Swells By The Numbers
Our new weekend column on the Chron's society page!
Total number of people pictured in this week's Swells: 58
Pictures of people whose names we recognize: 7. Two pictures of Willie Brown, two pictures of Gavin Newsom, Dede Wilsey, Stefanie Coyote, and we're counting Chronicle Books publisher Nion McEvoy as a person whose name we recognize, even though we didn't realize until reading the column that he's not a she.
Minority count: 12 (about 20%). One pictured event is a world music/dance party, and another is an event at the Museum of the African Diaspora. Count includes the two pictures of Willie Brown and five world music dancers.
Getty v. Traina: 6-2. Counting Gavin as a Getty and Dede Wilsey as a Traina.
Biederbeck count: 5. Counting Mr. Biederbeck's mother-in-law. (Who are the Biederbecks?)
Number of hats: 5.
Number of people wearing stripes: 4.
Number of people in floral prints: 5. After some deliberation, the outfit with wavy lines and an animal-type print has been classified as a "floral."
References to parties hosted by Gavin to which we were not invited: 2.
Numbers of parties hosted by Gavin to which we have been invited: 0.
Picture of Dede Wilsey by Thomas Gibbons. And if you're interested, an explanation of our Swells statistical methodology after the jump.
To answer questions raised by a few of you after last week's Swells By The Numbers debut:
In the minority count, we only count people who we can definitively tell are minorities. We also only count people in the foreground of the picture.
In counting name mentions, we count both a person's appearance in the pictures and a person's appearance in a photograph. So if Gavin Newsom appears in a picture of an event and in the writeup, that counts as two appearances of Gavin.
In counting people we recognize, we go solely by the pictures. However, we'll count someone whose name we recognize in the pictures, even if we don't know what they look like. For instance, we would count Peter Ragone as a person we recognize, even though we wouldn't be able to pick that guy out of a lineup.
Any other questions? Post 'em in the comments and we'll be happy to answer them. Also, point out any math errors we may have made.