This is really Gordon's terrain (wiredformusic!) here, but I've been known to make the odd mix here and there, and being in grad school has awakened all the angst of being in high school and college, which were my prime mix-making years. I'm still working on an econ/public finance type-mix, but here are a few tunes that have made my quant playlist. There are a few missing tracks (Luna's "math wiz"! Lala doesn't think I own it, but lala, you're wrong about that, just as you're wrong about the Silver Jews not existing, and about me not owning "Supra Genius" by Soul Coughing or "Fractions and feelings" by Malkmus + Jix.)
Without further ado! The quant mixtape! Comments below.
1. 4 out of 5 (Soul Coughing)
Few bands spent as much time counting or listing numbers as Soul Coughing. Accordingly, they are something like the patron saints of this mix.
2. One (Aimee Mann)
Pretty self-evident.
3. Don’t tell me to do the math(s) (Los Campesinos!)
Every mix needs token bratty Scottish indie punk. Work on your algebra and stand out in the rain! Plus, the title reflects that charming British locution of calling it “maths.”
4. The Calculation (Regina Spektor)
“Counted up our feelings / and divided them up even / and it called that calculation perfect love.” HAHA, nice try, liar. Multivariate linear regression is the opposite of perfect love.
5. Plus Ones (Okkervil River)
Ah yes, the plus one. Because this song is explicitly about all the things that got left out of other songs that enumerate things (97th tear, 100th luftballoon), I think of it as being about the error term.
6. If you don’t like the effects, don’t produce the cause (Funkadelic)
Funkadelic goes right to the heart of the matter, don’t they? They bypass association entirely and go right to causality. This must be a bivariate model since they don’t touch on interaction effects. I’m hoping that at some point we’ll get to hear George Clinton’s thoughts on multicollinearity.
7. 100% Dundee (The Roots)
In evaluating Dundee-ness, it is clear that the Roots will not tolerate even the smallest alpha. This song mentions sigma, assumptions, and the phrase “lyrically calculus in this arithmetic hip hop metropolis.” It therefore makes math seem much cooler than it is.
8. 6’1” (Liz Phair)
Clearly what’s going on here is that the break-up in the song has caused Liz Phair to reparameterize her height variable, and she’s found that the recalibration gets her an extra 11 inches on her height measurement.
9. 123 goodbye (Elvis Perkins)
Abacus of the rain! Calculus of pain! It’s all there, and it’s all true. Elvis Perkins has written a couple of gorgeous songs about the death of his mom – she was on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center in 2001. This is one of them.
10. My mathematical mind (Spoon)
My English lit mind does not see the breaks.
11. Neverending math equation (Sun Kil Moon)
Originally a Modest Mouse song. Love this cover. Google the lyrics because they’re good, and while Sun Kil Moon has this great mopey voice, he’s also completely incomprehensible.
12. Feelgood by numbers (The Go! Team)
Except going by numbers makes me feel bad. On the other hand, this song makes me feel decidedly good, so maybe you can feel good by “Feelgood by numbers.” Hmmm.
13. Two sevens clash (Culture)
Marcus Garvey predicted that on July 7, 1977, something epic or terrible was going to happen. The sevens would clash. The band Culture made this prediction famous, and the song was so popular that supposedly when the date rolled around, most of Kingston shut down. Schools, stores – all closed for fear of the sevens clashing. Nothing happened, but we certainly do put a lot of faith in numbers, don’t we?
14. 100% (Sonic Youth)
Much like the Roots’ uncompromising approach to Dundee, Sonic Youth will not accept any degree of alpha in their “love for dead roadie model.”
15. Casiotone nation (Soul Coughing)
Again, with the counting.
16. I wish I could go back to college (Avenue Q cast)
Because this is how Quant II makes me feel.
17. A day to God is 1000 years (RZA)
RZA takes on the delicate issue of scaling in data. Sure, it’s just a day to God, but it’s 1000 years for humans. Be mindful of how to interpret the coefficient on your time variable in this model because of thi scaling issue. And, bonus thematic tie-in: The Wu guys are five percenters, or at least use a lot of it in their lyrics. So, we’re back to Soul Coughing, the oroboros of quant music.
18. Count me out (The Del McCoury Band)
Yes, Del. Sing it.
2 comments:
Fantastic. I love theme mixes, it's been too long since I made one. I guess to keep my cred up, I have to recommend some add-ons, right? (though this mix is perfect just as it is.)
How about "Mathematics" by Mos Def, "Add It Up" by the Violent Femmes, and maybe Fugazi's "Long Division?"
Based on how many of your comments I utterly failed to understand, this sounds like a hard class. Good luck!
Thanks! "Add it up" was in the first cut but for some reason it didn't survive the never-ending revisionism of tracklisting for the final cut (though it's still in my general quant playlist.) Not sure why. The two others are terrific suggestions and lacking entirely from my playlist...
And theme mixes are all I have, apparently, because they dull the pain of using statistical analysis software programs. You people who like code are foreign to me.
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