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Poll: What is your age?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: What is your age?

#311

Post by blablabla123 »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #286
blablabla123 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may sound odd but according to this http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-17.pdf more than 0.5% of the U.S. population is over 90 in 2010. In the poll it is 1.7%. Maybe it's fake, maybe tech people stay longer online...

Look at the curve though. Age should be a smooth bell curve, but here it spikes on the ends (even when accounting for the fact that the end choices potentially cover more than the 5 years covered by the other options), which is clear evidence of error.

For the whole population of a country it is probably fine to assume that curve form. The first time I had my own computer was at age 7 or 8 which was already highly unusual 20 years ago. But today this is less unusual, the availability of decent gear is more common for children. On the other hand, right now many 60+ year olds don't even use internet. Those who do might be bad-ass veterans that never lost interest... ;)

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#312

Post by PAULHANNA84 »

Minus the under 10, I think there is some truth in the pattern from the point of 16+. Hacker News/Y combinator primarily attracts entrepreneurs,hackers,engineers...people who are constantly learning based on self-interest. 26 is the average age for a Y Combinator alumni and 26-30 is also the majority of users in this toll. Essentially what I'm trying to say is I think this is a reflection of ambition dwindling with age based on the general overall population.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#313

Post by PAULHANNA84 »

RobAley wrote: post #116
pg wrote: post #62

The most significant result of this poll is that HN now seems to be past the point where we can rely on an honor system to prevent users from giving junk answers to polls. A few years ago we could. That's an unfortunate change. However, it's an ill wind that blows no good. When I'm done reading applications, I'll add a little tweak to HN to make the fonts super big for all the users over 80.

PG, have you considered that many (though granted not all) of the "junk" answers may due to the hacker mentality, people asking themselves questions like "what if I choose more than one option, will it let me?", "what if I 'accidentally' select the wrong answer, can I undo it?", "What if too many people give implausible answers, can it be corrected for or will the poll be junked?" and so on. Hackers - tinkers and the…

Anyone who knows the functionality of HN (I would expect a hacker to) knows that you could choose/upvote multiple answers.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#314

Post by kelnos »

Jun8 wrote: post #305
kelnos wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with both your opinion and response. First off, who are you to decide that this kind of poll is useless, and actively damage it? If you think the poll is useless, fine: we have a flag button for that. I happen to disagree that the poll is useless; I think any data set can be interesting given that you understand the limitations in interpreting it. But that's just my opinion and I totally get that other peo…

"First off, who are you to decide that this kind of poll is useless" I am a HN contributor like you, my opinion does not count more than other people's. And I didn't say it was useless, it definitely has use. I said I disagree with collecting this type of demographic data data. "Just don't ruin it for those who care." If you read my comment I haven't actually ruined the data at all, I clearly stated which wrong bin I…

Wait... so it's immature to mark a fake response, but it's mature to mark a fake response and then confess to it? Nope, don't buy it.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#316

Post by TeMPOraL »

solistice wrote: post #264
TeMPOraL wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AKA. you're breaking things because you can?

Yes, uhmm, no (I actually answered truthfully". "Because I can" seems to be pretty deeply ingrained in the hacker ethos of "analyzing, understanding, controlling" systems. Technically I'm the reason for my old schools digital policy. I couldn't find the student drives on the school computers, I looked for network drives, and somehow the teacher/admin drives showed up. I did report that in truely whitehat fashion, but…

I might have been wrong, but I interpreted "I is just my habit of creating some noise in any data collection effort" not as "I was curious what happens if I'll try to mess up with the poll" but more like "I don't like when people gather and analyze data, so I'll screw this up for Greater Good".

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#317

Post by solistice »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #316
solistice wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, uhmm, no (I actually answered truthfully". "Because I can" seems to be pretty deeply ingrained in the hacker ethos of "analyzing, understanding, controlling" systems. Technically I'm the reason for my old schools digital policy. I couldn't find the student drives on the school computers, I looked for network drives, and somehow the teacher/admin drives showed up. I did report that in truely whitehat fashion, but…

I might have been wrong, but I interpreted "I is just my habit of creating some noise in any data collection effort" not as "I was curious what happens if I'll try to mess up with the poll" but more like "I don't like when people gather and analyze data, so I'll screw this up for Greater Good" .

Again, it could be the motivation you put forth to, but in favor of the defendant if the evidence is inconclusive. What really bugs me is that on a site that is not entirely void of coders (There might be some around. Mayyybeee...), we use a honor based polling tool that doesn't allow for the creator to set a max number of votes per person. Now I know that creating a new poll takes time, but surely not much more than setting all the +80s font to extra large and all the <10s font to comic sans.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#318

Post by TeMPOraL »

solistice wrote: post #317
TeMPOraL wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might have been wrong, but I interpreted "I is just my habit of creating some noise in any data collection effort" not as "I was curious what happens if I'll try to mess up with the poll" but more like "I don't like when people gather and analyze data, so I'll screw this up for Greater Good" .

Again, it could be the motivation you put forth to, but in favor of the defendant if the evidence is inconclusive. What really bugs me is that on a site that is not entirely void of coders (There might be some around. Mayyybeee...), we use a honor based polling tool that doesn't allow for the creator to set a max number of votes per person. Now I know that creating a new poll takes time, but surely not much more than…

True, though I guess lack of features is kind of HN style.

> setting all the +80s font to extra large and all the

That actually made me seriously consider voting up both the 80+ and <10 answers just to see what "easter eggs" pg implements.

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