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Poll: What is your age?
It would be interesting to know which age group(s) HN readers consist mostly of. Please be honest and click one answer only!
- roy_s 14y ago22
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- joelrunyon 14y agoShouldn't there be a stagger for the ages so there aren't double counts? I.e. 16-20, 21-25, 26-30, 31-35
- waterlesscloud 14y agoMost the time the average age cited for readers of this site seems to be 24. I don't know where that came from, but it seems to match what's stated or implied in a lot of comments.
- l33tbro 14y agoFor those also interested in Male to Female ratio (data courtesy of user 'pdx'): 1309/89 == 15 to 1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1571216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1571216 1377/72 == 19 to 1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591309 506/31 16 to 1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2175603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2175603 466/35 == 13 to 1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=749617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=749617 reply
- tracker1 14y agoWild that at 38, I'm at the tail end.
- zahir64 14y ago45
- incompatible 14y agoStrange that there are so few here who are older than Paul Graham, who is about 49.
- D9u 14y agoI was also disappointed by the amount of responses in my age group. (49)
- tonyedgecombe 14y agoI'm not that surprised , this is still a relatively new industry. Ask this question again in 20 years and I expect you will see a much higher mean/median. (48)
- Houshalter 14y agoThough his age group would still be under-represented, since he would be older than he is now.
- niggler 14y agoI'm curious about these (5 as of the posting time) people that are over 90
- clark-kent 14y agoAlso curious about the 13 under 10. Some young geniuses.
- tiredofcareer 14y agoI have a brand-new bridge over the East River for sale, low miles, navigation package included, e-mail on my profile if you're interested.
- icemelt8 14y agoIs the next answer "get over it?"
- tiredofcareer 14y agoNo, I reworded 'If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you,' it's an old expression. Nobody got it.
- sbashyal 14y agoI created HN Charts to visualize HN Poll data. Click the following link to see the result of this poll in an easy to read chart: http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=5536734 http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=5536734
- samstave 14y agoAwesome! Here is the chart fdrom my recent poll: http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=5522156 http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=5522156 sans Winklevii
- spiralganglion 14y agoThis is nice, and I'm really glad you have both Front Page and Best sections. A link from the chart back to the poll post would be helpful.
- jjcm 14y agoCan you provide a link back to the original poll somewhere on the page?
- sbashyal 14y agoThat can certainly be done!
- pjmlp 14y agoOh man, no wonder many on HN are unaware of how technology on the 80 and 90 was like.
- NuZZ 14y agoOne issue; on these charts there doesn't appear to be a link to the original HN thread. This should be there.
- tuananh 14y agoover 90 !? noise?
- lostlogin 14y agoWonder who the oldest reader/contributor is? Anyone want to start that ball rolling?
- xijuan 14y agoSome people suggested I should not included some of the options. But your questions are one of the reason why I chose to include options such as over 90. It would be really interesting to know the age of the oldest reader.
- epsylon 14y agoI'm waiting anxiously for the "What is your quest?" poll.
- caffeinewriter 14y ago17, and a proud hacker.
- D9u 14y agoI've always thought that when someone refers to oneself as being a "hacker" then they're most likely not. http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is
- kintamanimatt 14y agoAre there really people over 80 and under 10 on this site, or are people just clicking shit for the hell of it?
- willlll 14y agoI always vote every option in any poll that you can pick more than one thing.
- kintamanimatt 14y agoWhy? Why fuck up the data like that? The thing with HN Polls is you've no way to create polls in which you can select only one option. All you can do is list the options you want included in the poll, nothing else. On a side note, your personal website is fucking hilarious.
- sgt 14y agoI have to admit I clicked both my real age and also on 10. Pg needs to fix his polls, because clearly we can't help ourselves.
- vacri 14y agoSome people just want to watch the world burn.
- Posibyte 14y agoI found his activity graph on github very interesting: https://github.com/will https://github.com/will
- polymatter 14y agoAmusing that the pattern isn't perfect because of his legitimate git commits adds noise.
- pseut 14y agoOh, just, wow.
- yagibear 14y agoOld enough to know that this has been asked before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126923
- JamesLeonis 14y agoIt's interesting to compare the responses here to those. I especially like the "spike" in users over 60 that mysteriously showed up between then and now.
- manojlds 14y agoBut not old enough to know that there are new users all the time? ( and maybe old users leave too ) The numbers are going to change every year, and it would be interesting to know how HN users are distributed in terms of age.
