ELEVENTH IN LINE |
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![]() About This Blog A blog about my life, universe, etc. At any given time you might find something endlessly interesting or just me ruminating on something else, which no one (not even myself) finds interesting. That's the way blogs go, I suppose. Anyway, I was eleventh in line, and you weren't. Hah! About Me Name: Sarah Age: 26 Residence: Columbus, OH Religion: LDS Political Score: 5.00/-2.15 Job: Temp @ JPMorgan Chase College: Ohio State University Majors: Political Science, International Studies High School: Home Educated Hobbies: Reading, standing in line for things, writing, research Resume: HotJobs Email: lloannna@gmail.com About My Family My mom is a lawyer in Pickerington; my stepdad and dad are computer guys, and my stepmom (who works with my dad) is an engineer. My sisters are, in order of age, a photographer, an artist, and a person too young to have her own website. My brothers are, in order of age, living up north, and again, a person too young to have a website. At some point soon I'll be collecting links for my aunts, uncle, and cousins. ^_^ Message Services (Please see the notes below the Comment Policy before sending me a message) AIM: lloannna ICQ: 29395930 Yahoo: lloannna My CafePress Designs Even More CafePress Designs Star Wars: Episode 3 Line (Hollywood) My Star Wars Line page ![]() ![]() NaNoWriMo 2007: My Novel: Cipere Lumen ![]() NaNoWriMo 2006: My Novel: The Manatee Conspiracy ![]() NaNoWriMo 2005: My Novel: Beyond the Cliffs of Kefira ![]() ![]() NaNoWriMo 2004: My Novel: sul Okyar tir taTz'ileea ![]() Worthy Causes Fight the INDUCE Act LDS Foundation - Humanitarian Projects Starlight Children's Foundation ![]() ![]() ![]() Sponsored Links ![]()
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If I really really regret a post, it's likely I'll post about cats or something for a while in pennance. You've been warned. -- If I find something through the efforts of another blogger (in fact, of anyone I can link to), I'll credit them with a link (the style of such a link is pretty much up to my mood, so don't expect consistency in that area). -- My comment policy is listed below. Comment Policy I like comments, and I'll keep them activated. HOWEVER, if you want to start a flamewar, go somewhere else. If you want to get me to start arguing with you about Ohio State vs. Michigan, whether Mormons are Christian, how stupid being spoiler free is, or pretty much anything else inflamatory (inflamatory is in the eye of me in this case -- if you don't trust my judgement, too bad), go somewhere else. All links to pornography, all instances of vulgar language, and anything else I don't think is appropriate for my sisters, brother, neice, and nephew to see (ages 1-18), or quite frankly appropriate for ME to see, will be edited as I see fit (probably with links to something else, or alternate words, or what have you). All spam comments, including blatant off-topic self-promotion, will be deleted. If you've been banned, feel free to email me; if you're uncivil, please know that I'm interested in finding out exactly how many people I can add to my killfile without bringing my processer speed to zero, and don't mind using your address in my experiments. I reserve the right to delete and/or ban anyone I want. If you need to say it that badly, go get your own blog. They're free, you know. A Note About Chatting and Emails I'm not what you would call an extremely social or extraverted person. As a matter of fact, I tend to test 100% introvert on Myer-Briggs and other personality profile tests. Therefore, please be aware that most of the time, if I don't already know you (either in person or through weeks/months/years of email contact) the chances are I won't be very talkative if you IM me. I like having a long time to consider what I say, and that goes double for what I say to total strangers. Please don't think me scary, rude, hateful, or even just someone in a perpetual bad mood, if chat efforts are unsuccessful. Quite frankly, it's probably better for you to go find someone else to chat with, unless you have something significant to say. And if it's that important, you should probably email me. Which reminds me to let you know now that if you do choose to email me, it might be days, weeks, months, years, or never before I email you back. It takes a lot of energy for me to come up with replies to random inquiries from strangers, and most of the time there's something I'd rather be doing instead. Your understanding is appreciated. I'm not saying don't try, I'm just saying -- have minimal expectations, okay? Thanks. Oh, and if you DO know me, don't treat this statement as an excellent excuse not to talk to me. You know who you are. ![]() ![]()
