Joshua Feldman

So, Threads is a thing now. See you there? threads.net/@feldesque

Crosswords – Wordle for boomers? Here's a crossword of the 20 most common answers in @thetimes crossword. The clues are samples from previous editions. Code 👨‍💻: github.com/joshua-feldman/ti… Full-size graphic 📈 : github.com/joshua-feldman/ti… #rstats #tidytuesday #ggplot2

The University of Bristol have a great online course on multilevel modelling (including practical lessons with R): bristol.ac.uk/cmm/learning/o…

Code: github.com/joshua-feldman/mi…

I ❤️ 90s sitcoms (esp. Friends, Frasier and Seinfeld), so I looked into which was most popular at the time. It blew my mind that Seinfeld had higher ratings than Friends in the US (at least during its later seasons). A true master of its domain. FYI @JerrySeinfeld #rstats

Update! I learned via @MeijaJuris that Wordle only uses a subset of words as possible solutions. If we take this into account, LARES is only #2 – SOARE is #1, which is the same conclusion that @bertrandom came to.

Here's the link to the (currently very messy) #rstats code for anyone who wants to explore further: github.com/joshua-feldman/wo…. I deleted my earlier tweet because I noticed a bug, but the end result was the same after fixing it.

The word LARES is that which – on average – reduces the solution space the most, specifically from 10k to 300. In general, good first guesses are those that use common letters but do not repeat them.

Of course we don't know the answer in advance (and therefore which letters will turn green/orange/grey). BUT we can loop through all possible answers and calculate how much each guess reduces the solution space in that instance. Then we take the average reduction for each guess.

The colours that the game shares for each letter – green, orange and grey – are signals as to how to reduce the solution space. E.g. if you guess CHASE and the letter C turns green, the solution space reduces from 10k to 1k (i.e. the number of words that begin with C).

Ultimately, Wordle is a game about reducing a solution space from ~10k possible 5-letter words to just one, by process of elimination. The optimum first guess is therefore a word that reduces that solution space as much as possible from the outset.

So I was playing Wordle by @powerlanguish and I wondered – what's the optimal first guess, i.e. the word that maximises your chances of winning? As I'm self-isolating and apparently have nothing better to do, I figured out that word is LARES. Rationale and #rstats code below 👇

New datasets: The 100 Best Footballers in the World 2021 (scraped from the @guardian using #rstats) ⚽️📊 👨 Male version: github.com/joshua-feldman/gu… 👩 Female version: github.com/joshua-feldman/gu… In male football, Man City have the most players featured, followed by Chelsea and PSG.