- MichaelApproved 14y ago759 days ago, 1448 days ago and 1867 days ago, respectively. I think it's OK to ask this question after 2 years. It's great to see how communities change over the years. Yes, I know it's not scientific at all and does a poor job of reflecting real demographics. But, if you think there's value in asking, then there's value in comparing previous answers.
- pavanky 14y agoIt is also interesting to see what the median age is. I think it is between 25-30 now where as it was between 30-35 before. The ratio of teenagers also seems to be decreasing.
- RaSoJo 14y agoAh good. I thought i was growing old. Now i realize everyone on HN is growing old with me.
- 14y ago
- robinreekers 14y ago38
- JakeL 14y ago17!
- Void_ 14y agoA few under 10, awesome. What do you kids find most interesting here?
- lakeeffect 14y agoI think saying please don't abuse makes way for a joke, and may act from the numbers as a planted seed.
- xentronium 14y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039 -- 5 years ago it didn't.
- slu 14y agoI think the "Please don't abuse this option..." has had the opposite effect than the OP wanted...
- jkestner 14y agoIt's a honeypot.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- biswajitsharma 14y ago21 Under 10 Geniuses ... All hail!
- benaiah 14y ago17 - and I'd like to note that this is one of the few forums on which I can have that information public and still be able to participate in (mostly) civil public discourse, without put-downs, pats-on-the-head, or pandering. It's a breath of fresh air.
- Zombieball 14y agoThat is unless you start a post with "Show HN: I am 17, look what I made..." some people seem to take offense to that :P I think its great that people of all ages can connect on HN through a common passion for technology.
- singular 14y agoWell done lad, good for you! pats head ;-) Only kidding, maturity varies wildly in online communities, I think age is very often not correlated. Oftentimes I think that kind of patronising can be the result of jealousy. You know, youth is something you come to miss more than you think you would (31 here...)
- cstuder 14y agoBorn on the first january of 1970.
- AdamTReineke 14y agoMakes it really easy to figure out how many seconds old you are!
- brokenparser 14y agoDo you celebrate birthdays or time_t milestones?
- adlpz 14y agoMy mind just got blown. For some reason, I never thought of this possibility.
- cstuder 14y agoIt's not my real birthday, it's just the one I use on the net. Like waterlesscloud I hop it will break something somewhere. Or at least amuse a fellow engineer. Somebody else however suggested using 31st december 1969. Now that's just evil...
- adlpz 14y ago31st Dec 1969 23:59 UTC, Ouch
- khet 14y agoWhy is that bad? Please enlighten a naive hacker
- cstuder 14y agoIf you convert this to Unix epoch time (Seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00), the result will be -1. Which is problematic in several scenarios: - Databases which store dates in integer fields and maybe don't handle negative values. - Other overflows unhandled by date parsers - Libraries, which use -1 as 'invalid'.
- camus 14y ago33 use to tag te walls of Paris before writing some php & java.
- austenallred 14y agoI find it hard to take this poll seriously, given the 33+ in the "over 90" range.
- DigitalSea 14y agoI don't know how accurate the results will be from this poll. I seriously doubt there are 36 users on HN over 90 (not entirely implausible, but most likely not the case). For anyone wondering I just turned 25, so in the 21 to 25 bracket and voted accordingly. Another fact worth pointing out is that you can vote more than once, so you can vote your real age and then vote on every other age to game the poll if you want too.
- vl 14y agoWell, at least he is going to know what people from HN that choose to answer polls say about their age.
- gobengo 14y agoI'm curious to see more granularity on 21-25
- nu2ycombinator 14y agoOne conclusion from poll results you can deduct is "You are not that successful in life, if you are older than 30 and still checking hackernews"
- lostlogin 14y agoWhy? Learning new stuff regularly is right up there in my definition of success.
- D9u 14y agoMy sentiments, exactly. (I'm 49)
- sukuriant 14y agoOr your incredibly successful and an awesome person all together, because you're learning to program and thinking of starting your own business --- or HAVE been programming and still are, at 90
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- wilfra 14y agoToo many options. All I can really discern from a quick glance is that ~71 people trolled the poll (under 10+over 90) and most HN'ers appear to be 21-30.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoWhy do you assume they lied?
- wilfra 14y agoLook at the old polls. Low single digit %'s of people were under 15 or over 60 and now nearly 10% of people are under 10 or over 90? Riiiight. I realize it's possible demographics changed in that time. Maybe HN is all the rage in nursing homes and kindergartens these days. Doesn't pass the sniff test though. One demographic does appear to be distinctly on the rise though: trolls.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoNearly 10%? Nowhere near that. 66/(66+23+358+1340+1465+813+378+168+86+34+22+16+15+17+18+19+21+82) 0.013357619914996965 => 1.3%
- wilfra 14y agoNot sure where you got 66, right now there are 195 total votes for under 10 or over 90. That is a bit over 3% (195/6410). I stand corrected, that is not 'nearly 10%'. Pedantry aside, my point stands. Common sense dictates people are trolling the poll.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoI don't know about that. It could be trolling in the over 90s, but I don't see why there couldn't be a lot of under 10s.
