[Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics

[Milos Rancic]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 10:23 PM, Pavlo Shevelo<pavlo.shevelo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> * ... Older age groups are not interesting
>> anymore in the sense of quantity
>
> Are we really interested in quantity as that? Are we?
>
>> In other words, whatever we want or prefer, projects which hope that
>> their main recruiting age is older than 30 -- are dead projects in the
>> long run (i.e., if you are spending time of people in 30s to recruit
>> people in 50s, who will spend time to recruit more people in 50s when
>> those who are now in 30s will be in 70s?).
>
> :)
> My point is not switch from "15-24" to "50+" age limits, but to object
> narrowing of limits too much.
> I mean that combining of several age diapasons could provide "best of
> two worlds" result.
>
> And "recruiting" process should go as snowball - for example "50s"
> should hunt for more "50s" (as "30s" seems not mature enough to do
> that really well :) )

I have to say a lot about this, but I'll try to be concise...

Let's make one more very rough statistical analysis.

It is year 2009 and the age distribution of our contributors is very straight:

15-19: 1000
20-24: 1000
25-29: 1000
30-34: 1000
35-39: 1000
40-44: 1000
45-49: 1000
50-54: 1000
55-59: 1000
60-64: 1000
65-69: 1000
70-74: 1000
75-79: 1000

and we have 13.000 contributors.

Now, we are starting with the implementation of the Scenario 1: we
want to attract more retired academicians and we don't care for
younger and we are very successful in that implementation. So, during
the next year we are getting 500 more contributors in the ages groups
between 60 and 79.

This is year 2013 and we have the next situation:

15-19: 500
20-24: 1000
25-29: 1000
30-34: 1000
35-39: 1000
40-44: 1000
45-49: 1000
50-54: 1000
55-59: 1000
60-64: 1000
65-69: 1500
70-74: 1500
75-79: 1500

and we have 14.000 contributors. This is very good beginning.

And we are continuing with caring with older generations, and not
caring for younger... This is the year 2019:

15-19: 250
20-24: 500
25-29: 1000
30-34: 1000
35-39: 1000
40-44: 1000
45-49: 1000
50-54: 1000
55-59: 1000
60-64: 1000
65-69: 1500
70-74: 2000
75-79: 2000

and we have 14.250 contributors. Still good, but not as good as it was
during the first year.

2023

15-19: 150
20-24: 250
25-29: 500
30-34: 1000
35-39: 1000
40-44: 1000
45-49: 1000
50-54: 1000
55-59: 1000
60-64: 1000
65-69: 1500
70-74: 2000
75-79: 2500

= 13.900, which means that we are behind the peak and that number of
contributors will be just lower and lower.

OK. Let's try to implement Scenario 2: We want to spread our efforts
both on young and old generations.

It is 2013:

15-19: 1250
20-24: 1250
25-29: 1250
30-34: 1000
35-39: 1000
40-44: 1000
45-49: 1000
50-54: 1000
55-59: 1000
60-64: 1000
65-69: 1250
70-74: 1250
75-79: 1250

and we have 14.500 contributors.

It is 2019:

15-19: 1500
20-24: 1250
25-29: 1250
30-34: 1250
35-39: 1000
40-44: 1000
45-49: 1000
50-54: 1000
55-59: 1000
60-64: 1000
65-69: 1250
70-74: 1500
75-79: 1500

and we have 15.500 contributors. And we may expect slow raising of a
number of contributors.

And let we try to implement Scenario 3: We are concentrated just on
young generations.

2013:

15-19: 1500
20-24: 1500
25-29: 1500
30-34: 1000
35-39: 1000
40-44: 1000
45-49: 1000
50-54: 1000
55-59: 1000
60-64: 1000
65-69: 1000
70-74: 1000
75-79: 1000

= 14.500

2019:

15-19: 1500
20-24: 2000
25-29: 2000
30-34: 1500
35-39: 1000
40-44: 1000
45-49: 1000
50-54: 1000
55-59: 1000
60-64: 1000
65-69: 1000
70-74: 1000
75-79: 1000

= 16.000. Which means that the number of our contributors continues to
raise faster.

This is a simplistic view, of course. There are a lot of other
variables. And, usually, those variables would bring just less
contributors, not more. So, in the Scenario 1 we'll have stronger
lowering, in the Scenario 2 we'll have, at the best, stagnation and in
the Scenario 3 we'll have, at the best, slow raising. Not to talk
about the fact that you efforts to find retired academicians are much
more expensive than efforts to find young people; as well as that the
fact is that lower number of young people means lower capacity for
getting old people. Also, it is proved that we don't need to wait for
two decades to see the results. 3-5 years are enough because age
groups are our simplistic way for grouping data; children are becoming
young people every minute, as well as old people are dying every
minute.

So, to give the answer about quantity vs. quality: We need quantity to
have sustainable community development or even just a sustainable
stagnation. We shouldn't be shy of saying that quantity is very
important to us because we are able to build quality. And, yes, it is
possible that quality brings quantity. This thread is about that: we
have to think how to do that. If we don't think (thinking=quality) how
to bring quantity and our quantity is lowering: we are at the dead
end.