How did Obama do among Prius owners?

Here's a question: Did Obama do better among African-Americans or Prius owners?

The consensus is that he did better among African-Americans. (96% of African-Americans who voted voted for him, which is a pretty high bar.)

But how would one go about estimating how he did among Prius owners?

Obama's Erdos number

Does anybody know what Barack Obama's Erdos number is? (In particular, is it even defined?)

I learned a few days ago that if the links are people who know each other, my distance from Barack Obama is at most four -- Joe Biden went to high school with the father of a friend of mine. (Yes, this only proves that I'm at distance at most three from Biden; proving that I'm at distance at most four from Obama is left as an exercise for the reader.

Then again, I'm not sure if Obama even has academic publications, or where I'd look to find out if he did. The relevant Wikipedia article says "he published no legal scholarship", citing this New York Times article, though.

Ladies and gentlemen, the 44th President of the United States of America

I will let a more eloquent man speak for me.

We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

- Barack Obama, from his inaugural address.

Obama isn't average -- and that's a good thing.

Someone at the Washington Post is a bit confused about averages.

Basically, Barack and Michelle Obama (you've heard of them, right?) got a mortgage at a rate of 5.625% at a time when the average rate was 5.93% -- and so the Obama campaign finds itself playing defense. But as Nate Silver pointed out, this is evidence that the Obamas have good credit, and as various people commenting there pointed out, it's an average.

Some people get better than average rates. That's true by definition. (Although I suspect that more than half of people get a rate below the mean, because the right tail is probably longer than the left tail.

Personally, I want my presidential candidates to be getting a good interest rate -- because it's evidence that they have good credit, which in turn is evidence for some sort of financial prudence. (Yes, I know, some people with bad credit got there because they got dealt a bad hand. It's evidence, not a proof.) And if someone is good at managing their own money, they might be good at managing the country's money.

And do we really want our president to be average?

When Obama wins...

When Obama wins is Jason Kottke's collection of people's postings to Twitter that begin "when Obama wins".

It appears to have started with When Obama wins... unicorns will crap ice cream and pastries.

Of course this is vacuously true! Or at least it would be given the nonexistence of unicorns, which I think we can take as an axiom. To disprove it one would need to produce a counterexample, namely a unicorn that does not crap ice cream and pastries. But we can't do that, since there are no unicorns!

Now, if it said "When Obama wins... everybody will have their own unicorn that craps ice cream and pastries", that would be falsifiable. (And almost certainly false. Let's face it, it's hard to make sure everybody gets a unicorn.)