Hackers and Caffeine | Hacker News Reader

Hackers and Caffeine

whattofix.com

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.

Fixed

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

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...

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.

Must be the addictiveness of caffeine creeping in :-(

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.)

Assuming caffeine/cup is linear (2 cups =~ 2x caffeine), the second graph you made shows caffeine consumption vesus age. Since average consumption goes down in the last age group, your sample does not show a steady increase with age.

edit: Think of it as an increase in the 7+ category being counterbalanced by a bigger drop in the lower categories.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It was self-reported.

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

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.

The sample size is unfortunately woefully small.

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