Home of what used to be called Irish Music?

I was curious as to the validity of Grego’s claim on Joyce’s recent thread Sessions in the South, where he asserts that…(I’m not sure which, Canada, where he’s from, or the whole of North America)..this is the new home of what used to be called Irish Music. So I looked up a few population statistics and tallied them against the number of sessions listed here per country, on a Microsoft Excell spreadsheet. Here’s what I got:

Country England
popx1000 49089
area sqkm 130423
pop densx1000 376.383
sessions 81
popx1000/session 606.037
session/area 1610.16



Country Wales
popx1000 2921
area sqkm 20766
pop densx1000 140.6626
sessions 10
popx1000/session 292.1
session/area 2076.6




Country Scotland
popx1000 5149
area sqkm 77080
pop densx1000 66.80073
sessions 26
popx1000/session 198.0385
session/area 2964.615



Country N.Ireland
popx1000 1685
area sqkm 13483
pop densx1000 124.9722
sessions 45
popx1000/session 37.44444
session/area 299.6222



Country UK
popx1000 58844
area sqkm 241752
pop densx1000 243.4065
sessions 162
popx1000/session 363.2346
session/area 1492.296



Country Rep Irel
popx1000 3883
area sqkm 70280
pop densx1000 55.25043
sessions 45
popx1000/session 86.28889
session/area 1561.778



Country Irel all
popx1000 5568
area sqkm 83763
pop densx1000 66.47326
sessions 90
popx1000/session 61.86667
session/area 930.7



Country IoMan
popx1000 74
area sqkm 572
pop densx1000 129.3706
sessions 3
popx1000/session 24.66667
session/area 190.6667



Country USA
popx1000 280600
area sqkm 9629091
pop densx1000 29.14086
sessions 196
popx1000/session 1431.633
session/area 49128.02



Country Canada
popx1000 31900
area sqkm 9976140
pop densx1000 3.19763
sessions 19
popx1000/session 1678.947
session/area 525060



Country N.America
popx1000 312500
area sqkm 19605231
pop densx1000 15.93962
sessions 205
popx1000/session 1524.39
session/area 95635.27






Notes.
1.Ok, North America is not a country. But Grego didn’t say which he meant. BTW, Grego - this is only a bit of fun - I say controversial and provocative things on this site all the time. I’m merely sharing my indulgence to satisfy my curiosity that your remark sparked off.

2. I suspect the sessions listed for Ireland, north and south, are grossly under-represented, but as the sessions listed here are all I can go by, that’s what you’ve got.

3. popx1000/session - refers to the population of the country which could theoretically be distributed to each session listed.

4. session/area - I presented it this way round to show the theoretical area covered by each session listed per country.

5. session/population densityx1000 - Hmmm…this would have been a bit of an abstraction. I thought about this but couldn’t think of any validity in its inclusion.

6. The conclusion seems to be that Canada scores lowest, both in popx1000/session and session/area but the Isle of Man scores highest.

So, according to this, The Isle of Man is actually the home to what used to be called Irish Music.

Danny.

4. erm don’t you really mean “area/session”; but anyway i think you’re just trying to blind us poor numerically challenged folks with lies and damned lies… (and the odd statistic)

Danny, shouldn’t you be talking about the confidence levels as well, just to make it more entertaining?
Trevor

Rog - oops, you’re right - my title is wrong but the value is, as you say, session/area.

But no, I’m certainly not trying to blind anyone with stats - as simple as these calculations are (Honest - no kidding!!) But what this quantitative dataset does not show of course is the quality of the music from any one source.

danny.

Trev - but the sample size is one per sample.

Danny, ah yes, that’s ok then.
Trevor

Right - OK folks I can see where this is going. Sorry. A simple explanation is in order.

Take the dataset for Scotland:

Country Scotland
popx1000 5149
area sqkm 77080
pop densx1000 66.80073
sessions 26
popx1000/session 198.0385
session/area 2964.615


popx1000 5149 - this simply means the population is 5149x1000 = 5,149,000, ie just over five million souls.

area sqkm 77080 - The area of Scotland is 77080 square kilometres.

pop densx1000 66.80073 - The amount of people per square kilometre is 66.8. I had to times the calculation by 1000 to give you the right answer.

sessions 26 - Need I say more? Just check them out in the sessions section on this site for any given country. 26 are listed for Scotland.

popx1000/session 198.0385 - This is the value given for the population divided by the number of sessions - so you need to multiply by one thousand to give you how many people in Scotland could theoretically go to any of those 26 sessions - so for Scotland, it’s 198,038 and a half people could go to each of those 26 sessions.


session/area 2964.615 - as rog pointed out, I should have put area/session, meaning what area of Scotland is theoretically covered by each of the 26 sessions. I put this in to give the USians and Canadians a bit of slack cos they live in much bigger countries than we eurofolk. So Scotland has one session per 2964.6 square kilometres.

Hope this helps.

danny.

Isn’t General Motors a country?

Dave

and we all know that the whole of scotland only has 26 sessions, oh yes, *grin*.

