Results of Arbitrary Day Survey! (self.secretsanta)
Posted by _supernovasky_ at 2014-05-13T04:12:52+00:00
Hey guys, so as promised, I am delivering some stats to all of you that I think will be very helpful in deciding which option you want to participate in. Furthermore, I have some interesting statistics about age and gender that I would like to include. There were about 400 respondents, more than enough to draw some good conclusions.
Gender
To get started, It would appear that the Arbitrary Day exchange tends to skew towards females:
http://i.imgur.com/ALED4DC.png
So how do males and females differ in their planned gifts for this exchange? Well, the results are quite interesting. I direct your attention to the following:
http://i.imgur.com/CvVMqOc.png
Men plan on giving more, and their spread is much larger than women. This means that having a female Secret Santa makes you more likely to get a gift valued at the mean, around $40.00. Getting a male Secret Santa is more likely to net you a higher valued gift, but other than that, the histograms for males and females show similar spending patterns:
http://i.imgur.com/kVjYUtH.png
http://i.imgur.com/DnUNQot.png
Edit: Some people have commented on the histograms above. I should have been more clear in that in these histograms, I am excluding gifts greater than 150 dollars. There were a few "big spenders" in the male column that are not reflected in their histogram.
However, just because men give slightly more on average doesn't mean you're receiving a lower value gift from a female Secret Santa. In fact, I wanted to explore the gender breakdown in personal gift giving, basically items that were personally made by the Secret Santa:
http://i.imgur.com/vd9TTpL.png
As you can see, women are much more likely to give something they personally made in this exchange. In fact, 40% of women plan on making something for their gift recipient!
Age
The average age of your Secret Santa is around 27 years old, but the variation in age is huge. Here is an age curve for the Secret Santas. We actually have a 100 year old Secret Santa this year!
http://i.imgur.com/SJDtrnj.png
Age is positively correlated with the dollar amount that one expects to give. This is not a surprising finding. Netting a 40-50 year old Secret Santa is more likely to get you a gift value of >$50.00:
http://i.imgur.com/YxJCwUv.png
Credit Options
This is why you are probably here - to help decide which option to choose. Well, I have some surprising news for you... the options vary dramatically in what they have to offer, and mostly in unexpected ways!
First of all, here is the chart for each tiered credit option and the amount of money the Secret Santa plans on spending as well as the dollar amount of the gift the Secret Santa expects to receive:
http://i.imgur.com/xyrSqV6.png
Instantly you can see something surprising. There's been a strong push for the 7 credit option, with a lot of people right at the verge who want to participate in other exchanges going for the 7 credit option because they feel like they'll get shafted if they don't. Here, you can see that the 3 credit option and 7 credit option are practically indistinguishable. Most people plan on giving around $45.00 in gifts, and most people plan on receiving around $25.00 in gifts. If you are on the cusp and want to do other exchanges, then don't feel bad about going for the 3 credit option! Other than that, Elves actually plan to spend the most on their giftees. Here are histograms of how much people plan on spending by tier:
http://i.imgur.com/0R5gc9B.png
http://i.imgur.com/poNt3jU.png
http://i.imgur.com/V5lzg5y.png
http://i.imgur.com/wfSPQzP.png
Something even more important to consider... do you value personally made gifts? Well these results might surprise you:
http://i.imgur.com/rpr6bnf.png
That's right. You are twice as likely to get a personally made gift in the 1 credit option zone. Almost half of all Secret Santas choosing this option plan to give a personally made gift. Elves have almost no interest in doing this. Remarkable!
In the end, here is what the final breakdown looks like by tier:
http://i.imgur.com/YrbdrTl.png
Now with raw data!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Alm47InuFvyOdFNqaDVidXBrNXlfVjNHQzFhWlNtWVE&usp=sharing
Be aware, if you plan on doing anything with the data, look for double posts (submissions within 10 seconds of each other that are identical) and absurd dollar amounts, of which there were a couple ($100,000).
For verification purposes, I did the analysis at 369 respondents and eliminated 4 cases that were obviously absurd.
)Gave shit to his wife about smoking while pregnant in spite of his past."