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Sunday, January 20, 2008
Primary 4 Lessons 5 through 7 So at the YSA meeting I was asked to make posters and my lesson work here got delayed. I should have the PDFs here tomorrow. At least from now on I'll finally be ahead of schedule! 2008 Senior Primary (Book of Mormon) Lesson Five - Lehi and His Family Are Led through the Wilderness Church-Approved Materials Related Gospel Principles Chapter: Faith In Jesus Christ Guide to the Scriptures Entry: Liahona; Nephi Related Gospel Doctrine Lesson: #5, "Hearken Unto the Truth, and Give Heed Unto It" (Class Member Study Guide) Useful Articles from the Friend: Keeping Promises (a Sharing Time page including instructions for a "roller box" illustrating the Liahona story) Compass of Faith (a Sharing Time with paper figures of Lehi's family, and a dot-to-dot picture of the Liahona.) Journey to the Promised Land Game "Do You Know" (a version of the broken bow story with a question in the middle, to see if the children know what happened.) Lesson Six - Heavenly Father Commands Nephi to Build a Ship Church-Approved Materials Related Gospel Principles Chapter: Obedience Guide to the Scriptures Entry: Obedience Related Gospel Doctrine Lesson: #5, "Hearken Unto the Truth, and Give Heed Unto It" (Class Member Study Guide) Useful Article from the Friend: Nephi Builds a Ship (a Sharing Time with many ideas for teaching this story) Lesson Seven - Crossing the Sea Church-Approved Materials Related Gospel Principles Chapter: The Holy Ghost Guide to the Scriptures Entry: Holy Ghost Related Gospel Doctrine Lesson: #5, "Hearken Unto the Truth, and Give Heed Unto It" (Class Member Study Guide) Useful Articles from the Friend: Keeping Promises (a Sharing Time page including instructions for a "roller box" illustrating the Liahona story) The Holy Ghost is Real (an interview with Elder Craig A. Cardon) The Witness of the Holy Ghost (an interview with Elder Robert S. Wood) Being Smart (a story about being prompted by the Holy Ghost) Help from the Holy Ghost (a poem) Labels: book of mormon, church, LDS, mormon, Primary, religion, scriptures, Sunday school, teaching . | 0 comments | Saturday, January 19, 2008
Primary 4 Lessons 2, 3, 4 The transition on Millennial Star still isn't done! My apologies for missing last week -- I'm making up for it by doing several weeks in advance today and tomorrow; I hope to get lessons 5-7 up after my YSA meeting tomorrow night. To be honest, I was sort of surprised anyone actually used my stuff. ^_^ I am putting all the PDFs on one page on my Geocities site for now, to make the links easier. They're organized by lesson; let me know if it doesn't work well for you all. Lesson Two - Nephi Follows His Father, the Prophet Church-Approved Materials Related Gospel Principles Chapter: Prophets of God Guide to the Scriptures Entry: Revelation Related Gospel Doctrine Lesson: #2, "All Things According To His Will" (Class Member Study Guide) Useful Articles from the Friend: Lehi's Journey To the Promised Land (game - you will need the original magazine for the board, if you don't want to make your own.) Courage (a Sharing Time idea, including a Scripture Heroes puzzle, and some activities related to lessons two and four of the Primary 4 manual) Lesson Three - Obtaining the Brass Plates Church-Approved Materials Related Gospel Principles Chapter: Obedience Guide to the Scriptures Entry: Obedience Related Gospel Doctrine Lesson: #2, "All Things According To His Will" (Class Member Study Guide) Useful Articles from the Friend: Nephi Gets the Brass Plates (a