The Sociology of Breakfast

I am a stranded hiker on a mountain of term-end work, so obviously I spent twenty minutes composing a graph that documents my eating habits.

The website of _____ College/University has a handy feature that tells you the precise minute you swiped your ID to get into the dining hall (it also tells you when you did laundry, so keep on the lookout for a laundry-graph-sequel-blog post!). I thus decided to investigate potential patterns in the swipe-in times of all 48 weekday breakfasts I have enjoyed and/or eaten so far this term.

There are grid lines in the background, which makes it official.

Check out that linear trend all up in my breakfast business. Sadly, though, my results are actually not as scintillating as they might first appear. When the two outliers of post-morning-class breakfast are excluded, my average swipe-in times for the first and second halves of the term differ only by a minute, 7:59 AM vs. 8:00 AM.

The power of science teaches us that I arrive at the dining hall at pretty much the same time each morning.