Well, that’s up to you guys to put them up. Course there’s gonna be tons more in Jockland. Even more hidden sessions in Ireland. As I said, I can only work on the information that’s given.

I agree with Dave. Isn’t General Motors that country where they’re growing those crops everyone’s fussing about?
Trevor

ROFL -- Danny, you’re a statistics geek.

Oh, I don’t know… if he really was a stats geek, he’d have put in error bars, p’raps depending on estimated “session reporting slackness” (SRS) for each region…. Dunno how you’d estimate SRS though, or even what units you might couch it in. I reckon it’d be highest in Ireland though, from my experiences looking for sessions in Ireland vs. USA.

Nee-nee-nee-geek-geek-geek!!

As rog says, there’d be coefficients of errors and p-values in there, and all that old madam. I reckon it’s pretty simple now, after my explanation.

Ermm…let’s face it, if you can’t undertand that lot now, er ….just keep banging the rocks together lads, or keep shaking those goddamm eggs. Don’t worry, be happy…

The Isle of Man hardly counts at all [unlike your good self!!] in which case I claim the crown for the Black North.

This smacks of the estimate of uilleann pipers in the world, using land mass, estimated pipers per land mass and doing the math. When compared with NPUs estimate, the estimated counted of around 3000 pipers wasn’t that far off.

Ohms per furlong per meters squared 😉

furlongs per fortnight

Danny …

You’re a hard-working man and we all appreciateyour efforts to rebut the spuroius but HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS and to hell with the begrudgers! V pisht as I write and requiring a lot of back spacing … BUT I HOPE IVRYBADY GITS THE DRIFT!!!!!!!!!

IoM is probably a spurious outlier - results confounded by the small sample size. So, breandan, I have to agree, the prize does have to go to Norn Iron. All the more remarkable that the music is not at played by the protestant 58% of the population. So the potential playing population should be 42% of 1,685,000 = 707,700, thus the true ratio of popx1000/sessions = 26.5, which is almost the same as that of the IoM (24.6667), anyway!

Aidan, rog, felinoba, no worries, I’m not being very serious here. However if the numbers of sessions listed *were* a true reflection of the numbers of sessions in existence, then it might well make for some interesting stats.

Danny.

Danny, as they say, you’re using statistics the same way a drunk uses a lamppost:

- for support rather than illumination

Neh neh ne neh neh- jes cos big ole’ Canada’s last & little IoM’s first!

Now hang on a minute here, this was supposed to be illuminating? Geesh, I’d better read this all over again… *snort*

I was happy to find out that So Cal had about 30 practicing (playing? Much like doctors that practice) pipers that contributed to the count…Then there’s the bunch from Utah. The fact that there are about 3000 people that play uilleann pipes, not to mention the ones that have put their set in the attic and have stopped playing, is revealing for an instrument that almost died out in the 50s/60s. Now, if I could only find those folks that have stashed their Rowsome set in the attic in Los Angeles. I don’t think the California condor has had that kind of come back.

It’s population density…

Candians are the least dense. The English are very dense indeed. The Scots are moderately dense.

Now, Baffin Island’s a great big place - there must be some sessions there that haven’t been listed here yet?

Grego - you’re right - the Canadians are by far the most empty.

Looks significant from Danny’s data, Steve… Now of course you’re an Englishman transplanted to Ireland, aren’t you? What’s that story about increasing the density of both populations….

(sorry!) :>}

Touch

Fascinating statistics, Danny - and I’m only being *slightly* ironic.

Of course, what you haven’t taken into consideration (unless I have missed something in this thread, which is not at all unlikely) is the average size of sessions in each country. So, Northern Ireland, with one session per 37,000 people, might have, on average, 3 participants per session, whilst in Canada, with one session per 1.7 million people, the average session might have, say, 1.7 million participants.

back in the day- one woman/9 months pregnant; 9 women/one month pregnant.

Works every time 😉

Felinoba - please carefully and patiently explain for the benefit of we lesser mortals what on earth are you wittering on about.

David - it doesn’t take long to do this lot on an Excell spreadsheet -once I acquired the population stats, etc. - if the figures for participants per session were available they surely would have been incorporated into this. That would certainly have been a more interesting dataset.

No worries Grego - just some banter to lighten things up - that was fun.

Danny.

I think the stats would say that it wasn’t “9 women/ 1 month pregnant” but 9 women/ 11% pregnant. Mmmm… maybe stats don’t always work well.

Domhniaill the Demographer strikes again, with some succulent statistics! (Just practicing my paliteration, you understand). Yes. 🙂

Jim

Hey Steve. We’ve got about minus 25 degrees here. (sorry, that’s frozenstiff’s domain…) 8>}

Sometimes I envy you (I’m a transplanted Irishman,) but after living in various parts of Ireland, the US, and Canada I’ve come to believe that home is where you put your hat.

Steve, thank you for pointing out my spelling mistake. Is “speruious” a spurious spelling of the word “spurious”, or just an anagram of “pious user”?

Jim 🙂

Touche, Mr Steve! 🙂

Jim

Steve, no offence meant. Just a little fun, that’s all. 🙂

Jim