mixed-up picture game) Scriptural Giants: Nephi's Courage (the story of the Brass Plates in relatively plain English) Brass Plates Code (funstuf decoding activity, scroll down) Friend to Friend with Earl M. Monson (talks about how nervous he was to be called as a bishop and how Nephi inspired him) Friend to Friend with Lowell D. Wood (talks about how Nephi inspired him) Lesson Four - The Tree of Life Church-Approved Materials Related Gospel Principles Chapter: Free to Choose Guide to the Scriptures Entry: Agency; Temptation Related Gospel Doctrine Lesson: #3, "The Vision of the Tree of Life" (Class Member Study Guide) Lehi's Dream (w/illustrations) Lehi's Vision (matching activity, near the bottom of the page.) Friend to Friend with Jeffrey R. Holland (he talks about the iron rod and a time he got lost) Courage (a Sharing Time idea, including a Scripture Heroes puzzle, and some activities related to lessons two and four of the Primary 4 manual) Labels: book of mormon, church, mormon, Primary, religion, Sunday school, teaching . | 1 comments | Tuesday, November 27, 2007
CafePress Madness, Part Two So in my last post I put up all my easy-to-figure-out, non-controversial, not-likely-to-garner-evil-comments designs. That was simple enough. Now to enter the murkier waters of... LDS themed designs!! Stupid anti-Mormon comments won't even get a polite response from me this time, people. As you can see, there are all kinds of fun designs -- I have two CTR ("Choose the Right") logos, some funky (almost?) ugly art with the text of Moses 1:39, an "I Am A Child of God" sort of logo specifically for girls and women (I'm still trying to come up with a "manly" looking one for the guys,) an FHE (family home evening) logo that I'm really rather proud of, a faith one that I mostly did out of a desire to make a good-looking sun (I don't think I'm quite there yet...), and a sort of sloppy yet hopefully cool block with the text of the 13th article of faith. There will probably be more designs added to this collection over time -- the system I'm using will, niftily enough, update this post automatically with any changes. Yay! I wasn't kidding when I said I needed a job, though. Nine designs (technically, the tenth -- the Moses 1:39 one -- has been floating around waiting for me to use it for about two years.) One week. Yeesh. Oh, and there's one more post coming! [edited to add: I also have a Christmas design in there! Not specifically LDS, but I wanted to keep all my "religious" stuff in one post... yeah.] Labels: art, bible, book of mormon, christmas, church, culture, design, LDS, mormon, Primary, religion, scriptures, working . | 1 comments | Thursday, November 09, 2006
So, it's been a while... And honestly, I'm really a little too busy to be blogging, but I got a couple of comments in my email today, and I was taking a break from noveling or studying (I'm in Russian 104! I could very well graduate soon!) And I thought, hey, why not blog a bit. Today I'm going to do something really easy: compare the April 2006 General Conference citation rankings to the Top 25 General Conference Overall Scripture Rankings I did earlier this year. First, the top citations for the 2006 conference talks, reverse alphabetically arranged within each instance category (and with previous Top 25 General Conference Overall Rankings in parentheses): 4 Instances D&C 58:42 (39) D&C 115:5-6 (471) 1 Peter 2:9 (110) 3 Instances Moses 1:39 (1) D&C 59:9 (23) D&C 13:1 (49) BM Title Page (148) 2 Instances Mosiah 18:9 (130) Moses 7:62 (455) JS History 1:17 (45) Helaman 5:36 (N/A) D&C 84:44 (267) D&C 81:5 (193) D&C 132:19 (179) Alma 5:14 (80) Alma 42:30 (N/A) Alma 42:15 (425) Alma 42:13 (N/A) Alma 34:32-34(316) Alma 34:16 (N/A) Alma 12:32 (N/A) Abraham 3:25 (176) 2 Nephi 9:45 (N/A) 2 Nephi 32:5 (425) 1 Corinthians 15:29 (43) 1 Corinthians 13:11 (N/A) Next, we try to balance the two rankings -- since some of the scriptures cited more than once in 2006 weren't on the Top 100 lists by book, they didn't have a preexisting ranking. I arbitrarily set their ranking as 2,500 -- the lowest ranking from my previous all-time list was in the upper 600's. Then I divided the 2006 ranking (4 instances = 1, 2 instances = 3, etc.) by twice the all-time ranking ([2006]/[2*AllTime]). That way the best-ranked 2006 citations (given a rank of 1) which had the best all-time ranks (in this case, we're talking about D&C 58:42, obviously) would have the largest resulting score within its own citation group, but not (automatically) the highest score overall The top 25 for 2006 are, thusly: 1. Moses 1:39 (Pearl of Great Price) [Top 50] 2. Amos 3:7 (Old Testament) [Top 50] 3. Matthew 5:16 (New Testament) [Top 50] 4. D&C 59:9 (Doctrine & Covenants) [Top 50] 5. John 10:16 (New Testament) [Top 50] 6. 