{"id":1962,"date":"2010-08-02T00:01:04","date_gmt":"2010-08-02T08:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=1962"},"modified":"2010-08-01T16:26:15","modified_gmt":"2010-08-02T00:26:15","slug":"stats-stats-stats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=1962","title":{"rendered":"Stats! Stats! Stats!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hear a tidbit on the radio the other day. It said that over one third of the computers on the Internet are used for
\n
\nporn<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(Sorry about the break. I’m trying to be dramatic.)<\/p>\n

The number was something like 36 percent.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure if that’s 36 percent of the servers, web sites, web pages, or whatnot. I’m also not sure what qualifies as porn; are pictures of celebrities getting out of cars porn? It seems so, these days.<\/p>\n

Given my love for statistics, I was blessed the other day with an email from Stephanie from the Double Forte marketing group. Support.com<\/a> did a survey of computer users and here are the stats that stood out the most for me:<\/p>\n

• Online gaming is most popular with the younger crowd. Duh. But the numbers were surprising to me: Of 20-year-olds, 61% played online games. The number holds steady at 61% for 30-year-olds, but then drops to 51% for 40-somethings.<\/p>\n

• The number one thing 20-somethings use their computers for is social networking. The least favorite thing mentioned was reading books online.<\/p>\n

• For the old farts, their favorite thing to do was reading the news or sports. Their least-favorite thing was, like the kiddos, reading books online.<\/p>\n

• News and sport reading was the number one thing that consumed most folk’s computer time.<\/p>\n

• Comparatively speaking, most people feel more overwhelmed by paying bills, health insurance, managing their retirement accounts, and shopping for groceries than they feel overwhelmed by computers.<\/p>\n

• It’s possible to be overwhelmed, and it’s possible to underwhelmed, but can anyone just be plain old whelmed<\/em>?<\/p>\n

• Most people felt that they could better deal with a computer problem than a minor health issue.<\/p>\n

• Lots of people are fearful of getting a virus or other computer problem from a social networking site than just about any other thing that they do online. That makes sense to me.<\/p>\n

• Most people try to solve their computer problems themselves. Typically the first thing they try is to restart the computer.<\/p>\n

• By a more than two-to-one margin, people will call up a computer savvy friend before they resort to phoning up tech support.<\/p>\n

• More men than women would rather phone tech support than ask for directions.<\/p>\n

The survey was a bit skewed, of course, since Support.com paid for it and they’re an online tech support company. Being a statistician myself, I could see that many of the questions were leading and they were trying to elicit some interesting replies. Here’s the summary from the press release:<\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  • Nearly four in ten (36%) consumers would rather be late to an important meeting than lose all of their personal files stored on their PC.<\/li>\n
  • Despite the tough economy and the high unemployment rate, 20% of those polled would choose missing an important job interview over losing their data.<\/li>\n
  • Americans rely heavily on their PCs as a communication portal, where they can read news (72%) stay in touch with friends and colleagues on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter (69%) and chat online with family (47%).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Interesting stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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