That’s the inevitable conclusion to be drawn by anyone looking at the DonorsChoose Leaderboard at the moment. So far, we’ve had ten donations to my challenge, raising a total of $395 for deserving school teachers and students, which is good, and I thank those who have contributed.
But, man, we’re getting our clocks cleaned in both absolute and per-capita terms. I mean, it’s one thing for PZ Myers and his billions of tentacled minions to be beating us in absolute dollars, but even in average-donation terms, we’re getting housed. Math nerds have ponied up an average of $110/donation, the squid freaks are next with $98/donation, and even philosophers of science are more generous than physicists, averaging $59.50 to our $39.50.
C’mon, people, cough up some cash! Surely somebody has some spare funds sitting in a research grant that needs to be spent out before the end of the fiscal year?
Oh, man, that biology envy…it burns, it burns.
Don’t worry, physics is still a somewhat interesting science.
I bristled a bit at your per capita comparison. I donated to your challenge, but as an astronomy grad student, I’m sorry if my donation helped the numbers to fall below the per capita donations of the biologists.
I think a better tactic is to shame those phyisicists into donating. I, a lowely, poor, and under-paid grad student was able to find a few nickels to donate to under-paid and under-appreciated teachers. So, any of you physicists or astronomers out there making real money should be able to do the same or better! Get out there you slackers.
That was perhaps not the most diplomatic phrasing I could’ve used, but I figured it was worth trying the per capita angle, just to have a different way to write a “please donate money” post (and it required less research than Janet’s dollars per visitor stats…).
Insulting people in passing did work to generate a couple more large donations, though– we’re now up to $846.02, and a respectable $70.50/donation average. Thanks to all who have contributed.
Perhaps some of PZ’s tenticled minions, will be tempted to throw a few bucks your way just to lower your per capita numbers.
🙂
Perhaps some of PZ’s tenticled minions, will be tempted to throw a few bucks your way just to lower your per capita numbers.
That’d be cool with me.
I’m not afraid to change standards back to absolute numbers (I notice that the recent contributions have put us in third place in terms of absolute dollars raised…) if we start getting a large influx of calamari cash…
The key to generating the normalized stats is not so much research (beyond the leaderboard and Google Analytics) as a spreadsheet. Also, it doesn’t hurt to have a writing project or two you’re putting off.
Also, grad students who give in drives like these — even teeny amounts of money — get major karmic credit.
As UP’s resident tentacled minion, I’m sad to say I’m flat broke. Sorry to let you down, Chad.