Odd This Day

Scanned letter: Dear Sir, Your letter has just reached me re weight judging at the last W. of England Fat Stock Show we sold just over 800 tickets at 6 [pence] each, the dressed weight of animal was 10-2-21 [cwt, quarters, and lbs] 7 had the right weight; 11 were a pound over or under, 17 under...

9 cwt; 88 under 10 cwt; 487 under 11 cwt; 214 under 12 cwt; 10 under 13 cwt; 4 under 14 cwt, 3 under 15 cwt. 2 under 8 cwt. These were undoubtedly meant for the live weight. 1 guessed 16-8-2 1 [ditto] 17-2-0 1 [ditto] 20-1-14 1 [ditto] 22-1-8 Mr. Rolestone, Saddler, Market Place has the cards which have been filled up, he will be pleased for you to see them. Yours truly, J H Hine

...but he wouldn’t have been up for wandering around a country fair admiring admittedly admirable fat beasts. That blog links to UCL’s collection of Galton’s papers, which contains a letter about the livestock show ucl.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/de...

Galton definitely went to Plymouth in late 1906, because he was in his mid-80s, had been complaining of being an invalid, had suffered “12 days of Rheumatics and Bronchitis”, and wanted to be somewhere warm for winter because “London in November would help to, or quite, kill me”

About 800 tickets were issued, which were kindly lent me for examination after they had fulfilled their immediate purpose. These afforded excellent material. The judgments were unbiassed by passion and uninfluenced by oratory and the like. The sixpenny fee deterred practical joking, and the hope of a prize and the joy of competition prompted each competitor to do his best.

For starters, at no point in the Nature article does he say he went. Instead he says “A weight-judging competition *was carried on* ... About 800 tickets *were issued*...”, and it’s not just the passive voice favoured by academics...

But this is quibbling. A more important bit of pedantry comes from the opening sentence of that Conversation article: “The great Victorian polymath, Sir Francis Galton was at a country fair in 1906, so the story goes...” – and that last phrase is the important bit, because he wasn’t there

Diagram with an s-shaped curve showing that a quarter of the guesses “deviated more than 45 lb. above the middlemost (3·7 per cent.), and another quarter deviated more than 29 lb. below it (2·4 per cent.), therefore the range of the two middle quarters, that is, of the middlemost half, lay within those limits.”

In fact, Galton said “the middlemost estimate is 1207 lb., and the weight of the dressed ox proved to be 1198 lb.; so the vox populi was in this case 9 lb., or 0.8 per cent. of the whole weight too high” (and pointed out that the guesses “were not scattered symmetrically” and did a nice diagram)

How to unleash the wisdom of crowds If you want the best tool for making educated guesses, then you’d better get the basics right.

A more recent telling sums up what followed: “Galton ... took the 787 guesses and calculated the average, which came to 1,197 pounds. The actual weight of the ox was 1,198 pounds. In effect, the crowd had provided a near perfect answer”

IN these democratic days, any investigation into the trustworthiness and peculiarities of popular judgments is of interest. The material about to be discussed refers to a small matter, but is much to the point. A weight-judging competition was carried on at the annual show of the West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition recently held at Plymouth. A fat ox having been selected, competitors bought stamped and numbered cards, for 6d. each, on which to inscribe their respective names, addresses, and estimates of what the ox would weigh after it had been slaughtered and "dressed." Those who guessed most successfully received prizes.

Under the title Vox Populi, anthropologist, psychologist, sociologist, and statistician Galton told his example of the concept ‘the wisdom of the crowd’

A print from a lithograph of a painting, depicting a huge borown horned ox, behing which a man can be seen apparently measuring the beast, while another stands nearby noting down its immense statistics. It is entitled ‘Portrait of T. W. Coke and North Devon Ox’, by W. H. Davis, c.1837, animal painter to the Queen from 1839. The ox was bred at Holkham in Norfolk and was considered to be the perfect specimen. Image courtesy of the Museum of English Rural Life, obviously.

119 years ago today, that most prestigious of journals Nature published Francis Galton’s account of a visit to the West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition at Plymouth. You may know the story... 🧵

Rik Mayall at his best YouTube video by Redondo9

In one of may favourite clips of him you can't actually hear him say a word

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgG8...

