Collecting information about my friends by Ellie F. '28
im like if a corporation loved you
My birthday was two weeks ago, and I can proudly announce that I am now
Unfortunately I did not gain any new rights. No matter! In the two birthdays since getting to MIT, I’ve been afforded a happiness that money cannot buy: making my friends fill out stupid surveys. And after collecting that data, I had to do what any company worth their salt does: publish it to make money.
Here’s some fun facts about my awesome friends:
1. who are you
This year, my form had 45 responses!!! Of them,
- three did not give their real name
- five gave a misspelling of their name
- four included an emoticon or emoji
- twenty-eight did not capitalize their name. The impact of e e cummings
2. how are you
- two people are “Good”! Yay!
- nine people are some variant of tired or sleepy
- TWO PEOPLE FINISHED THEIR FINAL PROJECTS!!! BOTH RESPONDED IN ALL CAPS!!!!!!!
Quotes:
swimming through a pool of molasses known as the “just woke up from nap pool of molasses”
yesterday i was filling this out and my answer was “drunk” but then i closed slack and it didn’t save
Harmonically oscillating my bones
3. why do i know you
- Two people think this is a “good question”. Aw thanks!
- I know fourteen respondents from Mathcamp <3 <3 <3
- Seven from VGO. two inclusions of viola gang
- Six of y’all are bloggers (hi)
Quotes:
once I encountered you in the ups cafeteria and traumatized you with “it’s ellie from arkansas”
AP CS A when i watched u ace the nyt mini every day
4. fun fact checkpoint
Oh man, this one was fun. Here’s a bunch (mostly I’m omitting personal fun facts) (but they were all fun trust)
Quotes:
did you know that high-eccentricity migration (the presumed migration pathway for hot jupiters and hot neptunes) doesn’t really seem to make sense because the energy that the planet needs to dissipate as its semimajor axis gets smaller is actually an order of magnitude higher than the binding energy of the planet’s atmosphere so as far as we can tell there’s no way to do high-eccentricity migration and make a hot jupiter without entirely ripping off its atmosphere? someone in my lab group has been trying to figure out this issue for like two months with no solution.
pennsylvania is the mushroom capital of the world
there are >100 species of sparrow with 11 named after people, which must be renamed following Audubon’s decision to not name birds after people
The zippo lighter is made in bradford pennsylvania
Largest geomagnetic storm in recorded history was the Carrington event in 1859. Aurora borealis came down to the equator, telegraph lines glitched and sent gibberish messages on their own & could be operated without needing to be hooked up to any actual power, full light in the middle of the night, messed up the natural rhythm of lots of animals, etc. read abt this extensively this morning
recycling isn’t real, i learned. how sad :(
a new pho place opened up on campus and I hope its yummy
Did you know North Carolina has the purest natural quartz needed for the manufacturing of all advanced computer chips
cats can’t taste sweet things
as of recently, gentoo penguins are considered four different species
Drugs (medicine) can go extinct bc of crystals
The moon has a cometary tail from ions boiled off from its surface from the sun but it’s too bright and wastes it out. Stupid
horses hooves are weird when they’re born. look it up.
Polish language has some interesting rules when it comes to spelling adjectives, so you can create infinitely long words (that are completely valid and could be used in a normal conversation). One I could think of right now is “dziewięćsetdziewięćdziesięciodziewięcioićwierćtysięcznokilogramowy” (try to pronounce it lol) and it means “999.25 thousand kg” (adjective)
bears can eat up to 40000 moths a day to prepare for hibernation
Teeth exist, except when they dont
there are two ‘r’s in the word “strawberry”
The English idiom “have other fish to fry” in other languages (translated back to English) are: “have other cats to whip” (French), “have other cats to skin” (Italian), and “have other hedgehogs to comb” (German)
Teeth exist, except when they dont
did you know that sperm whales are the loudest animal on earth?
Some steels are magnetic and some aren’t depending on the type of crystal structure
Uh uh uh the book Dracula is SUPER GAY and Bram Stoker was trying to go deeper into the closet with it after Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency
Hope you learned something!
5. what does CRT stand for (in your heart)
- Eight people went with Cathode Ray Tube (most correct answer)
- Both people who responded with critical race theory prefaced it with “the first thing I thought of was”
- Two people invented new (non-hormone) replacement therapies
- Two people founded their own quant firms: Cudson River Trading and Charles River Trading
Quotes:
Cartin Ruther Ting [jr.]
crimate tchange
Cat?
