Rose & Crown, pt. 2

On Saturday, Rob and I visited the Rose & Crown in Oxford.

Rose & Crown #2
North Parade, Oxford
1^st October 2011
Beer: 10/10
Service: 10/10
Atmosphere: 10/10

This pub can be largely blamed for us beginning this journey: Our discussion in The Black Horse began with me claiming that Oxford's Rose & Crown is the best pub in the country. Assuming the Rose & Crowns are a representative sample of the UK's pubs, then finding whether Oxford's is the country's best Rose & Crown would be a good indication of whether or not it's the UK's best pub.

As always, our experience at the best pub on North Parade was great. This pub really should be visited by all. Lots.

Rose & Crown

Last Tuesday (2 August), Rob and I were in The Black Horse Inn, Shipton-on-Stour. It was late afternoon and we were already in our second pub of the day, so we were both quite persuadable. Then I made the suggestion. Rob agreed.

So now we are both going to attempt to visit every Rose & Crown pub in the UK. A quick look on the British Beer & Pub Association website told us that there were 326 such pubs in 2007. Amazingly, such a high number failed to put either of us off.

Rose & Crown #1
Sheep Street, Stratford-upon-Avon
5^th August 2011
Beer: 8/10
Service: 8/10
Atmosphere: 8/10

Friday found us beginning our journey in the Rose & Crown, Stratford-upon-Avon, a large pub in the centre of town with a good sized beer garden, where we had our first Rose & Crown pint. We decided to rate each pub out of ten for beer, service and atmosphere. However we both found rating our first pub a difficult task as we had nothing to compare it to. Hence I decided to give it 8/10 in each category and return to update these ratings once we've visited a few more.

This pint also taught both of us that we know very little about reviewing pubs or ale. Although once we've reviewed 326 pubs our skills may well have improved...

30 Day Friday Challenge

Recently, Facebook has been plagued by the 30 Day Song Challenge. In mid May, a couple of friends and I devised an experiment: post Friday by Rebecca Black as each song in the 30 day challenge to investigate the trend in the number of people who 'like' the post each day.

Predictions

Before beginning the experiment, I predicted that the number of likes would follow a trend similar to the 'SHCAS curve' seen on sites like IMDb for so-bad-they're-good films. Additionally, I thought it likely that we would see small peaks on Fridays and days on which the song was particularly relevant to the description.

Results

The graph below shows the number of likes each day. As expected, there is a large peak on the first day, followed by a few smaller peaks. However, there is no final peak as predicted. In fact the number of likes after day 5 is so low that very little can be inferred from the data after this point.

Number of Likes by Day

In searching for other trends, I plotted the total number of interactions (likes and comments and likes of comments). This graph has both the initial and the final peaks as expected.

Number of Total Interactions by Day

Conclusion

In conclusion, the total number of interactions followed a similar pattern to the one I expected, with the initial peak largely due to likes and the final peak due largely to comments. If I was to repeat the experiment, I would make note of the number of 'unfriends' I received each day. These numbers could potentially be very large.

How Long Until I Get One Back?

On Tuesday (3rd May), I began writing "www.purplestereo.co.uk" on every bank note I get. There are two reasons I'm doing this: first, for a bit of free "advertising" of my website; and second, the more interesting reason, to see how long it is before I get a note I've written on back and how far away from where I've been spending them one turns up. Watch this space...