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Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

rogerdickey.com

61–70 of 103 posts

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#62
post #6

Time for me to re-post my perennial "fun banana facts" post: Bananas are the #1 most-sold item at most grocery stores including, notably, Wal-Mart. Bananas also have the highest standard deviation in terms of predicting if a given (known) consumer will purchase bananas in a given store run. (At least as compared to other food products and consumables.) When predicting a consumer's shop, it's generally pretty easy to…

Berries are most certainly not seasonal anymore. They should be but we thoroughly engineered the seasonality out of them. They're always on the shelf. Do people's purchase habits follow the natural seasonality of the product anymore? Probably something that can be found in this dataset as well.

Available year round and seasonal isn't an oxymoron. Something can be both. Just look at potatoes, we learned a long time ago how to store them. Doesn't mean there isn't a time in the fall with they're the freshest and cheapest.

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#63

Time for me to re-post my perennial "fun banana facts" post: Bananas are the #1 most-sold item at most grocery stores including, notably, Wal-Mart. Bananas also have the highest standard deviation in terms of predicting if a given (known) consumer will purchase bananas in a given store run. (At least as compared to other food products and consumables.) When predicting a consumer's shop, it's generally pretty easy to…

Very interesting!

> Someone who buys bananas reliably every week for months will randomly stop for months, and then start again, for no perceivable rhyme or reason.

The bananas were cut up or pureed and fed to a child at a particular stage of development. Kid is now eating on their own, doesn’t want bananas or doesn’t have the dexterity to peel them. Parents reintroduce bananas a few months later, kid likes them again.

Or someone got a new job and they’re not eating breakfast at home. A few months later, they go back to eating at home to save money or lose weight.

> Bananas also tend to be a high volume item at gas stations and convenience stores.

Bananas are often the only fresh fruit at convenience stores. Sometimes there are apples or oranges that look extremely underripe or dried out and starchy. Bananas also don’t need to be washed and don’t excrete juice, so you can eat them on the go. There’s nowhere to wash an apple in most convenience stores, and oranges are more likely to get juice on your clothes or car seats, have a harder peel to remove and neatly dispose of, and may have seeds.

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#64
post #18
post #16

My conclusion: there's nothing funny about groceries, no matter how you order them. Counterexamples welcome. (Makes sense as I never felt the urge to laugh after looking in someone else's shopping basket. Anyway, perhaps that's why I'm not a data analyst.)

Some combinations could be funny, like a pregnancy test and something really mundane but odd like a whole pineapple and a large bag of lettuce

Why would that be funny?

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#65

> Much better! Some of these even made me laugh out loud. Kale and an enema? Parsley and condoms? Adult diapers and baby food? > Small orders are less common but we still got some fun ones. Oreos and lube? Sounds like a good time! Funny to who ? Was this rated "for sure funny" by a LLM or what's going on? Why is it funny to buy Oreo and lube? I could understand "contradictions" or something like that (like buying wei…

[deleted]

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#66
post #16

My conclusion: there's nothing funny about groceries, no matter how you order them. Counterexamples welcome. (Makes sense as I never felt the urge to laugh after looking in someone else's shopping basket. Anyway, perhaps that's why I'm not a data analyst.)

Counterexample: https://xkcd.com/236/

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#67

> Much better! Some of these even made me laugh out loud. Kale and an enema? Parsley and condoms? Adult diapers and baby food? > Small orders are less common but we still got some fun ones. Oreos and lube? Sounds like a good time! Funny to who ? Was this rated "for sure funny" by a LLM or what's going on? Why is it funny to buy Oreo and lube? I could understand "contradictions" or something like that (like buying wei…

here's how this likely went down: 1. they found the dataset and thought "i bet there are weird order combos i could write a blog post about" 2. they did all the analysis and found nothing all that interesting 3. posted it anyway

They did it interactively with Claude, it’s possible that it played up the significance and humor of the findings in a way that the interaction left the user feeling like they were really on to something.

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#68

> Much better! Some of these even made me laugh out loud. Kale and an enema? Parsley and condoms? Adult diapers and baby food? > Small orders are less common but we still got some fun ones. Oreos and lube? Sounds like a good time! Funny to who ? Was this rated "for sure funny" by a LLM or what's going on? Why is it funny to buy Oreo and lube? I could understand "contradictions" or something like that (like buying wei…

Having to wear adult diapers after giving birth is not unexpected.

Re: Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

#70

> Much better! Some of these even made me laugh out loud. Kale and an enema? Parsley and condoms? Adult diapers and baby food? > Small orders are less common but we still got some fun ones. Oreos and lube? Sounds like a good time! Funny to who ? Was this rated "for sure funny" by a LLM or what's going on? Why is it funny to buy Oreo and lube? I could understand "contradictions" or something like that (like buying wei…

Having to wear adult diapers after giving birth is not unexpected.

Nor funny.
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