- thomasfl 14y agoBTW: this poll is displayed beautifully with bar chart on HN for mobile http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/#/item/5536734 http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/#/item/5536734
- chmike 14y agoIt looks like 44 people over 90 isn't very realisic. I guess some people find it funy to screw the poll. It's a waste of creative potential. What else have you done lately to make this world a better place to live ?
- pg 14y agoThe most significant result of this poll is that HN now seems to be past the point where we can rely on an honor system to prevent users from giving junk answers to polls. A few years ago we could. That's an unfortunate change. However, it's an ill wind that blows no good. When I'm done reading applications, I'll add a little tweak to HN to make the fonts super big for all the users over 80.
- SCdF 14y agoMy thoughts exactly. That's a lot of <10 year olds...
- pg 14y agoI'll have to think of something extra for them too. Any ideas? Bear in mind that about half the users under 10 are also over 90, so whatever it is can't conflict with extra large fonts.
- barredo 14y agoput the nicks of the voters below each answer
- petercooper 14y agoOr when someone votes, it posts a comment in the thread with their vote/answer.
- nicholassmith 14y agoI like that idea, but there's plenty of people who use shell accounts and will still pick a ridiculous answer.
- pgbovine 14y agoextra bright colors; maybe some blink tags too.
- 14y ago
- heavenike 14y ago26 and I always think that I am still 21 years old。。
- sthangav 14y agoover 30
- harsimrat 14y agofuck
- cmutty 14y agoThank you for putting 25 in the younger pool! I hate feeling as old as 30 :)
- abrahimsh 14y agoسكس
- zerr 14y agoAnother reminder that Life is very short.
- kokey 14y agoThere's a lot of 21 to 30 year olds acting like under 10 year olds by pretending to be over 90 years old.
- sukuriant 14y agoI'm just shocked, shocked! that you would insult our centennial user base by suggesting they're lying about their age!
- rydgel 14y agoI’m 12 and what is this?
- Wista 14y ago56
- kadaj 14y ago84 people over 90 and 68 less than 10 at HN, shows honesty :|
- ameen 14y agoI'm 24, and come to think of it. I haven't really achieved much that I hoped to achieve by now when I was younger. I wish I could turn back the clock to the last 7 years and get right to what I really could do instead of wasting my time at College[1] and chasing useless dreams. All the best youngsters and to those that made it cheers. And for others like me, stay at it. We'll never know when lady luck will smile upon us. [1] Went to an Engineering college in India. While the syllabus was pretty good for a CS student, the teachers sadly were the worst. This is one of the biggest reasons why I believe innovation in Education is long due. By contrast, the US Higher Education system is pretty decent compared to what I experienced in India (vicariously, i.e.,).
- alan_cx 14y agoGet the HELL on with it then. You feel bad now? Im 40 and feel worse. I would give anything to be your age again, and have to 16 whole years, plus the 7 you regret, to achieve......well...... anything. I promise you, if you don't you will bitterly regret it. I'm a busted flush, but you have every opportunity. You can even fail lots until you get it right. Oh, forget luck. It does not exist. Its just recognised opportunity.
- reinhardt 14y agoI'm 34 and have stopped having any pretense of pursuing "achievements", if I ever cared at all. It's liberating.
- solistice 14y agoI'm sure there'll be another person coming in with 50 years of age and more existential regret to reprimand both of you, but I'm not that person because I'm frankly not that old. None of you two (or any number out there) is a busted flush till you've stopped breathing for about 15 or so minutes, so don't sweat it. Alan, you're 40 years old, and your expiration date is proably still another 30-50 years off. That's more than enough time to do something that makes you happy. Yes, I'm younger than you two, but I had to say it. I mean I thought my life was done for and wasted when I was 13 years old (tsss...truely depressing times weren't they?), and that was obviously not true. But lack of hope for the future is understandable when your plan A seems blocked, your plan B is nonexistent, and a lot of people tell you you will fail if you don't pull the ship tight together. But there is always a second route to Rome, and along every limes there's a hole you can get through, no matter how extensive it looks. Especially since I only looked for one meter to either side back then. Anyways, none of you guys are as doomed as you make yourself out to be. If you start out now, will you be as sucessfull as the 19 year Wunderkind who started his multi-million dollar company with 16? No, but you don't need to.
