Lyfe Jennings – Statistics
Eh, close enough…
[Video][Website]
[4.89]
Mallory O’Donnell: Lyfe Jennings is good at two things, that’s math and fuckin’.
[3]
Anthony Easton: Are these statistics peer reviewed?
[3]
Hazel Robinson: “That’s a 50% chance that you’ll marry a coward, something to think about when you’re taking a shower.” Err. I’m not really sure what to make of this lecture on the fickleness of males and the necessity of not taking your clothes off unless (and I suspect this is key) the man you’re taking them off in front of is Lyfe Jennings.
[4]
Martin Skidmore: My favourite new male singer since Cee-Lo: I love his husky tones and deep sincerity, even though he does tend to get rather preachy (as if he is lecturing his teenage daughter about sex). Also, he has no clue how statistics work, but I admire the attempt at scientific analysis of relationships. Mostly I just love listening to someone I can imagine being produced by Willie Mitchell in the ’70s, not that there is anything wrong with T-Minus’s lovely backing here.
[9]
Michaelangelo Matos: Shit, can I marry him?
[9]
Chuck Eddy: Judging from this, he makes as effective a female R&B singer as most female R&B singers I’ve heard lately. Not to mention one condescending motherfucker and quite the algebra wonk. At least 33.3 % of these points are just because I think all the numbers, which nobody listening will actually add up, are unintentionally funny.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: As fans of R. Kelly know, for some reason singing mundane, unlikely, or educational lyrics in a silky-sweet loverman r&b song is a joke that never stops being funny. I was hoping for something that maybe had a second joke to it, but apparently Lyfe is in earnest. Whatever: crooning percentage figures is still amusing enough.
[6]
Al Shipley: 25% of me was impressed by the clever lyrical conceit, 30% of me was distracted by Lyfe’s annoying Winnie The Pooh voice, 45% of me was bored to tears by the bland melody and production.
[4]
Matt Cibula: “The official video for Lyfe Jennings “Statistics” – a song inspired by Steve Harvey’s “Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man” relationship advice book.” I don’t think I could say anything more damning than that, really.
[0]
bah, i made extensive notes on tabulating chi-squared and reversion to the mean then i had beer and forgot to write them up. WHAT IS HIS SAMPLE SIZE?
Here I was regretting I didn’t get around to everything this weekend, and then Matt comes along and shuts that regret right nown. Or Lyfe’s PR person, I guess. Either way.
“My favourite new male singer since Cee-Lo”
Definitely not very new. This is his 8th or so hit about the evils of giving it up. 8 may be an exaggerated number, but still. Anyway, I liked the other ones better.
So this song is great, but I do have one quibble with the math.
If 10% of the remaining 20% of good guys are gay, that means that he would need to subtract 2% of the remaining population. So really he’s teaching women how to expose 82% of the population as awful and terrible (though more accurately, if 10% of those guys are also gay, and NICE gay men are exempted from the “pro” statistic, then the 10% of the 82% of BAD gay men should also be exempted — i.e. he’s going to tell you about how to recognize the 18% of NICE GUYS and the roughly 74% of BAD GUYS).
The first thought when I heard this was “I wonder how you could devise a study to test these hypotheses.” His follow-up single could be “Research Methodology.”
“Standard deviation from the MEAN”
“Don’t let your man turn his love into an obsession / Don’t let things get predictable like linear regression.”