minuteearth

Who's Eating All These Spiders?

Added 2024-02-23 16:44:51 +0000 UTC

Hey friends!

We have a new video this week that’s a bit different from our regular ones. Normally, the ideas for our videos are pitched between the writers, who then discuss whether a topic will work or not. They lean on their considerable experience and expertise to design the best narrative.

That did not happen for this script.

This script started as a joke between Lizah and Arcadi, in between in-depth Rocky Horror Show and Stardew Valley discussions. Somewhere along the way, one of us stumbled upon a Tumblr post. And not just any Tumblr post, a legendary Tumblr post about Spiders Georg!

The original story goes:

The "average person eats 3 spiders a year" factoid is actually just a statistical error. The average person eats 0 spiders a year. Spiders Georg, who lives in a cave and eats over 10,000 spiders each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted.

During a goofy morning, Lizah and Arcadi wrote a suggestion for a small script (potentially a short). But, like a very hungry Spiders Georg, this story grew and grew. While the statistical outlier of Spiders Georg is a joke - statistical errors are no joke at all.

With some help from David, Arcadi wrote a wonderful story about statistics and misinformation. My completely unbiased opinion is that this is a masterpiece.

Thank you for being here with us and supporting our work. It's because of you that we can turn Tumblr memes into serious videos about statistics. <3

x, Lizah