1 Corinthians 10:13 (New Testament) 7. John 3:5 (New Testament) 8. 1 Corinthians 15:29 (New Testament) [Top 50] 9. Joseph Smith History 1:17 (Pearl of Great Price) [Top 50] 10. Matthew 6:33 (New Testament) 11. D&C 13:1 (Doctrine & Covenants) [Top 50] 12. Alma 5:14 (Book of Mormon) 13. John 14:26 (New Testament) 14. Matthew 11:28-30 (New Testament) 15. Matthew 3:17 (New Testament) 16. D&C 58:42 (Doctrine & Covenants) [Top 50] 17. Matthew 25:21 (New Testament) 18. Ephesians 1:10 (New Testament) 19. 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 (New Testament) 20. Mosiah 18:9 (Book of Mormon) 21. Daniel 2:28 (Old Testament) 22. 1 Corinthians 2:9 (New Testament) 23. 1 Corinthians 11:11 (New Testament) 24. Luke 18:22 (New Testament) 25. Acts 3:19-21 (New Testament) Note that this isn't the same as putting the 2006 citations in order by their all-time rankings (to illustrate that, I marked the 9 scriptures which appear on the Top 50 all-time ranking.) Note also that, if you thought this year was a bit heavier than normal on the New Testament, you're right: Book of Mormon (2 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 16) Doctrine & Covenants (3 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 10.33...) Old Testament (2 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 11.5) Pearl of Great Price (2 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 5) New Testament (16 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 14.3125) Now, you could argue that by folding in the all-time rankings, I'm essentially eliminating the true up-and-coming citations (especially considering that no scripture was cited more than 4 times in 2006, and not even the Pearl of Great Price all-time ranking goes down to just 4 citations.) On the other hand, this largely eliminates any bias from one speaker repeatedly citing the same scripture (with no one else following suit;) unless at least two or three other speakers have had the same impulse. Since I already provided the "more than two citations in 2006" list above, I've decided I'm not too worried about this problem. Similarly, I'm not using the pure citation rankings today -- I'm using the combo ranking, which takes into account placement on the Scripture Mastery lists (either the old one or the new one.) Again, the point is "stuff that would be really really good to study, especially in light of 2006 Conference citations" and not just "stuff that gets cited a lot," for which you can visit the BYU citation site and get the answer right away. ^_^ I am a little annoyed that my list isn't a perfect "all the 4-citation scriptures in General Conference Overall Rank Order" display, but again that would be easy to calculate from what I've put up there. I like this weighted list the best, since it points out that 3-citation, #1 overall-ranked Moses 1:39 beats 4-citation, 39th-ranked D&C 58:42, which pretty much meshes with what I'd guessed would be appropriate. [final note: I was waiting for the October 2006 conference to show up on the BYU site before doing this, but it's November now and it still isn't there and hey, I wanted to put something on the blog already. I'll just redo this exercise whenever it shows up. ^_^ Also, be aware that there's a beta version of the scripture index -- but it doesn't seem to include any 2006 data at all, not even from just April, so I didn't bother with it today. When they add the 2006 data, I'll start messing with comparative Journal of Discourses and General Conference citation rankings; unsurprisingly, Moses 1:39 remains king of that contest, with the top rank in the JoD/GC combined ranking -- but shockingly, it drops off the Top 100 altogether if you just look at the JoD! Daniel 2:44, not cited at all in April 2006, and ranked 49th in the GC ranking, is #1 in the JoD ranking and second in the genuine all-time ranking.] Labels: analysis, book of mormon, church, reading, scriptures . | 0 comments | Sunday, April 23, 2006
