Next, one of Dr. Isis's favorite words is "magma."
Finally, Alice over at one of my favorite blogs, Sciencewomen (as an aside, the Isis family will keep little Annika in their prayers), writes the following:
Has anyone else noticed that, when women academics talk about balance, they tend to mean "work and the rest of life," and when men academics do, it's between teaching and research? Not all men... but it seems a pattern...
Balancing home life and work life, as Dr. Isis has discussed on many a prior occasion, is no laughing matter. However, I would like to assure you that, no matter what your professional status, it is possible to be successful and still hold it down at domestically. Allow me to offer the following evidence:
Video 1: Rapper Ludacris totally kicks Martha Stewart's ass making origami paper boxes.
Enough of that. Now, on to your emails...
ScienceMama over at Mother of All Scientists writes the following:
Dr. Isis,
Why is it that goddesses create gorgeous pumps like this:
Figure 1: The Nerve platform pump. $140.00 from Banana Republic.
only to mock me by pricing them way above what my humble postdoc salary can afford? I mean, a girls gotta eat and buy shoes!
How can postdocs, and worse yet grad students, satisfy their greedy shoe habits without ordering them through our bosses grants?
For an delicious pair of shoes, I'd pay around $40-$50. For an awesome pair, I'd say $80 is the upper limit. The amount I pay is inversely proportional to how practical they are. If they are delicious, but can only be worn with a small fraction of my wardrobe (or on days when I won't be walking too much) then I can only get them if they're an awesome deal. For something versatile, well-made AND delicious, then $80 sounds a little more reasonable.
It's pathetic I know, but my shoe budget has been completely overrun by my daycare budget...
Humbly yours,
ScienceMama (a.k.a. the Mother of All Scientists)
ScienceMama, I feel your pain. It is gut-wrenching to pull out the checkbook every month and lay down a cool $1000 for daycare and know that I could have had 7 pairs of those delicious shoes for the same amount of money. Still, this is the price we pay for those little people who feed us soggy Cheerios from slimy fingers in the morning while we try to write our blog.
Figure 2: Darn these little people and their need for expensive and quality care.
But, do not fret, ScienceMama. Hope is certainly not lost. You see, upon reading your email, Dr. Isis decided to head to her a closet to collect a little data. After all, we are all scientists, aren't we?
Dr. Isis removed each pair of shoes from her closet (all 60 pairs) and sorted them based on the priced she paid for them. She binned them in increments of $25 such that each bin had an approximately equal number of subjects and then rated them on a scale of 1-25, where increasing numbers indicate an increasing degree of fabulousness. The scale represents the product of their comfort factor (rated 1-5) and their deliciousness factor (rated 1-5). She carefully collected her data in her laboratory notebook and generated the following plot:
Figure 3: Comparison of the shoe rating in shoes separated by price. Bars represent the standard deviation about the mean.
Dr. Isis then took her data over to Minitab and performed an analysis of variance (ANOVA), investigating whether price was a significant predictor of the shoe score. In fact, dear readers it is not (p=0.47). Dr. Isis's study lacked sufficient power to investigate the effect of price on deliciousness and comfort as separate variables. I am certainly open to collaboration if you would like to help me increase my sample size. However, based on these results, Dr. Isis is forced to conclude that the degree of fabulousness of her shoe collection is unrelated to the price she paid for each pair. Simply put, a shoe can be ugly or uncomfortable regardless of the effect it has on your Visa.
That all being said, Dr. Isis is in need of a new pair of knee high black boots. Her old ones are beginning to get scuffed and a good black boot is a staple in Dr. Isis's fall/winter wardrobe. Dr. Isis is considering taking a trip down to Target to try these on because they seem absolutely delectable:
Figure 4: Kaylie boot in black. $32.99 at Target.
13 comments:
Oh my.... you graphed your shoes. I don't know what's most distressing to me. I'm torn between the reality that you had enough shoes to graph, that you have paid over $125 for a pair of shoes, that you remember the costs of your shoes, or that you calculated the standard deviation! Although, I would like shoes ranked according to clutz-factor. I think I would kill myself if I tried to wear those boots...
Academic, let us never forget that Dr. Isis is, above all else, a scientist. As a scientist I would expect you to not jump to conclusions without properly analyzng your data.
I love your graph.
In my own (more modest) collection of shoes, deliciousness does, unfortunately, correlate to price. I am, however, unwilling to do a statistical analysis at the present time.
I do believe, though, that if I loved shoes the way you love shoes, I would encounter enough lower-priced shoes to eliminate my current correlation between deliciousness and price. My obsession, I suppose, is not deep enough.
you. rule.
I do not have the shoe fetish gene... I do have a bra fetish gene though. I have anecdotally (since I didn't run stats on my observations!!) noticed that the pricey bras are not always the most comfortable or the hottest. And there are plenty of fantastic color and fabric options these days (pinks, blues, satiny, lacy opposed to white, nude, black cotton).
If I paid 125 smackaroos for a pair of shoes, they better be able to fly my ass somewhere!
Anon: The problem with bras is finding the right size.
Isis: I have issues finding knee-high boots that will not break my ankles (heels no more than three inches) and that properly fit my calves. I recently tried some that left a little fin on the back of my leg and I've tried many that I can barely zipper all the way up.
Dr. Isis, the problem was not with the graph. My problem was with the feasibility of the graph, namely that you had the required sample size at distributed intervals.
Of course Dr. Isis has the sample size! Have we not previously established that Dr. Isis is totally hot?
Yes, yes, more on the knee-high boots. I have always craved knee high black boots but had to settle for shorter versions, because I have never found saliva-worthy knee-high boots that fit my calves.
Also, seriously Academic, I could tell you not only how much I paid for every pair of shoes in my closet, but also how much they were originally priced, where I purchased them, and what other colors they came in.
I could do the same for pretty much all the clothes in my closet as well.
Don't forget TJ Maxx as a good source of delicious thrifty shoes. I scored a completely hot pair of knee-high boots there for $40 a couple of weeks ago. This week I was wearing them with a knee-length skirt, and I ran into a colleague also wearing the skirt-and-boot combo. We joked about taking a picture and sending it to you. But alas, we didn't have a camera handy.
FEP, if you had sent me that picture, I would have weed myself with excitement.
Don't think I wouldn't do it. I've had children.
Dr. Isis, it is clear that your shoe data require multivariate analysis. I would be happy to do this if you can send me the data in a spreadsheet or comma delimited file. Send it to Scicurious...She knows who I am.
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