I turned 20 last week. Here are the statistics. This is becoming a (fun) habit now!
Birthday messages (change from last year)
Facebook messages – 37 (-27)
Texts – 2 (+1)
Phone calls – 1 (0)
Tweets – 0 (0)
Frequency of Facebook messages vs. Time (i.e. when was the message posted)
Gender split of Facebook messages
Male – 20
Female – 17
Gender split of all message senders
Male – 21
Female – 19
Facebook messages
Use of initials (HB or BH) – 10 (27%)
Average length (includes x’s, o’s; excludes smileys) – 3.75 (-0.96)
Repeat posters (those who posted last year and this year) – 10
Observations
Most obviously, there is a significant decrease in Facebook messages. I put this to two reasons. One, my birthday this year falls on a Saturday, and I think that many people have better things to do than sit around reading Facebook. Two, I am three years out of high school. The ‘novelty’ of knowing everyone has greatly diminished. There are new connections to be made at uni (compare your friend count at the end of high school and at the end of each year at uni)
I have omitted face to face greets because I was not at uni on Saturday. However I have kept a rough count of greets on the next weekday (Monday): 3 (2 male, 1 female).
This year I quantified the number of people who posted in both 2011 and 2012 (on Facebook). I briefly mentioned this point last year. I’d like to see the percentage trend next year.
Histogram
This year’s histogram looks more like a normal distribution, with the peak at 11am. There’s a clear spike at 6pm. And I did not expect there to be many early birds at 8am (I might be wrong, maybe it’s because I don’t think people my age get up that early on weekends; I know I don’t usually).
I have extended the histogram to 27 hours after midnight on my birthday. As you can see one post came at 3am the next morning. This post was made east of the International Date Line (where it would still have been my birthday).
Gender Split
The gender split is closer to half and half. I think next year there will be more females to males. How nice!
The graph below shows the split for Facebook messages only.
Conclusion
Thank you for your messages! A short message can say a lot.
