Age Distribution

[jducoeur]

Doesn't really tell me anything I didn't know, but this is an interesting little tool that tells you the age distribution of your friends list. As expected, it shows mine as being a fairly smooth spectrum between 20 and 50 years old, with a few outliers at either end. I still find the official LJ demographics surprising when compared to my circle -- we are way the heck down the tail of the bell curve...

Comments

[siderea]

Is that URL correct? I'm getting not-found errors.

[mindways]

Google also thinks there's something there, so perhaps it's gotten blasted by excessive usage, or taken down for fear of same?

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Perhaps available sporadically. It is showing now. The center of the bell curve is from age 14 to 22.

[mindways]

*nod* It's the personalized tool that doesn't seem to be available.

[jducoeur]

It's probably getting slashdotted -- the owner has been posting to lj-nifty, which is often a way to make that happen. It was working for me this morning, though, and I suspect it'll work again once the crush goes away...

[cellio]

Older users seem a little less likely to include ages in their profiles. I don't think that's statistically significant for all of LJ, but it might be relevant for any given friends list.

[jducoeur]

That's actually part of why I find this result interesting. I'd been hypothesizing that the overall LJ demographic curve was being skewed by older people not putting in their ages. But among my friends, most appear to have done so -- the results line up pretty well with my knowledge of the people involved. Either way, we (and the SCA in general on LJ) seem to be a fairly anomalous bunch: a very openly age-diverse group in an overwhelmingly 18-year-old environment...

[cellio]

I might be weird (don't respond to that :-) ), but while I'm pretty open about my age in many circumstances, I don't want to provide an easily-avoided source of one-stop shopping for identity thieves. I decided years ago that there's no anonymity on the net and I'd rather my friends be able to find me easily, so given that I'm using my real name I'm at least going to omit my exact birthdate. Anyone willing to spend some time can figure it out, but I can't stop that kind of person either. As with locks, the protection is to deter the casual thief, not the determined one.