Poll: My age is...

25 points by robg 18 years ago

12 and under

6 points

13-18

20 points

19-24

146 points

25-30

165 points

31-36

65 points

37-42

24 points

43-48

15 points

49-54

6 points

55-60

4 points

61+

4 points
doubleplus 18 years ago

I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

  • mdemare 18 years ago

    But have you measured out your life with coffee spoons?

    • ghiotion 18 years ago

      I measure out my life in elevator rides to the 9th floor of the crappy office I work in. That's why I started taking the stairs. Nevertheless, +1 for an T.S. Eliot reference.

  • ghiotion 18 years ago

    Oh man, if I could give out 10 points for a T.S. Eliot reference, I would. Much love to you. The Four Quartets rivals Hamlet in its intricacy and attention to the human condition. And, it's about 1/10 the size! What a bargain!

tlrobinson 18 years ago

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p3ZpyEuzg1jyMSQxC-NBM...

  • robg 18 years ago

    Excellent! Unless there's something atypical about the sample of YC.news users late on a Saturday night (e.g., maybe we're a tad older?), I don't think the distribution will change much.

    • Xichekolas 18 years ago

      I'm 24 and I'm here on a Saturday night... I may be at my Ballmer Peak, but I'm here!

      • robg 18 years ago

        There goes that hypothesis! Things seem to have shifted slightly older late last night and this morning. Hopefully this stays on the frontpage through Monday so we can see some effect of workday visitors.

graywh 18 years ago

The statistician in me cringes at the information lost in categorizing a continuous variable.

altay 18 years ago

Despite the number of people who cared enough to vote in the poll, this actual news item only has 3 points. Should it automatically vote the item up when you vote in a poll? (On the other hand, polls would pretty much take over the front page.)

  • robg 18 years ago

    That's the Catch-22, I think. Maybe a threshold when a certain number of people vote? Or define hotness as some factor of votes divided by time perhaps?

  • Erf 18 years ago

    I have no interest in seeing this or other polls on the Hacker News front page, but if others want it I'm happy to contribute to it (all it takes is a click, after all).

    And yes; one of the worst things that happened to Reddit was the proliferation of Vote-Up-If posts.

    • robg 18 years ago

      But that implementation, I think, is much poorer (as you say Vote up if) because it's really very limited.

      Here's I think it's interesting that we can basically run a survey experiment based on the choices offered. For instance, we can see that the age of YC.news users is a slightly skewed distribution with a mean of of maybe 24-25 (even as we could nail it down more with smaller bins). To me, that's much more interesting than "vote up".

    • ghiotion 18 years ago

      It's interesting there was so much antipathy towards the Vote-Up-If posts. I found them annoying, but I could live with them. Personally, what ruined reddit for me was Ron Paul, politics, and all the 911wasAnInsideJob folks. I could even live with the over-abundance of LOL cats and flicker links. But the overall nuttiness of the site simply turned me off.

      Don't get me wrong, I like politics and I personally think Ron Paul has a lot going for him. But I didn't start reading the site for its political bent; I started reading it for the interesting links and the tech stuff. I'd simply like to get my political news elsewhere. With the bastardized reddit, I couldn't get away from politics, even with the introduction of sub-reddits.

      • yters 18 years ago

        Redditors trying to force ideas down my throat was a turn off for me too.

robg 18 years ago

Sorry for the fairly big ranges. I got an error when I had more choices.

  • clay 18 years ago

    I clicked this kinda hoping that you would have a choice for every age...

thorax 18 years ago

I move into a different vote group tomorrow. Better vote while I can.

  • robg 18 years ago

    Happy birthday! I'm in two weeks and the same happens to me.

    I would have preferred ranges of four years, but I got an error with that many choices.

maxwell 18 years ago

Single vote polls would be useful here.

systems 18 years ago

who lied and said he was 12 and under

  • cstejerean 18 years ago

    get those 12 and under users off the site unless they have parental consent.

nextmoveone 18 years ago

I can vote for more than 1 choice? I would vote for Obama and Hilary if I could.

  • mdemare 18 years ago

    In the primaries? That doesn't seem useful...

    But with multiple selections in the general election we wouldn't need primaries and would get more centrist presidents.

    • dfranke 18 years ago

      Not necessarily more centrist, but probably more idiosyncratic. The benefit of approval voting is that you aren't disincentivized from voting for candidates whom you like but think can't win.

      • mdemare 18 years ago

        It's interesting to consider which US elections would have had a different outcome with approval voting. Certainly the 2000 election. People could have voted both for Nader and Gore, which would have tipped Gore over the edge.

        How about 1992? Could Bush have won if angry republicans would have a chance to vent their anger by also voting for Perot? Or might Perot have won since voting for a 3rd party candidate wouldn't feel like a lost vote.

        To demonstrate the problem with approval voting (all voting systems have problems, as was proven by Kenneth Arrow in 1951): if Obama, Clinton and McCain would all run, McCain would probably win, even if a majority of voters preferred either Democrat.

        So, approval voting should allow fair elections with more than two candidates, but in practice it doesn't, because people vote strategically.

        • eru 18 years ago

          Don't you confuse approval voting with first-past-the-post?

ivankirigin 18 years ago

PG: how many people voted for more than one?

  • pg 18 years ago

    The current 50 votes were cast by 38 voters, so there were 12 dishonest votes:

      > (let voters (flat (map [_ 2] 
                           (map [(item _) 'votes] 
                                ((item 126923) 'parts))))
      (list (len voters) (len (dedup voters))))
  (50 38)

    In particular, many if not all of the votes by people claiming to be 12 and under were fake.

    • robg 18 years ago

      That makes me sad. Any easy way to make poll choices exclusive? Or toss the multi-voters?

mellampudi 18 years ago

We have kids under 12 here !!!

  • pchristensen 18 years ago

    Well, we have people claiming to be under 12.