6. your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to stop the trolley problem from happening in the first place. you are able to time-travel. what’s the plan
- John Trolley, the inventor of trolleys, is mentioned by name twice. He is killed in both these instances.
- He is also mentioned implicitly in one response, in which he is also killed.
- The actual inventor of trolleys, Frank J. Sprague is named in one response, where he survives but is unfortunately kidnapped.
- Other deaths include the inventor of the trolley problem, the guy who made it possible to switch tracks, and all moral philosophers.
- Some people decided against homicide but took preventative measures.
- Two people decided to prevent the invention of the wheel
- Two people opted to vanish the lever from existence
- Two people prevent the invention of the trolley through unknown means.
- One person stops the first fish from leaving the water
Sorry, this one’s long too. But they’re so good so you’ll have to understand.
Quotes:
become a master of tissue growth and biological functions. also train a highkly effective computer vision model. travel back in time to the invention of the trolley. switch out the wheels of the trolley for fully functional human legs. attach a camera and local computing unit with ML model on it. Now you have a centipede trolley with human legs that is no longer constrained to the trolley tracks and can see and make it’s own decisions on where it goes. Now you don’t have to solve the trolley problem, because the trolley can go wherever it wants and it is out of your control whether or not it tramples people tied up in random places.
I go back in time and talk to my past self. I take this version of me back in time further to find a version of me from before I transitioned, where he impregnates her (himself) (myself). I take the baby further back in time to the orphanage where I grew up. Then, I go forward in time to find and kill John trolley, who is responsible for all of this. I kill him, but he is me. I tie six people to some tracks.
we are investing in high speed rail and subways so that we no longer have to rely on roads or slow trolleys to get around cities. we will abolish the concept of the trolley. this may lead to the high speed rail problem however which is arguably worse
go back to the cuban missile crisis, write a manifesto abt communism, bring a bomb to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and trigger a nuclear war that kills everyone before they can be run over by a trolley
Wait holy shit I get to go back and ride the trolly? I go back and repeatedly ride the trolly over and over again, and time proceeds to halt because I keep reversing and riding the trolly again.
go to fords theater and watch the play where lincoln was shot.i reject the mission but i’m keeping the time machine.
Don’t accept because it’s a self inducing problem or whatever it’s called. Also I have better things to do
time to go back and stop the invention of the wheel (we will figure something else out)
replace the trolley driver and make the decision myself (gotta maximize kdr)
Im a big fan of trolleys let them have their problems
put the MBTA head in charge of trolley construction
No trolleys only horses #Kentucky
wasps and bees
Traceback (most recent call last): File “<stdin>”, line 1, in <module> File “<stdin>”, line 1, in <lambda> File “<stdin>”, line 1, in <lambda> File “<stdin>”, line 1, in <lambda> [Previous line repeated 996 more times] RecursionError: maximum recursion depth exceeded
7. guess the number that is 2/3 of the average of all responses to this question
So I had no bounds on this question. I kinda just wanted to see what happens. I’m sort of like a 20th psychologist like that. In fact, there was no input validation of any sort. Somehow, everyone still answered a number (if you count infinity).
- Three people went for positive or negative infinity
- The largest-magnitude finite number given was negative graham’s number
- One complex number was submitted
- Four people decided to go for game theory optimal (idk if that’s true im just making it up) and submitted 0.
- The longest response contained 318 characters, all of which were 9
- Three respondents employed scientific notation
8. what do you see
- Two people apparently see “a rorschach test”
- Eight people saw gnomes!
- Seven people saw bears!
- Five people saw people!
- Three people saw rats!
- EIGHTEEN people saw the indeterminate blobs high fiving!!
- Three people saw kissing <3
- Two people saw the ink blotches on their periods
NO ONE saw their parents fighting. Apparently this meme is much nicher than I thought.
9. which legend of zelda game should i play
I’ve played so many Legend of Zelda pieces in VGO that I should probably play an actual game.
- Breath of the Wild: 10
- Tears of the Kingdom: 3
- Twilight Princess: 3
- Ocarina of Time: 3
- Honorable Mentions: Majora’s Mask, Link’s Crossbow Training, Triforce Heroes, trains, celeste, super smash bros brawl, minecraft, silksong, and Hello Kitty Roller Rescue
So I guess I’ll play Breath of the Wild (this summer affirm)!
