Facebook Status Stalking

Gab Vass & Britt Gumerman

Today one of the ever growing fads around the world is the use of the internet webpage,

Fabebook. It started off as a website for college students specifically but over the years it has

evolved into the most popular social networking system used by people of all ages. Since it is so

relevant in today’s world, we decided to base our AP Statistic project exploring how many times

people update their Facebook status.

How we planned on stalking…• Select 100 random people

• Our friends in our network, our parent’s network, and friend’s networks

•Collect data based on people’s statuses•Compare Males vs. Females•Compare Young vs. Old

• Young= ages up to 10• Old= 30+

•Compare statuses• Relationship• Song lyrics• What they’re doing• Reflections• Other

Background•Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004•Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes•The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University•It later expanded further to include (potentially) any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over• The website currently has more than 400 million active users worldwide•Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade 'best-of' list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"

What we plan to get out of our stalking…

•Who wastes the most time on facebook updating statuses• Males or Females?

•What age demographic updates the most?• Young or Old?

•What is the most common theme of statuses?• Relationship, Song Lyrics, What they’re doing, Reflection, Other?

Bias and Error•Time frame

•The people who we check

•If people update a status, then delete it

•Human error

•People may lie about age

Total vs. GenderFe

mal

eM

ale

total0 2 4 6 8

Collection 1 Box Plot •Both female and male graphs are right skewed•The center for both is around 1•Females- min: 0 max:8•Males- min:0 max:4

•Females have a greater number of status updates, the most for females is 8 and most for males is 4. But they have the same center which means that 8 might be an outlier.

State 2 independent SRS

2 normal popOr

N1 and N2 > 30

Total vs. Gender

2 Sample T test Check

Calc random int

N1 and N2 > 30

Total vs. Gender•Sample count of Gender = Female: 59•Sample count of Gender = Male: 42•Alternative hypothesis: The population mean of total where Gender = Female is not equal to that where Gender = Male•The test statistic, Student's t, using unpooled variances , is 1.809. There are 98.8309 degrees of freedom.•If it were true that the population mean of total where Gender = Female were equal to that of total where Gender = Male (the null hypothesis), and the sampling process were performed repeatedly, the probability of getting a value for Student's t with an absolute value this great or greater would be 0.073.

2 Sample T-Test

HypothesesHo: m =f

Ha: <m f

2

22

1

12

21

ns

ns

xxt

Total vs. GenderConclusion

Based on our statistics Females updated their statuses more frequently than males did.

•Pvalue:•P(t>1.809|df=98.8309)=.073•We fail to reject our Ho because our Pvaule is greater than α=.05•We have sufficient evidence that the difference between the means of Male and Female facebook status updates is greater than 0.

Total vs. AgeAge 0

51015202530

Old

51015202530

Young

total-2 0 2 4 6 8 10

Collection 1 Histogram •Both graphs are right skewed•The center for old is around 2 and the center for young is around 3•Old: min- 0 max- 4•Young: min-0 max- 8 ½

•Based on these graphs the majority of people young or old post no statuses. But it is clear to see that younger people update more frequently than older people.

Total vs. Age•Sample count of Age = Old: 39•Sample count of Age = Young: 62•Sample mean of total where Age = Old: 0.487179•Alternative hypothesis: The population mean of total where Age = Old is not equal to that where Age = Young•The test statistic, Student's t, using unpooled variances , is -5.846. There are 97.7689 degrees of freedom.•If it were true that the population mean of total where Age = Old were equal to that of total where Age = Young (the null hypothesis), and the sampling process were performed repeatedly, the probability of getting a value for Student's t with an absolute value this great or greater would be < 0.0001.

2 Sample T-Test

HypothesesHo: o = y

Ha: o< y

2

22

1

12

21

ns

ns

xxt

Total vs. Age2 Sample T-Test

State 2 independent SRS

2 normal popOr

N1 and N2 > 30

CheckCalc random int

N1 and N2 > 30

Total vs. AgeConclusion

It is more common for older people to not update their status at all as opposed to younger people. Also younger people have a great range showing that they update more times that older people.

•Pvalue:•P(t>-5.846|97.7689)=.0001•We reject out Ho because our Pvaule is less than α=.05•We have sufficient evidence that the difference between the means of Young and Old peoples facebook status updates is greater than 0.

Relationship Song Lyrics

What you're doing Reflections

Other

35

19

27

66

4

Categories

Chi Squared Test

• Assumptions: • 2 independent variables• All exp counts greater

than 5

• Check:• Random int. in calc• checked

Chi-Square

expexp)( 2

2 obsx1.15)1.154( 2

5.75)5.7535( 2

8.106

42 1047.3)48.106( dfxp

Conclusions

• We fail to refect HO because p-value is less then .05

Application•Young people, especially teenagers update their status more frequently than older people•The most common status update is “What you’re doing”•Females are more likely to update their statuses than males•Just because you have a Facebook does not mean you have to update your status every second

• Some people have never touched their status

Personal Opinion/Conclusions •It was annoying going through a 100 people’s status•No one really cares what you are doing, so all the status updates are not necessary•Teenagers will most likely grow out of the updating phase because older people don’t update as much