Words to Lyrics Ben Ho's observations from the cloud

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.

See my previous birthday statistics posts:
2011
2010
2009

Once again, I have compiled statistics of the messages I received for my birthday this year.

Birthday messages (change from last year)
Facebook messages – 64 (-1)
Face to face greets – 4 (0)
Text messages – 1 (0)
Phone calls – 1 (+1)
Tweets – 0 (-1)

Frequency of Facebook messages vs. Time (i.e. when was the message posted)

Use of initials (mine or otherwise) – 20
Average length (words): 4.7
Facebook email lag – none

Gender split of Facebook messages
Male – 38
Female – 26

Observations
It is easier and more interesting this year because there is data to compare with!

I expected a normal distribution (bell-shaped curve) again. The histogram shows something resembling a normal distribution, with a slight right skew, and a spike at hour 20 (8pm).

The two posts at 1am (AEST) show something different was happening compared to last year. From the raw data, one post was make in Hong Kong (where it would have been 11pm) and the other I believe was made as a result of being awake for a night-shift job.

The spike at 8pm could be due to people checking Facebook before a night out.

There is a small group of friends who have posted birthday messages in both 2010 and 2011. This subset tends to have known me for longer than others. There are also people (who I consider to be good friends with) that have not posted messages at all. This isn’t a bad thing.

Gender Split
This year is the first that gender has been analysed. I predicted an even split of male to female, but the graph is self explanatory.

Initials
This year I have counted the number of people who used any initials. This will be the count methodology for the future.

What’s interesting is that my standard birthday greeting can be transformed to a birthday message for me with the removal of the exclamation mark.

In some cases, ‘Happy Birthday’ was abbreviated to ‘HB’, and thus shows symmetry with my initials (BH). Although I usually frown upon this method of greeting, in the interests of symmetry and brevity I have accepted it.

Conclusion
Thank you for your messages!