10. would you rather have unlimited bacon and no video games or unlimited video games and no video games ?
- “unlimited video games and no video games”: 5
- “the latter”: 3
- “Well what happened? This should explain everything. A Farewell To Arms. *gasps*. I fell in love with a nurse during world war I? Nono just the title, its- there’s no way you’ve read that.”: 1
11. lets bake a cake (for my birthday) please add an ingredient <3
From the iconic tumblr post, of course.
Vanilla extract: 44.44%
Butter: 13.33%
Milk: 13.33%
Flour: 11.11%
Sugar: 4.44%
Eggs: 2.22%
Do we think this would just be soup? I honestly can’t tell. Anyways next year I’ll bake it.
12. gnome game high score
13. best score on https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd/
I swear there’s skill to this game. The lowest score submitted was 0.0011, which is also my best score! I think. At my birthday party, we broadcasted this on TV and did it collaboratively. We were okay.
14. lets say you’re on vacation and you forgot all of your left shoes (including the one on your foot) and also you have no socks. obviously you have to go to the store to get new shoes and maybe socks. how do you do it?
This dilemma has been keeping me up for months. Let’s see what the survey says.
Two right shoes on: 48.88%
Barefoot: 22.22%
right shoe on, left foot barefoot: 8.88%
Other responses: crawling, handstand, handstand with left gloves only, hopping, rolling like a French baguette, DIY shoes, “simply flip the right shoe inside out”, and “raw dog no shoes all trip. punishment for somehow forgetting all my left shoes and socks”.
15. recommend things
- Four people told me to get sleep (sleep blog soon)
- Eight people wanted me to try some sort of food
- Seven people gave me music recs
- Also seven (not necessarily the same) people recommended TV shows, movies, or anime
- Four people named a game
- Three people wanted me to go somewhere (often near them)
- Three people recommended a book
16. which sounds best
Firth of Forth: 33.33%
Bay of Bengal: 31.11%
Bay of Biscay: 22.22%
Shoutout to a write-in: “viola section”
Honestly this kinda surprised me, Bay of Biscay sounds more appealing to me than Bay of Bengal.
17. tag yourself
i’m so flattened to hear that: 33.33%
what if it’s all assimilation: 24.44%
we’re not so diffident, you and i: 22.22%
my world has been appended: 20%
Some preference to being flattened, but the rest were quite even! Two friends also introduced the delightful “a clog in the machine” and “a rested development”.
18. liquid nitrogen ice cream flavor requests
- Two people requested “liquid nitrogen flavored”
- The most popular flavor was vanilla, with four requests
- Three people wanted caramel, a flavor I’ve honestly never heard of
- Two people requested coffee. Finals season, huh
- Three people requested frog, naturally. Two wanted blue tape.
Quotes:
Salt. Road salt. Road salt of my homeland
Pilk
Bees
19. would you be free friday may 15 evening (like 7 or 8 to whenever) for my birthday party. there will be cake and liquid nitrogen involved if i can lock in
Thirteen respondents didn’t exist in Boston :((((( One day I will move all my friends into the same city.
20. feels
Quotes:
It’s 2:20 am and I’ve never been more awake. I slept from 12:40-10:00 pm and I think I might never fall asleep again.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
If i was a pokemin trainer, I’d want a pokemon with self destruct, and i’d be spamming that move. Anytimes I’m losing, boom I explode and every pokemon faints. First move in a battle: blow everything up. it’d be so funny. Mega Glalie my goat.
The feeling of grippy socks against trampolines. Happy Birthday Ellie!!!
Overall stats:
Mentions of juggling: 7
Conclusion
I love my friends. I love that they indulge my stupid surveys and my inane brain. Honestly, they amplify me. I love that I could see so much personality in each response. After getting all my responses, I put them in a spreadsheet, hid the names column, and randomized the sheet. I was able to get 34 names based on vibes only. I love that I can tell. That emoji that only one person uses, that fun fact about space, that quote from the video game, that unique way we met, that overly enthusiastic recommendation of niche media, that song lyric, that poem, that sleep schedule, that slang, that hobby.
Here’s to my third decade of existence! Might it be filled with even more friends and Google Forms :)