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Post by motsamicaux on Sept 12, 2020 17:01:31 GMT
I like to write letters so much that I become unhappy if I don't have at least one letter to write a day. And I often don't have one letter to write a day. So, I did some math....
With the number of pen pals I now have (29), I receive, on average, 0.56 letters per day. To get the average number of letters received daily up to one, I would need to have about 52 pen pals.
I also figured out that each of my pen pals writes to me approximately 0.02 letters per day. And so I'm wondering if most pen pals write at that rate.
If anybody cares to do the math for their own group of pen pals, I'd be interested in hearing what your number of received letters per day per pen pal is (that's the 0.02 value above). To find it, take the average number of letters you receive per day (you may want to average it over several months) and divide it by your number of pen pals.
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Post by davidv on Sept 13, 2020 4:19:45 GMT
I really appreciate the way you’ve thought of this. I enjoy statistics. I’ve only recently started writing down when letters are received and sent, so it’ll take me a few months to accumulate the needed data to work out this.
I suppose for it to really be a good estimate, I should make sure my number of pen pals stays constant over the measurement period. Anyways, I’ll look forward to trying to make an estimate in a little while. At the moment mail seems to come in waves, with dry spells followed by bursts of letters.
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Post by davidv on Sept 13, 2020 4:25:50 GMT
Thinking a bit further about this, I could probably still come up with an estimate by going through old letters and checking the dates in the letters. It might make more sense to get averages for my individual pen pals over time, since my number of pen pals has changed a lot. Then I could add the individual rates together to get a total rate...
There would need to be a few assumptions...
I’ll report back. This is just the sort of diversion I’ve needed...
😀
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Post by InsomniaQueen on Sept 13, 2020 5:22:17 GMT
I just started writing letters, so I am doing well to get one letter per week. I got two today and was on cloud nine (one from you, motsamicaux !) But I do write at least one letter per day.
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Post by vertolive on Sept 13, 2020 12:12:27 GMT
In our house, outgoing letter statistics will be skewed by such factors as: 14 yr old boys doing online Jr High school, job hunting, hurricanes, and wily Scottie puppies. Which of course will affect the incoming statistics. Not to mention the vagaries of the COVID Era postal system.
I can ballpark one out per month per pen pal, FWIW.
That said, I’ll be watching this thread because such statistics do fascinate me and the more accurate numbers from other members will be worth a read.
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Post by eefa on Sept 13, 2020 13:59:53 GMT
I probably write 2 letters a week on average (usually on at the weekends) though I'm on to my 3rd for this week. I used to get a couple of letters a week but lately I'm only getting 1 every few weeks... don't know if it's COVID related or just those correspondences coming to the natural end of their life. Stats I do not have; much as I loved Maths when I was at school (a very long time ago) I hated statistics... could never get my had around them!
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Post by jamberrychoux on Sept 13, 2020 16:28:55 GMT
I probably write 2 letters a week on average (usually on at the weekends) though I'm on to my 3rd for this week. I used to get a couple of letters a week but lately I'm only getting 1 every few weeks... don't know if it's COVID related or just those correspondences coming to the natural end of their life. Stats I do not have; much as I loved Maths when I was at school (a very long time ago) I hated statistics... could never get my had around them! I was required to take a statistics class for my major in college. It was a horrible class for me. Some of the basic concepts I understood easily enough, but the majority of it was not understood and was pure torture for me! I called the class "Sadistic Statistics". About the word "Maths", I think it is very interesting to see a difference between the US and the UK regarding word usage. In the UK, it's Maths (plural), but in the US, it's Math (singular). I noticed this years ago, and have always wondered about the evolution of this.
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Post by vertolive on Sept 13, 2020 16:36:47 GMT
I probably write 2 letters a week on average (usually on at the weekends) though I'm on to my 3rd for this week. I used to get a couple of letters a week but lately I'm only getting 1 every few weeks... don't know if it's COVID related or just those correspondences coming to the natural end of their life. Stats I do not have; much as I loved Maths when I was at school (a very long time ago) I hated statistics... could never get my had around them! I was required to take a statistics class for my major in college. It was a horrible class for me. Some of the basic concepts I understood easily enough, but the majority of it was not understood and was pure torture for me! I called the class "Sadistic Statistics". About the word "Maths", I think it is very interesting to see a difference between the US and the UK regarding word usage. In the UK, it's Maths (plural), but in the US, it's Math (singular). I noticed this years ago, and have always wondered about the evolution of this. In addition, I notice how many will substitute the word math/s for arithmetic which is most probably what they are trying to express.
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Post by jamberrychoux on Sept 13, 2020 16:44:06 GMT
Yes, it is interesting to wonder how "arithmetic" got boiled down to "math/s". I don't think either the school system or people use the word arithmetic anymore. Here (in the US), I only see "math" being used.
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Post by Gary S on Sept 13, 2020 17:21:58 GMT
I've got close to the magical 50 letter pals you surmise you'd need to write a letter a day and I still often run out of letters to reply to sending out ~5 letters/postcards a week (when I don't get the blahs and fail to write at all for weeks or months). Different pen pals have different writing rhythms so even when you write back promptly it may be weeks or months before you receive a reply. I'm thinking unless you found some pretty prolific pen pals you might need 75-80 pen pals to develop an inexhaustible stack of letters to chip away at through thick and thin times. Then there will be the dreaded attrition that naturally takes place over time to deal with as some pen pals get tired of the whole letter writing hobby and simply stop writing all together. I'd recommend using this coming February to see just how many new pen pals you can pick up who'll be consistent through the coming year. The more you have the less frequent you'll be writing to each individual so the more likely you'll be to have some fresh news to share after the initial exchange of personal information is done. Just my two cents worth though.
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Post by eefa on Sept 13, 2020 17:47:45 GMT
Yes, it is interesting to wonder how "arithmetic" got boiled down to "math/s". I don't think either the school system or people use the word arithmetic anymore. Here (in the US), I only see "math" being used. I always think of maths as being an abbreviation of mathematics and not arithmetic. Isn't arithmetic just adding/subtracting/multiplication etc whereas to my mind mathematics covers more but actually it probably doesn't. I mean algebra is algebra, calculus is calculus...
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Post by eefa on Sept 13, 2020 17:49:40 GMT
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Post by jamberrychoux on Sept 13, 2020 18:04:27 GMT
Yep, I forgot about the word "mathematics". Good question about the difference between arithemetic and mathematics. I actually don't know myself and will have to look it up later on.
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Post by vertolive on Sept 13, 2020 19:12:20 GMT
I only minored in Math, but one professor stated that “Real Numbers” are merely placeholders in Math while they are central to Arithmetic which is the study of their manipulation, ie add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
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Post by motsamicaux on Sept 13, 2020 22:30:03 GMT
...you might need 75-80 pen pals to develop an inexhaustible stack of letters to chip away at through thick and thin times.... That could be. My sample set (29 pen pals) may be too small to allow reliable estimates.
I also could write really long letters over the course of a few days....
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