Friday, May 22, 2009

More fun with math

This is what happens when you're walking through the woods and you aren't thinking of things that are important: You start thinking about stuff that isn't important. It was one of those times that I realized I seem to have a propensity for the underdog.

  • 74% of the US population is christian. 1.7% is jewish, 0.7% Buddhist, 0.6% Muslim, 0.4% Hindu, 1.2% Other. I am none of the above (which puts me in a 16% grouping).1
  • 43% of the US population is Democrat. 33% is Republican. I am neither (24% grouping).2
  • 80% of the US population lives in urban areas. That puts me in the 20% group.3
  • 89.9% of computer users use Microsoft. 9.1% are Mac users. I'm left in the 0.76% using some flavor of Linux. (My previous home desktop flavor of choice was SunOS, which presumably is rolled into the 0.01% 'other' category.)4
  • I am in the 44% of folks that are childless by choice.5


The population of the US is estimated to be 304,059,724.6 Assuming that the percentages above have no significant grouping (i.e. assuming a Linux user is no more likely to be non-Republican, non-Democrat, childless or live in the country...) and assuming no substantial geographic grouping (which is a bad assumption) this means there would be a 0.0025% chance of meeting folks like myself. If applied to the population of my county (201,277), there are 5 of us and I am married to one of them. No wonder I have issues making friends.

I tried to find statistics on people's views of low-fat vs low-carb and really couldn't find anything useful. I suspect if I had found these stats and applied them to my "study" that I would be required by law to leave the county.

  1. Wikipedia: Religion in the United States
  2. Wikipedia: Democratic Party
  3. Population: USA Facts
  4. StatOwl: Operating Systems Usage
  5. Wikipedia: Childfree. This is a little fudged since the statistic is for women. Men's stats are a little hard to find, presumably because of the cost of cross referencing the DNA of every person that could possibly be your child.
  6. Google: Population

5 comments:

Enos Straitt said...

Interesting post, Spork. I like numbers although I suck at math.

I thought of a few things that could kinda skew the data you found (not criticizing at all, just some thoughts):

"74% of the US population is christian" - I could pull a Billy Clinton and argue the definition of "is" but I won't. The problem is that many claim to be Christian, but few live the faith to the best of their ability. For example, my sister claims to be a Christian, but still parties, never goes to church, doesn't donate to charity, yada yada yada. She, like a lot of other people, think that just believing in God makes you a Christian.

"43% of the US population is Democrat. 33% is Republican." -- In Texas we cannot register as Independent, or so I was told when I registered. I was a registered Indy back in NC. Does this skew the percentages?

"80% of the US population lives in urban areas" -- I assume they feel the 'burbs are "urban", although I do not consider it so. Maybe I am still arguing definitions like Billy Clinton did.

I am surprised that Micro$haft only has 89.9% of the market. I had hoped that MacOS and Linux had whittled down that total some, but i guess not. I wonder where I fit in...I dual boot XP and Ubuntu Linux, using Ubuntu 99.5% of the time at home. At work I am almost forced to use Vista on two machines (one for our network and one for the customer). The other interesting thing is that the largest percentage of Linux users don't report their flavor of Linux...I guess *Nix geeks really are into privacy. You also have to love the fact that XP has almost three times the number of desktops as Vista does.

Spork In the Eye said...

well, first off, you probably should argue the numbers and the math... I seriously doubt they are terribly accurate or the math really works. My mind just wanders.

on christianity: I guess there are multiple definitions, but I think there is actually some biblical support for your sis's claim. Even the oft quoted John 3:16 seems to imply that. There may be more narrow definitions in different faiths... or there may be multiple valid contextual definitions there. I.e, one definition for "belief" and one for "lifestyle."

politics: dunno. The fact I quote wikipedia probably makes it not too authoritative. Pew research (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/773/fewer-voters-identify-as-republicans) shows it as 36% Dem/27% Rep based on "what do you identify yourself as."

urbanity (urbanal?) - again... some number someone pulled out of their ass. Its hard for me to believe it was actually 80/20. I am rural... which is what I was trying to identify with. There are probably better categorizations: urban/suburban/rural. And while I cannot see my neighbors, there are a bunch of folks that would put me sub-suburban. I can walk to their house. Some folks can't.

OS: I am guessing this is the most accurate stat, but that's still probably some fudge. I think this is a compile of logs from large sites. So if you visit with the same computer on a dual boot, it will most likely see you as 2 computers (or the same computer with differing userids for that matter). And yeah, sometimes I lie and set my useragent to microsoft to make oddball sites work, so its easy to lie. I think some handheld devices (blackberry, etc) lie by default to make weird sites happy.

I did just read some Balmer article where he claimed to be more worried about Linux than about Mac due to recent increases. Not sure if that was FUD to make apple feel bad or if it was their real thoughts...

Og Make Blog said...

Hmmm... just saw those figures the other day... but pretty much 1/3 all across: Dem/Ind/Rep. The Ind. allied more so with Rep., but not on social issues. Not exact, but close within the margin of error.

Oh, Spork.... I just bet you are urban by definition... check the SMSA for Tyler... I bet you are included. Sorry to put you in the majority for once.

But, damn! I'm in the majority on a couple now! Urban and (don't forget the 80/20 split) coastal (within 100 miles of the coastline)!

Spork In the Eye said...

The State Motorcycle Safety Administration had nothing to say as to whether I am rural or not.

...but seriously... If you look to see what that includes, there is a whole lot of nothing smaller than 50 acres, septic only, no city water folks. I don't know if that counts. I'm probably "subrural" as opposed to suburban.

Here's my reasoning:
* I can walk outside nekkid and no one will notice
* I can fire a gun and no one will notice or care
* I can have horses/cows
* I have muni water, but no muni trash and no muni sewer.
* my newest and most expensive vehicle is a tractor

...you can't call that urban.

Oh, and repubs are shrinking... even with Obama manufacturing cars.

Og Make Blog said...

Ahhh, but I'll also show you horses and cows on pastures within the city limits of the 4th largest city in the US. Deer (rats with hooves,) too.