I was reading the "Post your Picture" thread for the first time today (saw the Vivamus one, but not the newer one). It is a popular thread, with many pages and many people contributing. As I was perusing the pictures, I stumbled across some of the male posters whose posts I usually seek out because they have something funny, poignant, insightful, raunchy, touching, or devilish to say--like Elsewhere, IP_SEC, Jourles, AuldSoul, and OpenFireGlass to name a few. They are all bunched up on this one thread, and easy to find. Then I started noticing something in common with those posters ...they are all 33 years old.
Being very bored tonight (and you will see just how bored, in a moment), I decided to do a little statistical experiment to see if there was any hard data to back up this strange finding. Were there really as many 33 year old males as it seems? This thread was a good place to look, as there were plenty of posts.
Disclaimer: "Selection bias...occurs only if volunteers or self-selected individuals are used in a study, because self-selected individuals (e.g., those who chose to participate in a [Post Your Picture thread]) may well differ from those who chose not to participate."--Statistics: Exploration & Analysis, (Devore, Peck, 2005.) In other words, the data collected is only "accurate" (and I use the term very loosely) for the Picture thread, and nothing else.
Parameters: All posters that fit the restrictions below were counted ONCE. It is assumed that posters counted were truthful about their actual age.
You were COUNTED if:
--you posted a picture and an age
--you posted a comment and an age
You were NOT COUNTED if:
--you posted a picture with no age
--you posted a comment with no age
--you posted a picture, it was cute, yet your profile says you are 105 years old
--you posted a picture OR comment and your profile says you are 100 years old or older, or a negative age, or your age really reflects the number of months/years on this board
Here is what I found:
As you can see, there is a large spike in the 33 age range for males (10 being counted.) In fact, there were NO females ON THAT THREAD who fit the restrictions (barring human error) who were 33. No other age group even comes CLOSE. For females, the magical year was 1976--six of you ladies posted pics/comments. My greatest outlier was Mouthy--79 years got cut off the chart.
All this proved is that there are many 33-yr old male apostates who post on picture threads. It doesn't explain the phenomenon, though. And since it is 2:43 a.m., I have neither the presence of mind nor the inclination to present a theory.
One thing I did learn--next time I get bored, I should just do my laundry.