Age Ain't Nothing But a Number: A Redditor's Zany Data-Driven Age Guessing Experiment

In a viral Reddit video titled "Age Ain't Nothing But a Number," a Redditor shares a humorous yet fascinating journey of age-guessing gone wild. The protagonist of the video recounts how a casual joke about an 18-year-old hitting on her in the subway led to an unexpected flood of age guesses from the TikTok community.

Initially, she didn't intend to invite comments on her appearance, but curiosity got the better of her. Hundreds of users chimed in, offering their best guesses. With remarks like "Oh yeah, you look 30, not 18, sorry," the responses were varied and plentiful. Intrigued, she decided to use her coding skills to analyze the data, scripting a Python program to scrape and process the comments.

The script efficiently loaded all comments, extracting two-digit numbers to narrow down the guesses. With 599 comments and 396 numbers, she embarked on a data analysis journey. Despite minimal quality control, the results yielded some interesting insights. The minimum legitimate guess was 12, while the maximum hit 81. The average age calculated was just shy of 26.

To visualize the data, a histogram was created, revealing that most guesses clustered in the 20s to 30s range, with notable spikes at round numbers like 20, 30, and 40. A peculiar spike at 18 was attributed to references to the original joke about the 18-year-old admirer.

The video sparked a variety of reactions from viewers. One user suggested, "She should probably have deployed the geometric mean to tame the outliers." Another lamented, "Her not saying how old she actually is ruins this video for me. I'm too lazy too to play detective."

Some comments found humor in her approach, with one user stating, "Not gonna lie, she is attractive and stuff but her coding this up and looking at the data distribution is sexy AF!" Another user appreciated the use of Python, saying, "Using Python to do the hard work for you instead of wasting time--always appreciate these kinds of things."

The Redditor's unique blend of humor, coding prowess, and data analysis captivated viewers, making the video a delightful watch. It serves as a testament to the unexpected ways social media interactions can unfold, proving that age is indeed just a number, especially when explored through the lens of data science.