skewed means its normal still. just a skewed normal distribution.

normal means it does a bell curve and can have a "central tendency"

16 ~2 months

I think the ageist comments about 70+ in the survey are uncalled for.

One might expect fewer older folks in this discussion just because it is conducted in a new medium. But that is no excuse for being unfriendly towards them. The fortunate among us will be 70+ all too soon, and imagine how frustrating it will be then if your hands do shake, your ears do ring, your eyes won't focus, etc. And on top of that to have people make fun of you.

"Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
- Douglas Adams

While certainly many older folks do have hearing problems, there are still plenty of them who appreciate low noise. If anything, it seems to be a lot of the somewhat younger folks who have blasted their ears out with overamplified music who show more hearing problems. Those who grew up before pop music meant rocking your ears to death have a distinct advantage.

(As far as my age - life the universe and everything.)

A normal curve would go off to infinity in both directions - how many participants do we have of negative age?
Looks more similar to a Poisson distribution to me.

ageist? now you're making shit up.

racism and antisemitistic comments, ok I can understand that people find them offensive, because no white guy will ever become black, and no non-jew will become a true jew. but ageism? let's face it I know I'm going to be old, so I can make all the age related jokes I want, just like blondes can tell blonde jokes, and dave chappelle can make black jokes.

Now if you consider this too personally offensive to a specific group of people, I suggest you get your sensitive self into a senior citezen home.... well actually, not that you never hear old people complaining about the young. so the whole thing is screwed over



as for the fact that this is a normal distribution, not really, it's centered around the 20's age group, much more so than total population is.

Oh, and that comment is not ageist either, is it?

I'm with klankymen on this one. A sense of humour is a useful thing to have. Would I be offended if my age bracket was described as "Are you sure your hands are big enough to lift this heatsink?", or "University student? You mean you have other hobbies than drinking?", or "Your parents pay for your silencing equipment, don't they?" ? Heck no, these are valid for a large percentage of my age group. I'm sure other similar texts can be written for the other age groups.

Of course, you'll say "but none of them were". May I kindly note that believing everyone is out to get you is not the healthiest way of living. But then again, I suppose it worked for the feminists.

Shhh! The patriarchal conspiracy theorists will hear you!

*dons tinfoil hat*

1961 vintage here and probably suffering from some hearing loss. I'm too much in denial to go get it checked.

I definitely attribute the hearing issues to the finest rock and roll acts of the 1970s and early 1980s. I couldn't hear at all for two days after seeing Boston. Van Halen, Kiss, Queen, Journey, Triumph, Blue Oyster Cult, Ted Nugent, J.Geils Band, Sammy Hagar, and a bunch of others all contributed.

Now I wear musician's earplugs when I go to concerts. They cut the sound by at least 20db while not altering the frequency response very much. I wish I'd had them when I was young and foolish. Live and learn, I guess.

Oh, and now I'm the old guy in the pits at Green Day, Warped Tour, Yellowcard, Coheed & Cambria, Taking Back Sunday, MXPX, etc.


Scott

I certainly didn't make up the term ageist, nor the idea of age related discrimination. Attitudes to age differ considerably with culture, if it isn't a problem there, great. It is quite common in the United States.
Sufficiently so that, e.g. employers are supposed to not be able to ask about age when interviewing prospective employees. There is quite a cult of appealing to youth controlling the media, products, etc. It may not get as much press as religious or ethnic discrimination, but they didn't get much press either when they were more acceptable.

Yeah... damn the young 'uns for being so young! And, um, energetic. And taking over the world from us.


edit: and to post something actually constructive.

This example of the discrimination I would classify as rather harmless. As for others -- the very group discriminated against has the power to change it. If I'm not mistaken, the 65+ age group is the fastest growing in industrialised nations. Have issues? Go vote. (Older, more conservative voters basically decided the last two elections in Poland. That is not to say that I agree with how they voted -- but they agreed as to how to vote, and had the discipline to go and have a say.) Have issues with products? Vote with your money. Have issues with a site's redesign? Post your thoughts. (Great post in the redesign thread BTW. I agreed with a lot of the points.) But don't waste your time accuse a piece of humour of being ageist...

I think ageist is a term invented by american lawyers with money as their only interest... that said I have to say I am suprised to even find out that we have people over sixty on these forums. Most old people I know, have no understanding of computers (both hardware and software). My mother is an accountant and has used computers in her work for 20 years now, yet her understanding of computers is very limited, for example she has no real understanding on how viruses work not to even talk about hardware. During the last few years my father has started to use computers and it has been a pain in the ssh trying to teach him how to use it. I have spent countless hours over the phone helping them both with their problems and needless to say, I have ran out of patience many times. Now being wiser I have installed realVNC on the computers of all my relatives who ask my help, so I can do it myself, because it seems they just cannot learn anymore...

Imo the stuff around SPCR, requires much more understanding and DIY-spirit, then just reading your emails. So my hat's off to every senior member here at SPCR for keeping up with the new times and technology.

So what your saying is that people over 60 years of age are old? BURN HIM!

No seriously, my almost 80y old grandma can use a computer, but my some 30 years younger mom cant.. It´s pretty much internet=Google

My dad and some of the people who work with him (late 50's) have spent most of their lives working with computers (ie one guy used to work on Cray supercomputers in the 70's!), so are very computer-literate. However I realise this may not be the norm.

However, there are two (or more) factors at work here:

1) Computers are not very user-friendly (far less so than cars or other consumer appliances). Even with Windows XP it can be very hard to figure out what is actually wrong with a computer when it crashes (and it is when, not if). The old joke in the computer industry is that if cars had progressed as fast as computers they would all get 1000 miles to the gallon and be able to drive themselves. The old joke in the car industry is that if cars worked like computers they would crash twice a day and ask the driver to "reboot" every 5 minutes.

2) Generally as people get older it is harder to learn new things (languages, technologies etc). Also, unless they are really interested in computers there is really nothing you NEED to use a computer for. ie banking, shopping, telephone, work etc. You might need to use a computer at work but that's it. So you really need to be very highly motivated to learn such a new technology later in life.

Good point.

Is there a poll for how many men and women there are in this forum?
I don't think there are many women here, especially considering how much help each forum member with a "female" nick gets every time they ask a simple question. Yeah... they get a lot of help!

Hmm, never been in Off Topic forum for a while - I missed this thread! I'm 23

Big 4 0 this year

I know both young and old who know nothing about computers. I also know some old folks who have forgotten more about computers then most on these forums wll ever know and still know way more than they have forgotten.

My father actively used computers up until shortly before he died at 82 1/2 but struggled with it the last few years because of failing heath. This in spite of the fact that he had never used one until just before he retired. It has nothing to do with age and everything to do with desire and motivation.

You can count on the 70+ age bracket to remain ZERO! That would be like asking someone if they are under 16 still sucking on their mommy's tits. No one is going to classify him or herself in that category. You have defeated the validity of this poll and yourself.

I know if the first option was:
Under 18? Shouldn't you be in bed on a school night like today? Does your mommy know you're going to grown-up sites like this?

I would still vote in it, so whatever. However I do also expect the last option to stay empty, and I did from the start, which might be part of the reason I put the mean comment in it....