{"id":2086,"date":"2018-08-01T09:00:58","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T17:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/?p=2086"},"modified":"2018-08-01T01:15:02","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T09:15:02","slug":"joyous-joy-the-tom-lehrer-song-mocking-quantitative-social-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/post\/2086","title":{"rendered":"Tom Lehrer song ripping on quantitative social science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/KTRYCRNQVFFYHJTH5UEVT3KURQ.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/KTRYCRNQVFFYHJTH5UEVT3KURQ.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1400\" height=\"775\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2087\" srcset=\"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/KTRYCRNQVFFYHJTH5UEVT3KURQ.png 1400w, https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/KTRYCRNQVFFYHJTH5UEVT3KURQ-300x166.png 300w, https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/KTRYCRNQVFFYHJTH5UEVT3KURQ-768x425.png 768w, https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/KTRYCRNQVFFYHJTH5UEVT3KURQ-1024x567.png 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1400px) 100vw, 1400px\" \/><\/a>Tom Lehrer <del datetime=\"2018-07-28T23:48:37+00:00\">was<\/del> is a cold war era lefty musical satirist, best known for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yhuMLpdnOjY\">Poisoning Pigeons in the Park<\/a>, and his jingles about math, science, and nuclear holocaust.  In addition to being a musician, he also taught math and stats at MIT and Santa Cruz.  His courseload at MIT through the 1960&#8217;s included the Political Science department&#8217;s quantitative modeling course, an experience that seems to have made him very mocking about the sciences of society. The song below is addressed to sociology but, as he admits, it&#8217;s really about all quantitative approaches to social science. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"660\" height=\"495\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zxFCQplZgKI?start=432&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Some choice bits:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>They can take one small matrix,<br \/>\nand really do great tricks,<br \/>\nall in the name of socioloigy. <\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>They can snow all their clients,<br \/>\nby calling it a science,<br \/>\nalthough it&#8217;s only sociology.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Elsewhere in the same clip are very nerdy mathematical songs, and a good satire about professors thinking we&#8217;re brilliant, and a School House Rock type kids song. Before stumbling on this, I discovered and rediscovered a bunch of other wonderful songs, such as the Vatican Rag, &#8220;I got it from Agnes&#8221;, and Oedipus Rex. I was especially into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3BDyFuDxA-I\">Selling Out<\/a>.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tom Lehrer was is a cold war era lefty musical satirist, best known for Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, and his jingles about math, science, and nuclear holocaust. In addition to being a musician, he also taught math and stats at MIT and Santa Cruz. His courseload at MIT through the 1960&#8217;s included the Political &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/post\/2086\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Tom Lehrer song ripping on quantitative social science<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpupg_custom_link":[],"wpupg_custom_link_behaviour":["default"],"wpupg_custom_image":[],"wpupg_custom_image_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2086"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2102,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086\/revisions\/2102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}