This year for my birthday, I asked people on facebook to fill in a short survey instead of posting “Happy Birthday” on my wall. Some people obliged and here are the results.

Warning: This post contains dangerous levels of navel gazing, dubious statistics and confirmation bias.

My Strengths

Popular answers (3 or more people):

More obscure answers:

  • Taking snapchat videos while spinning around on the ferry
  • Having a good supply of snacks, especially white mice

My Weakness

Some weaknesses appeared to be the flip-side of my strengths:

  • Avoid mentioning awards
  • Lack variety in selfies - too many on the boat.
  • Staying sober and saving money
  • “Not being on holiday. Seriously, how on earth do you manage to be away so often??”

I’m glad so many people took the time to critique the survey itself:

  • Proof read this question
  • “Published a survey with free text fields. no-one ever makes a free text field then actually looks at the responses.”

Some of the criticisms were ones I understood:

  • “Cheer, because you quit”

Others, I didn’t even realise I was meant to be aiming for:

  • Not saving the world in a batman suit
  • Not get onto the Great British Bake Off
  • Achieving immortality

Net Promoter Score

I thought it might be funny to take the piss out of a staple of questionnaires everywhere.

Net Promoter Score chart

Turns out it wasn’t that funny. But what if I go one step further and work out my “Net Promoter Score” from that data? I plugged it into a free tool online and got an answer:

65

Is 65 a funny number? I hope it is, because I have no idea what an NPS of 65 is meant to tell me otherwise…

30 things to do before I turn 30

None of these were my idea. Some I’ve already done. Others I plan on never doing.

  1. Skydive
  2. Vegas
  3. Bungee jump
  4. Ride a zebra
  5. Skydive off the Eiffel Tower
  6. Create a time machine
  7. Meet nice people
  8. Play the board game the Hare and the Tortoise
  9. See new things
  10. Mull over old things
  11. Keep breathing
  12. Live for another year
  13. Travel more
  14. Visit more countries
  15. Say “Yeah!”
  16. Enjoy life
  17. Get tinder
  18. Get with a girl
  19. Eat everything
  20. Cure everything
  21. Win everything
  22. Install some curtain rails
  23. Learn the programming language Rust
  24. Pass my driving test
  25. Smash an egg over my head every day for a year
  26. Get an Irish passport for the purposes of EU citizenship
  27. Adopt a cat
  28. Review feedback forms
  29. Make a list of 30 things to do before turning 30
  30. Cackle

Relationships

Defining relationships is hard. So I thought I’d get other people to tell me what they thought.

Relationship definitions chart

Interestingly, everyone who said they were a potential love interest also said they were my nemesis. In fact, I seem to have quite a lot of those, whatever you call the plural: Nemeses, Nemesises, Nemesii?

The Observer Effect

If studying physics taught me anything, it was that measuring stuff often changes the thing you’re trying to measure. So I tried to measure the impact of my measurements.

Observant readers may point out that attempting to measure the impact of a measurement will likely affect the impact of that very measurement. I could attempt to measure the impact of measuring the impact of the original measurement. But that would just be silly.

Observer effect visualization

Thanks to everyone who filled in the questionnaire. I enjoyed the responses (even including the ones I didn’t post here). And if anyone tries something similar for their birthday, do let me know how it goes!