

Hackers and Caffeine - DanielBMarkham
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/09/hackers-and-caf.php

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rwolf
3D graphs, oy vey.

Author needs to adjust for the number of respondents in each group. Giving us
just the mean for each group would convey more information.

If the histogram thing is just too appealing to ditch, they should make two:
avg. # of cups by age group and # of voters by age group.

edit: I'm not saying that the 3D graph is missing some information--humans are
just terrible at extracting meaningful data from this sort of presentation.

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DanielBMarkham
Fixed

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rwolf
Thanks for the fast fix! And check out the reversal in apparent trend: the
36-50 group has higher average consumption in your sample.

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DanielBMarkham
Yes. Although the 21-35 group _responded_ the most, the 36-50 group had a
higher relative usage of caffeine.

I think the 35-50 group has the highest 7+ usage, although that's hard to tell
from the graph. Maybe if I kick out another...

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DanielBMarkham
Actually I'm wrong again -- as it turns out, the group with the highest
percentage of 7+ cup-chuggers is the 50+ group. It looks like caffeine
consumption, overall, steadily increases with age.

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Tichy
Must be the addictiveness of caffeine creeping in :-(

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jrockway
No, that happens in about a week or so.

It is probably more like more responsibility = less sleep = more coffee. I am
24, and my obligations to the world mostly consist of 8 hours of work and a
few hours of "chores" (cleaning, grocery shopping, etc.) a week. This leaves
plenty of time for sleep.

As you get older, you have more job responsibility, you have a bigger house,
you have kids, etc. All these things take time, and probably reduce the amount
of time you have for sleep. Caffeine must give people enough energy to get it
all done.

(Personally, I use caffeine to supplement my wakefulness. It doesn't really
help me not be sleepy if I need to sleep.)

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abalashov
I wonder if smoking prevalence among "hackers" is higher than in general
population (about 20% aggregate in the US) and over standard deviation over
the mean.

Anecdotally and completely unscientifically, my experiences suggest yes, first
and foremost as a former smoker who tended to take notice of the distribution
of professionals who also took smoke breaks in the half a dozen or so places I
worked in three years. Seems like the same sorts of tendencies that make nerds
responsive to caffeine probably apply to stimulants in general, especially
noting the long-held poetic association between creative, focus-based tasks
and tobacco. I also know more than my fair share of ADD types (in a noticeably
classical kind of way) who sincerely regard it as a form of viable self-
medication.

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pavelludiq
I started smoking because of the boredom and frustration of high school. After
that nightmare ended i had to re-rationalize smoking and i ended up doing that
by telling myself that it has a positive effect on my concentration in a combo
with caffeine. Im not sure if it really is so, or is it me just trying to
rationalize my stupid addictions.

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garply
Has anyone else here switched to caffeine pills? I used to do several cups of
coffee a day but I decided I could control my dosage better using pill form.
Not to mention avoid staining my teeth.

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philwelch
I pulled an all nighter in EE lab once with caffeine pills.

This is for the good of everyone reading this: _do not overdose on caffeine
pills_. Fucking unpleasant is what it is.

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ashishk
What kind of caffeinated drink does each cup represent?

A cup of coffee has 2-3x times the amount of caffeine a cup of tea has.

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DanielBMarkham
It was self-reported.

It'd be much better to convert to mgs of caffeine, but that seemed a little
much to ask HN.

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edb
Basically, it turns out there's more 21-35 year olds on the internet who are
hopped up enough on caffeine to answer the survey they ran into while browsing
the internet. Consequently, I feel almost any survey done on the internet in
this fashion will include this distribution of respondents.

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erlanger
The sample size is unfortunately woefully small.

