Hackers and Caffeine

Re:Hackers and Caffeine by rwolf on Monday September 07, 2009 @05:09PM (#809758)

3D graphs, oy vey.

Author needs to adjust for the number of respondents in each group. Giving us just the mean for each group would convey more information.

If the histogram thing is just too appealing to ditch, they should make two: avg. # of cups by age group and # of voters by age group.

edit: I'm not saying that the 3D graph is missing some information--humans are just terrible at extracting meaningful data from this sort of presentation.

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Re:Hackers and Caffeine by DanielBMarkham on Monday September 07, 2009 @05:34PM (#809796)

Fixed

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Re:Hackers and Caffeine by rwolf on Monday September 07, 2009 @05:36PM (#809799)

Thanks for the fast fix! And check out the reversal in apparent trend: the 36-50 group has higher average consumption in your sample.

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Re:Hackers and Caffeine by DanielBMarkham on Monday September 07, 2009 @05:43PM (#809808)

Yes. Although the 21-35 group responded the most, the 36-50 group had a higher relative usage of caffeine.

I think the 35-50 group has the highest 7+ usage, although that's hard to tell from the graph. Maybe if I kick out another...

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Re:Hackers and Caffeine by DanielBMarkham on Monday September 07, 2009 @05:50PM (#809821)

Actually I'm wrong again -- as it turns out, the group with the highest percentage of 7+ cup-chuggers is the 50+ group. It looks like caffeine consumption, overall, steadily increases with age.

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Re:Hackers and Caffeine by rwolf on Monday September 07, 2009 @06:21PM (#809868)

Assuming caffeine/cup is linear (2 cups =~ 2x caffeine), the second graph you made shows caffeine consumption vesus age. Since average consumption goes down in the last age group, your sample does not show a steady increase with age.

edit: Think of it as an increase in the 7+ category being counterbalanced by a bigger drop in the lower categories.

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Re:Hackers and Caffeine by Tichy on Monday September 07, 2009 @06:19PM (#809860)

Must be the addictiveness of caffeine creeping in :-(

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Re:Hackers and Caffeine by jrockway on Monday September 07, 2009 @09:53PM (#810094)

No, that happens in about a week or so.

It is probably more like more responsibility = less sleep = more coffee. I am 24, and my obligations to the world mostly consist of 8 hours of work and a few hours of "chores" (cleaning, grocery shopping, etc.) a week. This leaves plenty of time for sleep.

As you get older, you have more job responsibility, you have a bigger house, you have kids, etc. All these things take time, and probably reduce the amount of time you have for sleep. Caffeine must give people enough energy to get it all done.

(Personally, I use caffeine to supplement my wakefulness. It doesn't really help me not be sleepy if I need to sleep.)

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