Editors’ Choice: A Statistical Analysis of the Work of Bob Ross

Bob Ross was a consummate teacher. He guided fans along as he painted “happy trees,” “almighty mountains” and “fluffy clouds” over the course of his 11-year television career on his PBS show, “The Joy of Painting.” In total, Ross painted 381 works on the show, relying on a distinct set of elements, scenes and themes, and thereby providing thousands of data points. I decided to use that data to teach something myself: the important statistical concepts of conditional probability and clustering, as well as a lesson on the limitations of data.

So let’s perm out our hair and get ready to create some happy spreadsheets!

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This content was selected for Digital Humanities Now by Editor-in-Chief Sasha Hoffman based on nominations by Editors-at-Large: Anu Paul, James O'Sullivan, Kristen Mapes, Beth Secrist, Amy Wickner, Amy Williams, Gregory Zobel, Angela Galvan, Aisha Clarke, Silvia Stoyanova, Sarah Canfield Fuller, Andrew Hyde, Laurie Allen, Chiara Bernardi, Souvenise StLouis, John Bell, Kevin McQueeney