The following data was obtained from polling done between January 22nd and February 9th, 2023. A few details about the polling conducted:
6,022 people answered the questions.
This is significantly larger than the vast majority of national polls conducted during Presidential Elections in the USA (most of which have less than 2,000 respondents).
The poll was presented to audiences of several shows and news sites in order to obtain a large, diverse sample of computer nerds.
The questions were wide-ranging, 100% optional, and no personal data was collected.
Let’s start from a very high level:
6,022 computer nerds & enthusiasts were asked the following simple question: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy would you say you are (in general)?”
In polls the demographics of the participants are selected so they are statistically significant.
When you poll visitors to a website there’s no telling what biases might be at work. For example, Arch is a popular distribution so its prevalence in the results could simply be an indicator of that.
Last but not least, correlation does not necessarily mean causation, and that goes especially for an uncontrolled sample. There’s a famous example that says “100% of the people who drink water die after that”.
You can’t compare to the President Elections in the USA. The answers are very serious and with a huge impact, so people will choose wisely. And they are complete randoms. Compared to the question to nerds how happy they are in a rating between 1 and 10 and then connecting the happiness to the operating system they are using. It’s like asking how happy people are and then connecting this to the current president. Who said other factors didn’t play a role?
In polls the demographics of the participants are selected so they are statistically significant.
When you poll visitors to a website there’s no telling what biases might be at work. For example, Arch is a popular distribution so its prevalence in the results could simply be an indicator of that.
Last but not least, correlation does not necessarily mean causation, and that goes especially for an uncontrolled sample. There’s a famous example that says “100% of the people who drink water die after that”.
You can’t compare to the President Elections in the USA. The answers are very serious and with a huge impact, so people will choose wisely. And they are complete randoms. Compared to the question to nerds how happy they are in a rating between 1 and 10 and then connecting the happiness to the operating system they are using. It’s like asking how happy people are and then connecting this to the current president. Who said other factors didn’t play a role?