Hackers and Caffeine

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

by DanielBMarkham • 17 years ago

22 17 17 years ago

rwolf3• 17 years ago

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.

DanielBMarkham4• 17 years ago

Fixed

rwolf3• 17 years ago

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

ashishk• 17 years ago

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.

DanielBMarkham4• 17 years ago

It was self-reported.

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

erlanger• 17 years ago

The sample size is unfortunately woefully small.

edb• 17 years ago

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.

abalashov• 17 years ago

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.

pavelludiq• 17 years ago

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.

garply• 17 years ago

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.

philwelch• 17 years ago

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.

dkersten• 17 years ago

Not as a replacement, but I've used them a few times. But, after totally overdoing it on energy drinks (to the degree that I wasn't able to drink any for a few months without getting sick), I'd recommend taking it easy and keeping them for those emergency late nights, rather than making it a regular thing.

Hackers and Caffeine

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