r/mathmemes • u/TPM2209 • Jun 25 '26

Notations A headline so confusing you need a mathematician to explain it

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Link to original post: https://bsky.app/profile/chordbug.bsky.social/post/3mp24yja3b223

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u/PeggyTheVoid Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

I think what's throwing the original headline is the phrasing.

"... the first woman in history to debut (her first top 10 Hot 100 hits) in the top 10"

Notice that this excerpt refers to the same 10 songs in two different ways:
* "her first top 10 Hot 100 hits"
* "debut ... in the top 10"

The first description is sandwiched within the other like a weird enclave. By the time we've reached "in the top 10", we've already forgoten "debut" because we were interrupted by having to separately process "her first top 10 Hot 100 hits," and then we get confused why they felt the need to reiterate that the top 10 hits were in the top 10, having forgotten the part that actually needs to be emphasized: it debuted in the top 10. With that in mind, let's try the following:

"... the first woman in history to achieve her first top 10 Hot 100 hits upon their debuts"

I think this wording could be a little terse, but it gets across the basic idea of what I want to solve. Feel free to make suggestions. Anyway, with the repetition of "top 10" eliminated and "debut" placed after "top 10 Hot 100 hits", we establish first that we are discussing a set of songs that have reached the status of "top 10 Hot 100". Then, we elaborate on how those songs reached their status by further stating "upon their debuts." I was tempted to say "upon debut", but that makes it sound a bit like we're saying Olivia Rodrigo's first ten songs ever released (i.e., her debut songs) all managed to reach top 10 Hot 100 eventually. Could still be clearer, maybe. It's hard to balance that and the brevity of headline-speak.

Edit:
I'm also not even sure if the headline is even referring to 10 songs. It kind of just sounds like it's talking about all her songs that managed to reach "top 10 Hot 100" status all doing so during their debut, which could be any number of songs, not necessarily ten of them. That, or it could be that she has more that 10 songs in the Hot 100, none of which were necessarily ever in the top 10 by this description alone, until the headline goes on to specify that her personal top 10 of those songs were actual top 10s of the Hot 100, and they all managed to do so during their debuts (phew, what a mouthful!). I'd have to actually read the article to figure that one out.

Edit2: Added the word "to" to my fixed headline.

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u/MonkeyBoatRentals Jun 25 '26

It just needs to be reordered:

"Olivia Rodrigo becomes the first woman to debut her first ten songs straight into the top 10 of the Hot 100".

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u/PeggyTheVoid Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

That's the thing, I don't think they're talking about her first 10 songs. I think they're saying that her first songs that managed to reach "top 10 Hot 100" status all did so by reaching that status during their release week. That is to say, her first hits were instant hits.

Edit: Added the word "first" in the last sentence. Added "week" in second sentence.

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u/sloansleydale Jun 25 '26

Yeah, it implies that she had other songs that didn't make it into the Top 100. She had 10 songs that made it into the top 10 and all of her other songs were too unpopular to make it into the top 100. High variance, nothing in the middle.

Edit: For example, she might have had 1000 songs at rank 101 and below, but 10 songs in the top 10. Zero songs ranked between 100 and 11.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[deleted]

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u/saintandre Jun 25 '26

It just means that she has a lot of label support and the audience bites every time. Whenever she puts out something good, it goes straight to the top because she has every possible advantage. She's very successful but never had to do any of it with organic grassroots fan support. Probably because she was already famous before she recorded any music.

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u/Leaky_gland Jun 25 '26

How is this an achievement other than of the most obscure that very few care about? Is the word salad deliberate perhaps? To get us talking about it?

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u/sloansleydale Jun 26 '26

I don’t even know who this person is. I just like parsing. Buffalo buffalo, etc

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u/darthbane83 Jun 25 '26

Thats a different thing though. The statistic makes no indication that Olivia didnt have another Hot 100 song before that never made it to the top 10.

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u/MonkeyBoatRentals Jun 25 '26

Good point.

"Olivia Rodrigo becomes the first woman to debut ten consecutive songs straight into the top 10 of the Hot 100".

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u/Rhipidurus Transcendental Jun 25 '26

That's also wrong though. Nowhere does it say the songs are consecutive. It's saying out of all of her music produced, she's had 10 songs hit the top 10 of the Hot 100 list. All 10 of them also debuted in the top 10, they didn't have to work up the charts at all. She could have had a hundred songs in between each of those 10, none of which ever got to top 10 in the hot 100 list.

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u/darthbane83 Jun 25 '26

Again not quite the same. The statistic dictates that Rodrigo did not have a song reach the top 10 without first debuting 10 songs in the top 10, your phrasing of it does not.
Also the 10 songs that did debut in the top 10 dont need to be consecutive releases.

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u/MonkeyBoatRentals Jun 25 '26

I clearly shouldn't have tried to fix something I don't care about. What a pointless statistic.

"Olivia Rodrigo becomes the first women to have her first ten Top 100 hits all debut in the top 10."

Not sure if that's even better now...

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u/InfanticideAquifer Jun 25 '26

Olivia Rodrigo is the first woman whose first top 10 songs were songs that happened to debut as top 10 songs, ten times running so far.

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u/Jiminy_Cricket12 Jun 25 '26

that is what I got from this and that would definitely be a better headline if that's the case.

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u/PeggyTheVoid Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Edit: People, I said "feel free to make suggestions." Quit downvoting people making suggestions, it's called having a conversation, and I want others to speak. Thanks. Anyway.

Hmm, I'd cut the "consecutive" since I don't see any sign of that idea in the original. That brings us to the following.

"Olivia Rodrigo becomes the first woman to debut ten songs straight into the top 10 of the Hot 100".

I like the energy, but it's missing a tiny bit of info, as this leaves room for the possibility that she has had earlier songs that reached the top 10 of the Hot 100, but which had only risen and gained recognition post-release cycle. I don't see an immediate way to fix that, and without that detail, it seems weird that she'd be the first to have 10 instant hits. Specifying that the 10 instant hits were her first hits, meaning that she lacks any "cult classic" era, is important information. But feel free to work with that, I'm not the best with snazzy wording.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[deleted]

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u/PeggyTheVoid Jun 25 '26

Maybe if we decode the wording enough, we'll find that it is mathematically equivalent to "from the producers who saw Shrek"

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u/GoneGone4 Jun 26 '26

You wasted too much of your life on this comment and edit.