- bennny 14y agoI'm 13!
- TheLegace 14y agoWhat shocks is me that there are 71 points for people under 10, and 87 for over 90. That stat just amazes me.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- rdl 14y agoThis might be self-serving, but I'm convinced "year of birth" matters more than age (and, more specifically, "when did you have computers and the Internet" and such). I think 50 year olds in 2030 will still be involved in tech in ways 50 years weren't in 2000 or 2013.
- jeremyjh 14y agoYes but there will be differences that may matter a lot. I suspect that a lot of members of my cohort (I'm 36) still have no idea why we would want to tweet. I spent a lot of time on IRC when I was younger (not any longer) and I suspect that both being young as well as birth year play a part in some of these behavior patterns. This behavior and interests would also be affected by other factors that may correalate with age (such as having a spouse and children).
- acheron 14y agoMy grandfather bought a home PC when he retired in 1986, and he was in his mid-sixties then. He kept up with new PC technology for many years after that. So there are always outliers!
- unkoman 14y agoI wish I was 10 again.
- kintamanimatt 14y agoClearly you forgot puberty, high school, and being unable to sign a contract or get credit. Having said that, to be 18 again...
- unkoman 14y agoI'm not american only puberty applies. So once again, I wish I was 10 again.
- kintamanimatt 14y agoYou can sign contracts, not go to school, and get credit when you're 10 where you live?! Where are you?
- damon_c 14y ago25 is when you can (easily) rent cars (in the US). That's definitely a sweet spot. Of course until 35 you still can't run for US senate or president...
- acheron 14y agoFor what it's worth, you can be a senator at 30. 35 is just for president or vice-president.
- alan_cx 14y agoThank you sooooooooooo much for the 36-40 group. Im 40, and I really cant get my head round that. I cant even really accept that Im a proper grown up adult, with kids. So, being put in a 36-40 group in stead of a 40-whatever group has very much cheered me up. My your god bless you, eve if she is your wife ;)
- acheron 14y agoHeh, I am ten years younger than you, and I was happy to be in a 26-30 group too. :)
- garysweaver 14y agoI'm not sure why I was surprised at how much it goes down after 40, but it makes me a little sad inside. BTW- You can remove one of the under 10 and one of the over 90 points. Was having too much fun with it.
- EFruit 14y ago16. I'm disappointed to see people skewing the results. I was hoping to see the lower brackets. So much for that.
- silasb 14y agoI'm surprised at the people over 90 years old, 102 seems very very suspicious.
- sidcool 14y agoOver 90, 102!!
- tokenadult 14y agoIt would be interesting to know which age group(s) HN readers consist mostly of. Voluntary response poll results will not provide reliable data on this question. You should have seen this FAQ with the previous polls. (See also pg's comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5537023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5537023 which I imagine will continue to be the top comment in this thread.) As I commented previously when we had a poll on the ages of HNers, the data can't be relied on to make such an inference. That's because the data are not from a random sample of the relevant population. One professor of statistics, who is a co-author of a highly regarded AP statistics textbook, has tried to popularize the phrase that "voluntary response data are worthless" to go along with the phrase "correlation does not imply causation." Other statistics teachers are gradually picking up this phrase. -----Original Message----- From: Paul Velleman [SMTPfv2@cornell.edu] Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 1998 5:10 PM To: apstat-l@etc.bc.ca; Kim Robinson Cc: mmbalach@mtu.edu Subject: Re: qualtiative study Sorry Kim, but it just aint so. Voluntary response data are worthless. One excellent example is the books by Shere Hite. She collected many responses from biased lists with voluntary response and drew conclusions that are roundly contradicted by all responsible studies. She claimed to be doing only qualitative work, but what she got was just plain garbage. Another famous example is the Literary Digest "poll". All you learn from voluntary response is what is said by those who choose to respond. Unless the respondents are a substantially large fraction of the population, they are very likely to be a biased -- possibly a very biased -- subset. Anecdotes tell you nothing at all about the state of the world. They can't be "used only as a description" because they describe nothing but themselves. http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=194473&tstart=36420 http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=194473&tsta... For more on the distinction between statistics and mathematics, see "Advice to Mathematics Teachers on Evaluating Introductory Statistics Textbooks" http://statland.org/MyPapers/MAAFIXED.PDF http://statland.org/MyPapers/MAAFIXED.PDF and "The Introductory Statistics Course: A Ptolemaic Curriculum?" http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz I think Professor Velleman promotes "Voluntary response data are worthless" as a slogan for the same reason an earlier generation of statisticians taught their students the slogan "correlation does not imply causation." That's