I could have sworn that TER had run a similar poll, but I couldn't find it in the poll archives.

Personally I started at "under 18" and hope to be still hobbying at "over 61".

but with 9 possible categories and only 57 respondents, your logic quickly falls apart. Unless you are arguing that there are no hobbyist under 25 as a literal interpretation of this poll would infer, and we know that is certainly not the case.

48% are over 50.  Of the hobbyist guys I know closely, most are over 50.  I know a couple under 50, but that's about it.  Don't know anyone under 40 that hobbys.  I'm 63, btw.

Swim

Just ask any escort, they could've saved you the time.

Just read some threads on another hobbiests website, one thread asks an intriguing question--what is the age demographics of hobbyists. They did some poll on that website. I attached the result below. I just wonder if this is general true cross the whole hobbyists population, or it is just one special case of that particular site? What do you think, my fellow hobbyists?

In 5 years I'll be going from Purple to light Violet

I think older men are more likely to participate in boards.

How old were you when you started the hobby?
36% 18-25
33% 26-35
18% 36-45
8% 46-55
3% 55+

since the total number of respondents is 57 and the binning error in samples of normal and lognormal distributions is proportional to 1/square root of the number in the bin it;s pretty good.

normal and lognormal distributions are regarded as beginning to be reliably sampled when the sample number is ~30. in this case with almost twice that, your assertion that the sample is small dubious.

as always the sample size is small or large compared to the precision demanded of the sample. for my purposes it is good enough for me.

I'm nearly 65, so I'm glad to hear our age group is well represented.  Would hate to think I'm compete for time with guys my kids' age.

especially if you frequent 18-30 providers. The thing about the age gap is that hobbyists your age are more likely (ie: just as likely) to frequent providers 30+ as 30-. Us young-lings (I was blue when I first joined the board, now I'm green and dreading mustard..) normally wouldn't. (the MILF complex, in practice, isn't something that I'd imagine we frequent)

There's enough young guys who hobby. There's probably a gap somewhere in the middle though. Sometime between the 20's and 40's disposable income drops as gents get responsibilities such as families that suck things up (and provide moral conundrums). Then this picks up again. The reason old gents don't know a lot of very young hobbyists is that it's not really something we'd brag about or network with older guys about. How many friends do you have that are in their 20's? lol

Fuck, man!  My kids are 32 and 29!  My step daughter is 25!  My buddy was leering at some young thing and, when I pointed out she was younger than either of his two daughters, he replied: "so what, she not my daughter."  That's why he's my hero.

Some of the poll responses are hilarious( For eg, the poll on how would you rate yourself on 1-10, some have rated them between 1-2) but infomrative on the whole.

a normal or (in this case better a) lognormal model (since negative ages are "unlikely") for the underlying distribution has only two parameters to be estimated: mean and variance. the expected error in estimating those two parameters is 1/square-root-of-sample-size, roughly. so as long as one is content with that size error in parameter estimation the sample is "large enough".

it is ALWAYS fallacious to state that a sample is too big or too small unless one has a sampling error criterion to go along with it. your "literal" interpretation of the poll is an invitation to fallacious statistical inference. the error associated with the number for each bin can again be estimated as 1/square-root-of-number-in-the-bin, which cautions one to not take the vacant bins very seriously.

I came across this just now.

Not sure how reliable it is, but it is interesting.

That a HUGE proportion of providers limit their services to men 40+, some of them even insisting that if they have any doubt as to your age, they'll check your DL and kick you out if you are a day under 40.

This sort of thing would tend to skew the numbers a bit, to say the least.

Furthermore, the pricing is such that a minority of men under 40 have achieved the success in life needed to afford it.

25 to 33-

Anymore, Age is like a Culture.

I've seen this trend decrease, at least in my area. When I first started reading TER two years ago this was a big deal and kept (ie: scared) me out of the local scene for a while. Now, it hasn't been a hindrance at all. Yes, maybe I have to forego 10-20% of providers I might be interested in but I exclude many more for other reasons.

I see the age concern now more with older providers than ones my own age. Then again, it helps to act (and be) mature regardless of the time one's been on this earth.

if one is testing different models by using Pearson's chi-squared binning is an essential part of the test but equality of bin sizing is not a requirement. for a case like the one before us it would be prudent to test several different binning schemas and see if the null hypothesis were consistently rejectable or not.

for hypothesis testing i much prefer tests that are completely independent of any binning scheme. Kolmogorov-Smirnov is a favorite but one can also do Anderson-Darling. i prefer Anderson-Darling when the subjects of the test are all female

continually transform LaPlace. the superposition of eigenstates of bi-stable real operators are wonderful to see, even better to feel their vectorial projection into kernel spaces.

yes, i can make quasi math speak sound dirty, LOL! don't get me started on the "no hair" theorem....