A DATA expert may finally have settled an argument as old as the telephone itself – that children “never” ring their parents.
The mystery American carried out mind-bogglingly detailed analysis of a year’s telephone exchanges with his parents – and proved he calls them more than they call him.
The Reddit user – known only as “seeyaspacecowboy” – examined every call with his parents between January 20 2018 and February 9 this year.
The project manager, who declined to give his name or even which state he lives in, worked out that he spent a total of 2,037 minutes – just under 34 hours – on the phone with his parents.
Sharing his findings on Reddit last week, he posted: “Alright I know this is a bit of a s*** post but it is real data!
“And really what use are reporting tools if they can’t help us win an argument with our parents?”
He added: “The most important part of this analysis was that I conclusively disproved the “you never call” thesis.
“In fact I call two times [more] as they do individually!
The key graph shows that Seeyaspacecowboy called his parents 190 times over the period to their 100 calls.
The stats even break down calls between the home landline and his parents’ individual mobiles, showing spent an average of 6 minutes and 46 seconds chatting to his dad compared with 4 minutes 35 seconds to his mum.
The most calls were made during the summer months, hitting a peak of four and a half hours in August and dropping below an hour in February.
He even included a scrolling table showing the date and duration of every single call during the period.
Redditor Mrcaid responded: “This hits home. Especially my mother has been complaining for 15 years that I should call more while they never do. She didn’t even call after our son was born and then still complain that I never call them.
“Good to see it’s a worldwide epidemic. Godspeed son. I never came past the “see on my screen, of my phone, this reality.””
LargeFapperoniPizza added: “My grandma complains every so often that the grandkids don’t ever call her. My mom’s amazing response to her? “You have a phone too, why don’t you call them?””
Kosumoth wrote: “For me, it’s an easy argument. “You should call more!” “When is the last time you called me?” can’t remember. I haven’t received an actual phone call from either of my parents for over four years. I’ve always had to call them, so we speak about once every four-five months.”
The redditor today explained why he decided to create these graphs.
He said: “It was just a regular argument with my parents. My dad was giving me the age old guilt trip of “you never call, we didn’t know we had a son, etc.” Now I work with data a lot for work and have a scientific background, so I thought “let’s test this theory!”
“What the data demonstrates is that I do in fact call my parents, actually significantly more than they do! It also showed some other interesting things like that talk with my dad longer on average per call but less overall than my mom.
“This was mostly for a laugh and my parents got a real kick out of it when I showed them the post.
“I don’t think that this data proves anything in the sense that data will never make them [parents] feel I call enough, but from now on we can at least ground the discussion with some objective numbers.”
