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part III
Tracking the generic ballot polls…and those pesky Undecideds
In May 2017, I launched the “A Wicked Early Look” series with an assessment of Democrats’ 2018 election United States Senate (“Senate”) prospects. The next month I wrote an analogous essay about the gubernatorial elections later that November and in 2018. Borrowing a concept from FiveThirtyEight.com forecasting models, I began to calculate what I call … Continue reading Tracking the generic ballot polls…and those pesky Undecideds
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part II
In late June, I wrote the first in a series of essays outlining the evolution of the methods I use to rank my favorite tracks (a term I prefer to “songs”), beginning with my first-ever mix cassette tape in August 1981. In the interim, however, moving to a new apartment, the ongoing search for a … Continue reading Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part II
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 1
I recently updated a data-based discussion of my cinematic “guilty pleasures,” adding a comparison of “most-acclaimed” and “my favorite” films from a given year or years. In so doing, though, I side-stepped the question of determining with something approaching academic rigor just what my favorite films are, relying solely on my gut to select a … Continue reading Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 1
Measuring Film Quality: Revisiting “Guilty Pleasures”
[This essay was updated on February 6, 2023. The number of films watched multiple times is now 718. I plan to update regularly.] In February 2019, I posed a deceptively simple question: What makes a pleasure “guilty?” To answer this question, I focused on films, specifically those I had seen multiple times. I gathered publicly-available … Continue reading Measuring Film Quality: Revisiting “Guilty Pleasures”
When is a pleasure “guilty?”
I first watched The Cotton Club (Francis Ford Coppola, 1984) as a sophomore in college, under curious circumstances. That year, I lived with two other men in a converted basement seminar room in Ezra Stiles College. The year before, that room had been occupied by a student we generally referred to as the “Saudi prince” … Continue reading When is a pleasure “guilty?”
Just Bear With Me... 