Just as interesting as what I eat every day.....

has got to be my television viewing habits. I mean, that's why you're tuning into this blog, right?

See if you can guess why I like the Big Bang Theory (BBT) besides the fact that it takes place in Pasadena and the main characters are physicists at Caltech.

As you know, I had determined that I've been watching far too much television, approximately 8.25 hours per week (if you subtract the time it takes to fast forward through the repetitive bits of The Biggest Loser). Resolved to get focused on my studies, I decided to eliminate all "unnecessary" tv viewing from my schedule. However, I elected to eliminate certain shows in a very ad-hoc, arbitrary fashion - including BBT. It was all based on a sort of theoretical, what-can-I-not-live-without evaluation. Very unscientific. A bit slapdash, as we say.


Realizing I needed to be far more empirical, I decided to measure instead the number of times I laughed during each show (Laughs Per Show, or LPS) that I watched. I then determined a weighting for each different type of laugh, ranging from merely a smile (MAS) to a hollering laugh-out-loud moment (HLOL). I also had to include a special rating for the number of SQUEE moments that a show (Squee per Show or SqPS) can bring me - e.g., JAM kissing for the first time (The Office, in case it's not your cup of tea-vee).

And I found something surprising.

BBT totally outranked every other show I watched, including 30 Rock! BBT garnered a whopping 37 HLOL's during last week's 30 minute episode. That's almost 1.95 HLOL's per minute if you subtract the average number of commercial minutes that a 30 minute sitcom contains (which I didn't measure directly this time). I only HLOL'd twice (2x!!) during The Office, although there were 7 MASs and 1 SqpS. And I only HLOL'd 14 times during 30 Rock, but my overabiding love for Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan has to weighed in there somehow, but I've not yet determined how.

Of course, I can't take a single week sample and base my tv viewing habits upon it. I've resolved to measure each week's laughs over a course of several weeks, controlling for sweeps, special guest appearances, repeats, and Most Shocking Weigh-in's Ever. After that, I will be able to take the averages and perform an MANOVA statistical analysis between the different shows.

However, one also needs to consider the validity and reliability of my measuring instrument (LPS) - this is where psychometrics comes in. Is LPS an accurate and thorough measure of my tv viewing enjoyment? Do its items "hang together" enough? Would its results show predictive validity? And what is it I'm trying to capture = is it enough to look for humor in a show? It would not capture, say, my enjoyment for The Biggest Loser or Life, neither of which are laughter based. Also, does the measure show temporal stability and interrater reliability? - i.e., do I, as the sole measurer, vary so much from week to week, day to day, that what makes me laugh one day, might not make me laugh the next day? And how would I test for this, as I could not be expected to HLOL at something when I see it during repeat, so a test/retest evaluation would not be sufficient?

You can see the bind I'm in.

But it looks like BBTs topping the list right now. And not just because I get to squeal "you do! you do have to drive over speed bumps if you take Euclid to Caltech! it would take too long!!"

I love geeks. So much I like to pretend to be one.