Significant Figures
This is a concept that makes no sense to most people in my experience. I am not really that great at explaining it and why it matters. When I ran into this explanation of it on this latest interesting blog I bumped into, I rejoiced. But I must temper my endorsement of this explanation of significant figures by saying that I really despise all reality television shows in general and The Biggest Loser in particular, even though I have never seen the show and I never, ever will.
The Biggest Loser appears to pit contestants against one another in some sort of judgmental fat-shaming boot camp. They have to report for humiliating weigh-ins and get kicked out if they fail to lose enough weight. A lot of the people on the show appear to have some psychological issues which led to their weight problems in the first place. It is hard for me to believe that people will learn long-term healthy eating and living habits as a result of this program.
It feels like stating the obvious to say it, but reality television is simply terrible, like staring at a train wreck. I just keep wondering, does anybody believe this is real? Or do they treat it like the WWF now known as the WWE. I have no idea what the acronyms stand for. All I know is that I used to watch the WWF when I was an impressionable youth, back when teevee had three channels and one was in French. You had to be pretty bored to watch French translations of English movies. So bored was I in small-town Saskatchewan that I watched lumpy, sweaty men with bad mullets and spandex tights pretend to beat each other up in the squared circle. I should have just read a book or something. If I was a teenager nowadays, I would be attached to my laptop. I’m not so sure that’s an improvement. But at least I knew it was fake. I remember having animated arguments with people over whether wrestling was real or not or some misguided adult would see me watching wrestling and explain to me that it wasn’t real. Some people think wrestling is real and some people think reality television is real. That is so sad!