Belay my last... I knew there was something odd about the Old Testament not having any instances in the top 25 -- now I know why. For some reason, the top 4 Old Testament scriptures didn't get their citations included in my Excel spreadsheet (I think it was a copy & paste error -- I've fixed it now.) Moreover, I realized that I gave the Articles of Faith short shrift; the reason the Scripture Mastery scriptures are given a boost is because Latter-day Saints are expected to memorize them; accordingly, I now give the Articles of Faith the same bonus that they would have had if they were on a single Scripture Mastery list. And, oddly, one entry (D&C 13:1) was given a lot more points than it should have (it went down to 49th, with 166 points, when I copy & pasted the new scoring formula; since I pasted over the old formula, I don't know what was wrong with it.) So, the correct Top 25 (plus the extras, from the original list, that were moved out of the Top 25) are: Scripture -- Volume -- Score/Rank Moses 1:39 -- Pearl of Great Price -- 1350/1 2 Nephi 2:25 -- Book of Mormon -- 505/2 Romans 1:16 -- New Testament -- 460/3 D&C 14:7 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 435/4 John 17:3 -- New Testament -- 424/5 Mosiah 3:19 -- Book of Mormon -- 415/6 1 Nephi 3:7 -- Book of Mormon -- 405/7 Amos 3:7 -- Old Testament -- 390/8 Moroni 10:4-5 -- Book of Mormon -- 380/9 Joshua 24:15 -- Old Testament -- 350/10 John 14:15 -- New Testament -- 345/11 A of F 1:13 -- Pearl of Great Price -- 340/12 Matthew 5:16 -- New Testament -- 335/13 Alma 41:10 -- Book of Mormon -- 325/14 D&C 82:10 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 320/15 D&C 130:20-21 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 305/16 John 7:17 -- New Testament -- 295/17 2 Nephi 31:20 -- Book of Mormon -- 285/18 Moroni 10:4 -- Book of Mormon -- 280/19 1 Corinthians 15:22 -- New Testament -- 280/19 D&C 1:38 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 275/21 Revelation 14:6 -- New Testament -- 275/21 2 Nephi 2:27 -- Book of Mormon -- 260/23 D&C 59:9 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 260/23 D&C 84:38 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 240/25 Matthew 25:40 -- New Testament -- 253/26 James 1:5 -- New Testament -- 244/27 [...] D&C 13:1 -- D&C 13:1 -- 166/49 (the scores are slightly higher now, as I changed the formula slightly, to give all the Scripture Mastery scriptures which didn't appear in the Top 100 citations lists a score; this also affected some of the rankings, but all of the original Top 25 are up there.) I included the volume information for any non-members who might be stopping by. The correct numbers for the volumes (for the Top 25 only) are: Book of Mormon -- 8 New Testament -- 7 Doctrine & Covenants -- 6 Old Testament -- 2 Pearl of Great Price -- 2 (incl. Article of Faith) We're still not big on the Old Testament, clearly. And if you don't count the Articles of Faith or Joseph Smith History, just Moses 1:39 and Abraham 3:22-23 have scores higher than the mean. Speaking of which, I have a total of 620 scripture references (obviously, there are some duplicates: Moroni 10:4 and Moroni 10:4-5 each independently rank in the Top 20,) and the mean score is 50.7 -- there are 137 references that have scores of 51+. I'm thinking seriously of adding the hymnal references in -- though I think I'll make two separate scores and ranks if I add the hymnal, because only about half of my current Top 25 are officially referenced by any hymn at all (I should point out that each hymn only has 2 scripture references; that plus the similarity in wording/content between various specific scriptures probably accounts for a lot of the scriptures that seem to have been overlooked.) Incidentally, we had our Stake Conference today. The highest-ranked scripture that was specifically cited by any speaker was Moroni 10:4-5. