Lighthearted Nerdery

Amidst the flurry of depressingly divided, emotional articles about IE8 breaking the browser market with version targeting, it was nice to see some altruistic, informative, and just-plain-fun news in my RSS reads this week:

Of course, there was a lot of other great posts, podcasts and articles this week, but in trying to keep away from the M$ bashing and ensuing flame-wars, I found a few good laughs in the recent Photo Basement post: 41 Hilarious Science Fair Experiments. As I scrolled, laughed, pointed, scrolled and laughed again, I couldn’t help but think how similarly nerdy and awkward I was myself at that age and remembered a particular science fair project I did back in my junior high days.

The title of my experiment was What are the odds of extracting a blue M&M from a “Fun Size” bag of M&Ms? I originally wanted to do a project about BBS games, but this was a much hotter topic in 1995 as the blue M&M had just been introduced. Somehow, my piddly, bean counting project won the 1st place prize in the math category; this could be because there were only 3 math experiments that year. It was also very well received by my classmates; mostly because I let them eat the candies they helped me count. And of course it was ground-breaking statistical research! While I never published a paper on my findings, I remember that there were way more brown M&Ms than any other color, and I managed to find this flattering image in an old box of photos.

A few interesting things to note in the photo above.

  • It took longer to staple all those empty bags to my board than it did to plug my numbers into Excel.
  • I designed that masthead for the “School Zone” section of our local newspaper as part of a design competition the previous year.
  • Yes, that’s a genuine Ironman Triathalon watch on my arm there.
  • See the check on the ribbon? I apparently won some money for getting 1st place. I’m not sure, but I probably used that extra moola to buy a hackey sack or some sweet Airwalks.
  • Über. Nerd.

So, there. I’ve shared with you a little glimpse into my childhood. Does anybody else have any embarrassing childhood pictures to post?

About this Entry

10 Comments

Sorry, comments are now closed on this post. If you have feedback or need to contact me about something on this page, you can use the contact form.