Take a look in the mirror

Let me tell you a little bit about yourselves. Also, 7 other things worth knowing today.

Quick note: I’m not sure everyone realizes this, but each edition of the newsletter is currently posted simultaneously at understandably.com. So, if you ever haven’t received an edition, and you’re wondering if it went out, you should be able to find it at understandably.com. Typically, the newest editions are displayed first.

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Thank you to all 1,925 of you (so far!) who:

• clicked through one of the links to the Reader Happiness Survey over the past week, and then

• scrolled down through more than 20 questions, and then

• answered them and offered some really pointed and interesting commentary in many cases, and then

• remembered to hit the Submit button at the end.

As promised, I’m going to begin sharing some basic data from the survey today. I won’t try to do everything in one newsletter; frankly I’m only a man and even pulling out this much was a bit of work.

So, you’ll likely see other pieces of the data creep into my writing over the next little while.

There are a few things I should have asked differently, or that maybe I knew I would prompt data that needed some manipulation to tabulate, but I did it anyway.

For example, I asked, open-ended, “Where do you live?”

This means I still have to do some spreadsheet magic to be able to recognize for statistical purposes (for example) that, “Austin, TX;” “Austin;” “78705;” and “ATX baby!” all mean, “Austin, Texas.”

That’s fine; I couldn’t do it in time for today, but, we have some good data to start a few conversations now, and more for the future. Let’s give it a go…

I hope you’re happy!

Let’s start with the question that started it all: How happy are you, on a scale of 1 to 10?

Overall, we averaged a 7.7 out of 10. You can see the distribution in this chart. (This is a chart-heavy offering today, so if you can’t see any of this, either (a) make sure you’ve enabled images or else, (b) check out the story on the website at Understandably.com.)

Moving onto the next chart (how’s that for a scintillating phrase in a newsletter?), i tried to correlate happiness and age. The happiest group of people were survey respondents who said they were in their 20s or younger, who reported an average 7.95 “happiness” quotient.

For those in their 30s, the number dropped to a bit under 7.25. It’s not a freefall, but it struck me as significant.

The good news is that after that drop, reported happiness increased steadily through life, to the point that our readers in their 70s and 80s were as happy as the 20-year-olds again.

(Keep in mind when you’re looking at the variance that all the data on the chart above lives between 7 and 8 on the scale.)

Again, it strikes me as interesting; a difference that seems statistically significant but not overwhelmingly so. I’d be interested to hear your explanations.

Female, 54

By the way, the average age of an Understandably reader is 54 according to this survey. Let’s embrace it: We’re a late GenX through Boomer+ newsletter and we’re proud of it. I’m right smack in the mix, born in 1970.

We’re also about 55% female and 45% male, with slightly under 1 percent replying to the question, “Sex?” with either “prefer not to say” or “non-binary.” Of course, a few life-of-the-party types answered with things like, “Yes, please!”

There was only a small difference between reported happiness for men and women. For men, the average was 7.75; for women, it was 7.65.

Marriage and happiness?

These stats were interesting. I guess I wasn’t surprised to see that a big majority of Understandably readers are married: well over 70 percent.

But, it was interesting to see how marital status correlated with happiness.

In short, married people reported highest levels of happiness overall. The second position was people who had been widowed. In third place, those who had been divorced. Again, these were matters of degree; everyone reported somewhere in the 7s.

I didn’t try to correlate “other” marital status to “happiness” because the explanations for “other” were all over the map. Again, there are 100+ follow-up questions I could ask based on this chart. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts and comments.

Religion and spirituality

This was one of the most interesting data points to me. I asked how important religion and spirituality are to you on a scale of 1 to 10.

The most popular answer? 10. The second-most popular answer? 1.

In general, although with some exceptions in the data, people who reported that religion and spirituality were important to them were more likely to report greater happiness.

I can’t imagine anyone would have any comments about that one, right?

I’ll tell you what, there is a lot more data to slice and dice and discuss, but let’s end it here for now. I’d be quite curious to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Is any of this intriguing? Is it surprising? Are you interested to learn (assuming the survey is representative) a bit more about your fellow readers? Also, what else would you like to know?

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7 other things worth knowing today

• Apple says it will no longer repair iPhones in the Apple Store if they’ve been reported as missing. I’m actually surprised they didn’t figure this out in about 2008, and also that people who steal iPhones are crazy enough to take them to the Apple Store for repair. (MacRumors)

• President Biden on Thursday ordered the release of 1 million barrels of oil per day from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve for six months, in an effort to control spiking energy prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. (AP)

• Starting on April 11, Americans can request that their sex be recorded on their passports with an X, rather than an M or F. (HuffPost)

• NASA says it plans to have boots on Mars in 2040. We’ll be heading back to the moon much sooner, but you probably already knew that. (PC Gamer)

• Harvard announced yesterday that it admitted a record low 3.2% of the 61,220 people who applied to be part of the incoming freshman class. Yale and Brown were at 4.5% and 5%, while Columbia and Dartmouth tied last year’s rates of 3.7% and 6.2%. Penn, Princeton and Cornell said they’ll no longer report their admissions rates. (WSJ)

• Morale at the U.S. Customs and Immigration agency is so low, according to reports, that the agency has forcibly installed a suicide prevention app on its employees mobile phones. (Washington Times)

• Meet the retirees living on cruise ships. Purchased suites run between $1 million and $8 million; 12 year leases start at $400,000. (CN Traveler)

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