Birthday Trends

Triggered by a conversation yesterday, I recently pondered on the statistical trends of birthdays. I noticed that a large number of my co-workers have birthdays in May, July and August. Following are some numbers to consider:

Both sets of statistics are the relative percentage of birthdays per month for a given population. See <http://pressroom.hallmark.com/birthday_trends_stats.html> for more on birthday statistics from Hallmark. I obtained the Galdos Systems birthdays by looking at the company calendar and doing some quick calculations of the 25 people listed there. I labeled Galdos as "Global" since many employees are not Canadian born, while Hallmark seems to be predominately American. As a result, these numbers vary a bit (plus the fact the sample size is so small for Galdos Systems).

I also compare this with Taiwan, where most of the birthdays (as I observed) are in November and December. This is a convenient 9 months after Chinese New Years (quite often the only holiday some people take in Taiwan). Where as the Hallmark and Galdos data show 9 months previous to be around Christmas and August (after the kids start school?) respectively. The difference is small but is seems to be a slightly greater probability of people having children 9 months after a major holiday over other times in the year.

Important Question: Should we be a little more careful to knock before entering a room during the holidays?

Barrel of Monkeys: How fun is it Really?

Yesterday, on my way to the wash room, I was struck by a thought on monkeys. Monkeys in a barrel to be more accurate. As most of us know there is a common saying: "More fun than a barrel of monkeys." I have depicted this idiom below in graphical form:

+

= FUN (?)

First, let's look at these two items independently: I think that barrels can be quite useful for a variety of purposes such as storing things or rolling down a hill, but are they fun? I don't really think so. Monkeys, on the other hand, can definitely be a real crack-up, but how would they react to being in such a confined space with their colleagues? I have my doubts as to the outcome of such a proposal.

All-in-all I would have to say that monkeys in a barrel has some potential, but it likely wouldn't last long. The monkeys would all be in each other's faces and there would be a lot of funny sounds. However, in the end, there just isn't enough room in a typical barrel for the monkeys to really get much fun going. Unless you have a really ginormous barrel the fun factor wouldn't get very high, in my opinion.

Then again there is only one way to find out for sure what the overall fun factor of monkeys in a barrel would be. If you have any experiences with monkeys in barrels, or know of any similar experiments, please let me know.

First Blog

w00t, first Blog!