Well, the results are in (at least, no one has sent me their age since Friday, so I'm gonna go with what I got).
My original hypothesis was that CR membership was younger, on average, than many of you might think. I kept the hypothesis to myself so as not to influence the replies (i.e. who chose to reply).
I received 141 replies. That makes for about 10% of the CR list membership. So generalize at your own risk!
Here are the stats:
youngest member: 14 (hi Samuel)
oldest member: 73 (two replies with this age)
mean (sum of all responses devided by number of responses): 48.85
median (the number [age] in the exact middle of the range when sorted from lowest to highest): 49
mode (the most common response): 48 (twelve people of this age replied)
Standard deviation (a measure of dispersion): 10.01 years
number of responses in the following age brackets: 0-25: 2 26-35: 12 36-45: 32 46-55: 58 56-65: 29 66-75: 8 76+: 0
Or by generation: Veterans (born 1901-1924): none Silents (born 1925 - 1942): 8 Boomers (born 1943 - 1961): 92 Xers (born 1962 - 1977): 39 Gen Y (aka Millenials) (born 1978 - present): 2
So we're definitely "Boomer-heavy" but have a pretty good number of gen Xers as well.
Just out of curiousity, I re-ran the averages after removing the youngest two members who replied (14 and 23 years of age): mean: 49.46 median: 50 mode: 48 standard dev.: 9.54
So not that much changes - we still have a group that's younger than some of you thought (at least for this sample). Many of you guessed at the averages when you emailed me your age. The most common guess as to our average age was 58. We're way below that, at least according to this sample...
We could spend all day debating the potential confounds (certain age groups may have been less likely to respond, for example), but this was never intended to be rigorously scientific, just fun. Again, generalize at your own risk, and take my conclusions with a grain of salt...
If anyone wants the excel file (with accompanying graph of replies by age) let me know and I'll happily email it to you.
There is definitely a group of 30-40 year olds out there with a passionate interest in collecting vintage lightweights
Michael Kahrl was kind enough to send me the same stats for a recent survey of the iBOB list: Mean: 45.5 Median: 45 Mode: 42
Generation GI: 0 Silent Generation: 8 Boomers: 64 Gen X: 30 Gen Y: 1
Pretty similar distribution...
So, any thoughts?
Duncan Granger
Mountville, PA