because common human cognitive errors run strongly in one direction on each issue, so the slogan has to take the cognitive error head-on. Of course, a distinct pattern in voluntary responses tells us SOMETHING (maybe about what kind of people come forward to respond), just as a correlation tells us SOMETHING (maybe about a lurking variable correlated with both things we observe), but it doesn't tell us enough to warrant a firm conclusion about facts of the world. The Literary Digest poll http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5168/ http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5168/ http://www.math.uah.edu/stat/data/LiteraryDigest.pdf http://www.math.uah.edu/stat/data/LiteraryDigest.pdf is a spectacular historical example of a voluntary response poll with a HUGE sample size and high response rate that didn't give a correct picture of reality at all. When I have brought up this issue before, some other HNers have replied that there are some statistical tools for correcting for response-bias effects, IF one can obtain a simple random sample of the population of interest and evaluate what kinds of people respond. But we can't do that here on HN. Another reply I frequently see when I bring up this issue is that the public relies on voluntary response data all the time to make conclusions about reality. To that I refer careful readers to what Professor Velleman is quoted as saying above (the general public often believes statements that are baloney) and to what Google's director of research, Peter Norvig, says about research conducted with better data, http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html that even good data (and Norvig would not generally characterize voluntary response data as good data) can lead to wrong conclusions if there isn't careful thinking behind a study design. Again, human beings have strong predilections to believe certain kinds of wrong data and wrong conclusions. We are not neutral evaluators of data and conclusions, but have predispositions (cognitive illusions) that lead to making mistakes without careful training and thought. Another frequently seen reply is that sometimes a "convenience sample" (this is a common term among statisticians for a sample that can't be counted on to be a random sample) of a population offers just that, convenience, and should not be rejected on that basis alone. But the most thoughtful version of that frequent reply I have previously seen in online discussion did correctly point out that if we know from the get-go that the sample was not done statistically correctly, then even if we are confident (enough) that HN participants are young, we wouldn't want to extrapolate from that to conclude that the users of any technology site are young, or that users of the Internet as a whole are young. On my part, I wildly guess that most HNers are younger than I am in part because this kind of poll recurs often on HN. Other preoccupations of younger rather than older people make up frequent topics on HN, and I've tried looking for signs that there are large hidden numbers of old participants here without finding many.
- gesman 14y agoWe need supplemental poll. Questions: 1. Did you click your correct age? 2. You click your incorrect age? 3. Did you click more than one age?
- pani 14y agoTo confuse furthermore: 4. Are you honest?
- sukuriant 14y ago6. All of the above? Remember to click all that apply!
- BHSPitMonkey 14y agoAre you a: (Please choose only one option) 1. Knight 2. Knave
- xijuan 14y agoI did adopt the third question on your list!
- marchra 14y agoi was about to click 31-35 then realized im not in that cluster. thaaaaaaanks.
- klrr 14y agoI doubt so many are under 10 or over 90.
- niico 14y agoIn dog years im like 80
- catzhang 14y agoIt just shows that the number of trolls on HN have increased
- thewisedude 14y agoI find it hard to believe that there over 125 people who read this website and who are over 90! I think what happened here is, some guys read this and decided to be naughty and decided to pick the max age. If lets say we provided another choice saying over 150 yrs old, I am sure it would have been picked and we could have safely ignored the whole set data points without affecting our interpretation of the different ages of people.
- Thiz 14y agoCmdrTaco's Law says that the last option in a poll is the funniest and some people will go right for it.
- greyfox 14y agoim only t1rteen wanna psyb3r~?
- parnas 14y agoI voted for several age groups accidentally, just started clicking on those little arrows.
- vinayakponangi 14y ago26
- timme 14y agojunk polls get junk answers.
- wild91 14y agoI just don't see the point in lying. You want to answer?Do it and be honest. You don't want to?Don't. It's plain easy.
- pani 14y agoThe nineties are missing some zeroes. It's over 9000.
- dev-devil 14y ago43
- vuzum 14y agoMany of us seem to be in our 20s. :)
- wallzz 14y ago23
- PAULHANNA84 14y agoMinus the under 10, I think there is some truth in the pattern from the point of 16+. Hacker News/Y combinator primarily attracts entrepreneurs,hackers,engineers...people who are constantly learning based on self-interest. 26 is the average age for a Y Combinator alumni and 26-30 is also the majority of users in this toll. Essentially what I'm trying to say is I think this is a reflection of ambition dwindling with age based on the general overall population.
- kbkaiez 14y agoAge doesn't matter.