Analyze Halloween
Published:
Earlier this year we moved from our downtown apartment to start renting a nice little house in a nearby city suburb. There are a lot of things I miss about being right in the thick of it, but we still have 5 breweries within walking distance and what more do you really need?
I have been getting so excited for Halloween! This would be our first time getting trick-or-treat-ers and I was pumped to see all the little cuties in their fun costumes.
By this point, we have established that I am a data nerd. In addition to getting candy, decorations, and costumes ready, I also prepared a spreadsheet to track costumes. I mean, you can analyze anything, why wouldn’t you look at trends in your trick-or-treat-ers?!
Data to Collect
There were 4 main data points I was ready to record for each candy-requester:
- Costume
- Age bucket
- Very little: held/escorted by parents to the door
- Little: made it to the door alone, but probably not past kindergarten
- Medium: 1st to 6th grade, ish
- Tweens & Teens
- Group
- Alone - the trick-or-treat-er is completely by themselves
- Family - parents and siblings
- Families - groups of kids and parents
- Group - multiple kids but no parents
- Cuteness Ranking - the opinion of my darling, notetaking husband
If we do this in future years we might also record amount and types of candy taken and the time.
Data Gathered
Spreadsheets and candy basket prepared, we were ready for the kiddos! Without further ado, here’s the data we collected!
| Order ID | Costume | “Age” | Group | Cuteness Ranking |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Sumo Wrestler | Teen | Alone | They didn’t come to our house so NOT CUTE |
| 1 | Loads of Money | Tween | Group | wut? |
| 1 | 1940s Paper Boy | Tween | Group | Weird fake accent which was…endearing? |
| 2 | Bee | Very Little | Family | ADORABLE |
| 3 | Batman | Little | Families | No mask…disappointing |
| 3 | Cat | Little | Families | Definitely actually a bear costume so super cute |
| 3 | Butterfly | Little | Families | Her wings were sideways so super cute |
Analysis & Conclusions
Lol we only got 6 trick-or-treat-ers… does anyone want several bags of candy???
Well, this happens regularly with data, we don’t actually have any. Here are some (almost guaranteed false) conclusions we can draw:
- All little girls dressed up as animals this year, and 2/3s of them were specifically insects
- All the tweens in my neighborhood are male, and pretty good at looking in their closets and making up costumes to get some free candy
- We should have let each kid take 10 handfuls of candy (this one isn’t false)
OH WELL. At least I got to spend Halloween at home - most of this month has been spread across the US.
Happy Halloween!