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was cited by our visiting General Authority. Interestingly, he's only spoken at General Conference four times, and didn't cite Moroni 10:4-5 any of those times; I looked at the list of scriptures he's cited in his General Conference addresses, and he doesn't seem to go for the really popular scriptures much; he's cited 27 scriptures, but only 7 of them have scores on my sheet (remember, there are lot of scriptures with multiple citations that aren't on my ranking,) and only 2 of his cited scriptures have scores above the mean on my list: Mosiah 3:19 (ranked 6th) was cited in 2001, and Moses 1:39 was cited in 1994. He's only cited one scripture twice: Moses 1:10 (1989 and 2001;) -- that's ranked 438th on my list, with 12 citations. The other speakers at General Conference who've cited it more than once were Harold B. Lee (4 times,) and Neal A. Maxwell (2 times.) I'm definitely researching the next General Authority I see speaking, ahead of time. It's like Conference Bingo, only more nerdy! Labels: analysis, book of mormon, church, LDS, mormon, religion, scriptures, statistics . | 4 comments | Friday, April 21, 2006
A Unified Theory of LDS Scripture Ranking [edit: see the next post up; I've had to correct the rankings somewhat -- the Old Testament benefits, while poor Doctrine & Covenants 13:1 is demoted substantially] I ran across, finally, the list of the original 160 Scripture Mastery scriptures (they reduced it to 100 before I even joined the Church) and thought, hey, why not incorporate this into my list of important LDS scriptures? These are the 25 most important scriptures, in order, taking into account whether or not they were on the old list, whether or not they are on the current list, their ranking on the BYU index of conference citations, and whether or not I'd run into more than one citation of them as "really important missionary scriptures." That last is totally random, but I wanted some kind of folklorey component, and that was the easiest one to find. I added together the yes/no questions (old, new, recommended), multiplied them by the total number of citations in General Conference, and then added the total number of citations in General Conference (the formula is: "((2*C2*J2)+J2)"), then sorted them with the highest scores on top. Moses 1:39 -- 1330 -- 1 2 Nephi 2:25 -- 485 -- 2 Romans 1:16 -- 440 -- 3 D&C 14:7 -- 415 -- 4 John 17:3 -- 414 -- 5 Mosiah 3:19 -- 395 -- 6 1 Nephi 3:7 -- 385 -- 7 Moroni 10:4-5 -- 350 -- 8 John 14:15 -- 325 -- 9 Matthew 5:16 -- 315 -- 10 Alma 41:10 -- 305 -- 11 D&C 82:10 -- 300 -- 12 D&C 130:20-21 -- 285 -- 13 John 7:17 -- 275 -- 14 2 Nephi 31:20 -- 265 -- 15 D&C 13:1 -- 260 -- 16 Moroni 10:4 -- 260 -- 16 1 Corinthians 15:22 -- 260 -- 18 Revelation 14:6 -- 255 -- 19 D&C 1:38 -- 255 -- 19 Matthew 25:40 -- 243 -- 21 2 Nephi 2:27 -- 240 -- 22 D&C 59:9 -- 240 -- 22 James 1:5 -- 234 -- 24 D&C 84:38 -- 220 -- 25 (the list gets less useful the further down you go, because the citation index is biased in favor of shorter books -- the top 100 Pearl of Great Price citations gets you down to just five citations each, whereas the top 100 Old Testament citations only goes down to 8 citations, and the heavily cited Book of Mormon only to 12.) As you can see, the one thing that keeps recurring is that Moses 1:39 is a LOT more important than any other scripture out there. Which makes me once again say that the March Madness showdown (which I can't even find anymore, but rest assured, " For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" did NOT win -- I don't think it was even running!) was totally off-kilter and wrong. Interestingly, these are the scores for the different books (across all my rankings): Old Testament: 3211 (0) Pearl of Great Price: 3285 (1) Book of Mormon: 6145 (8) Doctrine & Covenants: 6295 (7) New Testament: 7653 (9) I'm surprised by that. The numbers in parentheses are the instances of each in the Top 25 -- that surprises me rather less. I knew that a lot of our really basic doctrines are expressed mainly in the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenenants, and New Testament. I just hadn't