Ungrounded Outlet

A few days ago, I made the conjecture that the age distribution of twitter would be a bell curve. Indeed, I actually went so far to stake $5 on it. Fortunately, I didn’t say who I had to pay $5 to because it looks like I might be wrong. Or maybe not.

Over the course of a couple of days, I conducted an informal survey consisting of begging twitterers to send me their ages. I promised to keep direct message responses anonymous.

Eventually, I got bored with the whole thing and decided to wrap it up. Below, I present an analysis of the data. There’s a very strict caveat here: I know nothing about statistics. So please don’t try to draw any actual conclusions from this.

27 people responded to my survey. I follow 159 people and have 201 follow me. So my sample represents 17% and 13% of the populations I’m interested in. It’s estimated that twitter will have 1000000 users by the end of the month so my sample is .003% of that. I haven’t bothered computing confidence intervals for all of this (because, frankly, I don’t remember how), but I imagine that “statistically insignificant” would probably be a phrase that would come up. Since I’m not trying to call a major national election, I’ll reiterate that you shouldn’t trust these numbers.

It’s actually even worse than that. My sample was self-selected as the “type of people that will respond to a random guy on the Internet asking their age” group. I don’t know how this affects the results, but I bet it does: in my experience people in a certain age range tend to not broadcast their ages to the world. So ultimately, my data represents People on twitter who James finds entertaining and who also find James entertaining enough to follow, and they’re willing to share their age with James (someone who they have likely never met); and also speak English because James only follows people who mostly speak in English

I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s something of a narrow demographic. Still, I’m armed with a spreadsheet so I will press on.

The minimum age in my sample was 21 and the maximum was 24. The median age was 20 and the mean was 30.3. The standard deviation was 6.89. At 25, I am .769 standard deviations from the mean.

Looking at a graph of the distribution, I do not feel confident saying that the data represents a bell curve; but it might if I had a bigger sample size. Obviously, it’s hard to say. To me, the most interesting thing is that it looks like the age distribution would eventually demonstrate a long tail with a bunch of people clustered at the younger end of the graph (which is to be expected on the Internet, I think) and then a lot of older people who don’t share ages in common. Or, maybe that’s the sort of thing any sociologist would expect…but it surprised me.

Another thing that surprised me is the large age range of the people I’m friends with on twitter. I’m fairly young and still not used to being an adult: that I can have things to talk about with a 21 year old and a 46 year old at the same time is amazing. That the 46 year old isn’t already annoyed with me is nothing short of miraculous.

I was also a little disappointed at the lack of response. A quick “@willia4 I’m 25″ doesn’t exactly take long. I guess not everyone finds collecting data as much fun as I do. Ah well. ;)

My neighbors confuse me. They really do.

I live in a townhouse in an area that has city trash pickup. The guy I bought the house from, for some reason, painted his (now my) house number on his trashcan. It’s the only trashcan in my area that has the house number painted on it, but whatever. The trash collectors tend to just throw all of the empty trashcans into a pile so the number made it easy to pick my trashcan out from the sea of other trashcans. Having the same trashcan every day isn’t particularly important to me, but it’s a nice-to-have…I guess.

Anyway, I’ve recently started coming home from work pretty late so I’m usually the last person to take my empty trashcan back around. Actually, I’ve started coming home after dark and, because it’s REALLY dark back walking around behind the townhouses, I’ll usually just wait until Thursday morning to walk it back around. No big deal.

Sometimes, I don’t get my trashcan (the one with my house number painted on it). Since no other trashcans have numbers on them, it makes sense that other people aren’t checking and just grab one. Perfectly reasonable. Indeed, the trashcan I’ve been using this week hasn’t been mine.

But I don’t think it’s my trashcan anymore. My neighbors, two doors down, had set my trashcan out this morning. In red spray paint, they had crossed out my house number (though it’s still legible) and filled the side with multiple copies of their house number.

WTF? They stole my trashcan? Really? I mean…why? I don’t care about the trashcan (they’re welcome to have it if they really want it that badly); but now I’m incredibly curious about the people themselves. What was wrong with their existing trashcan? Did they go buy the paint just for this or did they have it lying around? Why did they do such a bad job of painting it? Did they want to steal a trashcan but not put any effort into it? Were they maybe trying to make a point that I shouldn’t have my house number stenciled on my trashcan? I’d buy that, but I’m not the one who did it; and they must know this since I moved in well after they did.

The whole thing just seems bizarre and weird. And I’m slightly scared that I’m going to start having some odd passive aggressive war with these guys. It started with the trashcan? What’s next? Personally, I want to live a quiet, non-confrontational life. So I’ll let them make the next move if they decide it’s necessary.

But if they really do want some strange suburban sitcom-style war, I’ll win. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

Five years ago today, I was getting ready to celebrate my twentieth birthday.

Because my birthday and my cousin’s birthday fall so close to each other (a day between them), we often had family birthday parties together. More than anything, it provided an excuse for the family to get together and eat. This year, my parents were hosting just such a party at their house.

While my parents were downstairs getting everything ready, I was hiding up in my bedroom surfing the web and watching one of the 24-hour news channels (probably CNN). I don’t normally watch the news, but that day was special: the space shuttle Columbia was coming home from her latest mission. As a huge space geek, I try not to miss opportunities to watch the shuttle land.

But it didn’t happen. Controllers on the ground lost contact with the shuttle and never regained it. As the minutes slowly passed, the newscasters started using the phrase “broke up”. Next came the eyewitness accounts and the amateur video: the shuttle had broken up over Texas. There was a number to call if you found debris in your back yard. There was very little hope for survivors.

And of course, with the possible exception of some experiment spiders, there were no survivors. One doesn’t really expect to survive when your spaceship disintegrates.

I went downstairs and in a rather quiet voice said, “The space shuttle blew up”. My parents weren’t particularly concerned. They cared but they didn’t seem to share the same shock and sadness that I did. Maybe it’s because they aren’t space geeks. Who knows?

The Columbia disaster means more to me than the Challenger does. I suspect this is because I’m old enough to have watched the Columbia on TV (I was not even three when the Challenger exploded). I can remember seeing the Columbia memorials. I can remember the flags being at half mast. And, perhaps most importantly, I can still see the effects of that day on the United States’ manned space program (something I feel very strongly about).

Today, I remember those men and women who died. I think of humanity’s destiny and I wonder if it can possibly lie in the stars. I think about sacrifice and risk and honor and courage. I think about our fragile blue home and how cold and lonely it is when we are away from it. I think about beauty and all the glorious wonders that human eyes may never see.

Today, I raise a glass to Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, and Laurel Clark. I raise a glass to Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ron McNair, Gregory Jarvis, and Sharon McAuliffe. I raise a glass to Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. I raise a glass to Vladimir Komarov, Georgi Dobrovolsky, Viktor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov.

I raise a glass to every man and woman who has ridden on that column of fire because they can’t bear to be so far away from the stars. I raise a glass to every engineer and scientist who spend long, sleepless nights so that we can do the impossible. I raise a glass to every teacher who inspires their students. And I salute every child who, like I did, stares up at the brilliant night sky and walks away with a head full of dreams.

I will probably never walk on an alien world. I will probably never look down upon this globe with my own eyes. I will probably never escape of the confines of my birth planet.

But humanity will. Because we must. Because we’re human. And when we choose to be, we’re amazing.