Hahaha, yes

a man in a white shirt and tie is sitting at a table with a box of cereal . Alt: Rik Mayall in shirt and tie sitting at a table. He appears to be shaking salt over food, but is doing it two-handed and vigorously and pulling an inexplicable face

I like to imagine that when Rik Mayall was born 68 years ago today, he leapt out of his mother with his eyebrows already waggling and bellowed sexual innuendos at nurses and doctors alike

Untold histories — the reality of LGBT+ life in 20th-century Britain ‘The Log Books’ delves into a poignant archive of helpline calls, while ‘Tales of the Suburbs’ peeks behind those net curtains to revealing effect

“…the small town of Horley, near Gatwick airport, became a gay paradise in the 1980s thanks to the high concentration of cabin crew residents … two first world war soldiers, Gerald and Phil, who fell in love after meeting on a boat returning from Le Havre.” John Grindrod’s book sounds fun

Been reading your replies. Good that you have a cushion. Good luck with the next thing

Oval goa stone, bearing traces of gold foil on the outside, in an elaborate silver case, on a silver tripod, possibly 17th century

Well if it’s 6 March, that means it must be... of course! The 335th anniversary of Jesuits in Goa being granted a monopoly on the production and export of Goa stones to Portugal – a mere century or so after a doctor proved they didn’t actually protect you from poison 🧵

Almost nominative determinism

Pop Art portrait of Belmondo in greay, wearing a straw hat, surrounded by an orange background, his hat topped by a giant red flower

Obviously, that first image has been labelled ‘sexually suggestive’. That was the point. She also posed naked in front of her portrait of Jean-Paul Belmondo. She was celebrating her sexuality, instead of apologising for it

Pauline Boty: British Pop Art's Sole Sister (2023) — Pallant Bookshop Pauline Boty (1938 –1966) was a founding member of the British Pop Art movement and one of its very few women. She attended London’s Royal College of Art

...and today has reminded me that I was planning to spend my birthday book tokens on this, so I think I shall order it now

Pauline Boty: I Am the Sixties The first TV documentary about pop art sensation Pauline Boty, tracking the artist’s original contribution to British art, her feminism and her unique take on the celebrity culture of the 1960s.

This is a very good starting point

Pauline Boty: The marginalised artist of British Pop Art is enjoying a Pauline Boty was a darling of the Swinging Sixties. Now, nearly 50 years after her tragically young death, her extraordinarily vibrant work is enjoying a revival. It’s long overdue

Every so often she enjoys a ‘revival’ and a few more people hear of her – this article says her work is enjoying one, and it was published in 2013

BUM, by Pauline Boty, described by the Art Newspaper as "a cartoonish depiction of a fleshy female bottom framed by a proscenium arch"

Hadn’t realised it was (or would have been) Pauline Boty’s birthday. She was amazing, and was only 28 when she died in 1966. This was her last work, commissioned by Ken Tynan for ‘Oh! Calcutta!’

Heading in newspaper clip: David Frost chooses...

... My Ideal Girl - Pauline Boty

Today would have been Pauline Boty's 88th birthday. David Frost was a fan.

Yes, doing better than the poor bloody Yangtze River dolphin

Really interesting. I see completely what you both mean, but I rather liked the tone. It seemed to fit, because the supernatural element made the show strange. I quite liked the fact that Brigham didn't really need to be there, or maybe the Father Christmas sequence. The oddness worked for me

Glad you're enjoying them. Always nice to hear

A new Love Island? Berry bloom leads to baby boom for New Zealand’s goofiest parrot A massive bloom of rimu berries fueled a mating surge among the world’s heaviest (and strangest) parrots

Always good to hear encouraging news about “the world's largest, fattest and least-able-to-fly parrot”

People seem to get to the end and then ask the thread unroller to do its thing! Who am I to question it…?

Odd this day: whale secretions and other matter 6 March 1691

...and at least tomorrow, it’s Fat Ox Day at the Plymouth Fair, which is a bit nicer than all this.

If you want to read this thread on one page, by the way, you can:

Another smooth round stone-like thing, this time in an ornate gold tripod case, with domed (filigree?) lid

Gordon Bennett. Anyway, you can still see Goa stones in places like the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Wellcome Collection in London – often in ornate gold or silver cases

An hour later, having heard of it, I asked M. de La Trousse to let me go and see him, and he sent me thither with three of his archers. I found the poor cook on all fours, going like an animal, his tongue out of his mouth, his eyes and his face flaming red. made him drink about half a sextier of oil, thinking to save his life; but it was of no service, being given too late, and he died miserably, crying out he had better have died on the gallows: he lived about seven hours."

Still, the story (from Stephen Paget’s Ambroise Paré and his times, 1510-1590) can’t get worse. Must have a happy ending. Is it at least quick...?