realized how much we rely on them (verses the Pearl of Great Price and particularly the Old Testament) on even the smaller or more unusual stuff. The top Old Testament scripture is, ironically, #26 on my main ranking -- Isaiah 29:14, with a score of 210. LDS readers shouldn't be surprised that Malachi 4:5-6 is right behind it, at #29, with a score of 195. In case you're curious as to how the Scripture Mastery and recommendation bonuses impacted the rankings, the top 25 in my version are 1st, 6th, 8th, 11th, 3rd, 15th, 18th, 54th, 23rd, 24th, 28th, 29th, 35th, 36th, 41st, 46th, 46th, 46th, 50th, 50th, 13th, 63rd, 63rd, 17th, and 78th in pure citation order, respectively -- there are a LOT of ties, since that ranking is just based on how many times they've been cited; my rankings have a lot fewer ties, thank goodness. The reason that, say, Daniel 2:44 (#1 in Old Testament citations, 46th in overall citations) ranks lower than the Isaiah and Malachi scriptures is because it's only on the current Scripture Mastery list -- the Isaiah and Malachi scriptures are on both. In case it's not obvious, I'll point out now that this system is not very sensitive to changes over time -- I gave the most weight to the continually popular (as evidenced by the citation index, from 1942 to the present) and that which both the CES of 1986 and the CES of today, and in a very few cases, returned missionaries of today, thought most helpful. I thought about giving a bonus to, say, everything that President Hinckley has cited personally, but decided against it. I may or may not add in the hymnal and children's songbook references. It'd be a lot of data entry, so I'm already biased against it, and I'm not sure how much overlap there would be with the other two lists (the biggest victims in my scheme are the Scripture Mastery scriptures that aren't on the Top 100 of any of the five citation indices -- they all have scores of 0.) It'd be a fun experiment, anyway. I have a strong suspicion that the overall winner, Moses 1:39, can't be unseated under any responsible method of calculation. Labels: analysis, book of mormon, church, LDS, mormon, religion, scriptures, statistics . | 0 comments | Saturday, December 31, 2005
The Finish Line! I offer a challenge to members of the Church throughout the world and to our friends everywhere to read or reread the Book of Mormon. If you will read a bit more than one and one-half chapters a day, you will be able to finish the book before the end of this year. Well, that was issued in August, but I didn't start till October 16th. And, as of today, I still hadn't read anything past the end of 3rd Nephi, leaving me with 35 chapters, or 130 pages, to go. My copy of Excel started freaking out around 8pm -- it said I needed to average 769 chapters a day to finish on time! It said I wouldn't be done till January 13th at this rate. But it was wrong. ^_^ Completion Dates (by book): Title Page -- 16 October 2005 Introduction -- 16 October 2005 The Testimony of Three Witnesses -- 16 October 2005 The Testimony of Eight Witnesses -- 16 October 2005 Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith -- 16 October 2005 First Nephi (1 Ne.) -- 26 October 2005 Second Nephi (2 Ne.) -- 27 October 2005 Jacob (Jacob) -- 9 December 2005 Enos (Enos) -- 9 December 2005 Jarom (Jarom) -- 9 December 2005 Omni (Omni) -- 9 December 2005 Words of Mormon (W of M) -- 9 December 2005 Mosiah (Mosiah) -- 15 December 2005 Alma (Alma) -- 20 December 2005 Helaman (Hel.) -- 20 December 2005 Third Nephi (3 Ne.) -- 30 December 2005 Fourth Nephi (4 Ne.) -- 31 December 2005 Mormon (Morm.) -- 31 December 2005 Ether (Ether) -- 31 December 2005 Moroni (Moro.) -- 31 December 2005 Erm, yeah, that book of Jacob was a rough one. Not to mention Helaman. Heh. Anyway, though my powers of procrastination were great, my powers of determination were greater. Whee! And with nearly two hours to spare! Now I just have to find a job, and I can change my signature at LiningUp.Net to something other than my current to-do list. Labels: book of mormon, church, goals, LDS, mormon, projects, prophets, religion, scriptures . | 0 comments | Because only so many people can be eleventh in line. |