Slice of Life: A Slice of Data of the Slices of Life

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(This is part of the Slice of Life Challenge with Two Writing Teachers. We write about small moments each and every day for March. You come, too. Write with us.)

And so, it ends.

Today is the last day of daily Slice of Life writing as part of the March Challenge (but anyone can continue to write about the small moments on a regular Tuesday basis via Two Writing Teachers throughout the year).  Each year, on this final day, I often reflect on the power of writing communities, and the connections made throughout the challenge. I notice the way that writing about moments in our lives opens up larger observations of the world in general. I pay attention to how writing remains the heart and soul of reflection.

All that still remains true, and I’ll add that the growth of the Slice of Life community is breathtaking to watch unfold, as each year, dozens more teachers spend their days writing, reflecting, sharing, connecting, and it is a joy to see happening.

Yesterday, though, I thought I might take a closer look at some of the writing and sharing that was going on during typical days of Slice of Life, gathering together some data.

First of all, a disclaimer: this is so not-scientific. But I will explain how I went about it so you can take my numbers for what they are — a slice of observation only.

  • For the average number of posts per day, I randomly chose five different days throughout the month and counted the Slicers who posted, and then averaged it out.
  • For the gender gap, I chose three different days and did the best I could to determine gender, and then tallied and averaged those numbers out.
  • For the number of comments, I took one single day and went to 10 different blogs, and tallied and averaged the number of comments at each blog.
  • And for the topics, I created a chart and used one single day to put topics in different categories, mostly based on titles of the posts, which is far from perfect.

And now, the Slice of Data, which I put into Haiku Deck to share out (and can’t figure out who some of the bottom section of letters are cut off … sorry).


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

For me, the most striking slide is the Gender Gap slide, which is something we have noticed in the past with Slice of Life but this year, it became very evident as the numbers increased, the number of male writers did not trend with the women writers. This is not a bad thing, per se, just an observation as one of the few male writers.

Peace (in the data),
Kevin

12 Comments
  1. I agree – the gender gap slide was a bit startling. Thanks so much for sharing the data. It shows what an impressive community this is!

  2. It’s great you took the time to do this, Kevin. Thanks, & best wishes to you! Wish the gender gap data would change!

  3. Thank you for creating this. Even if not scientific, it has truth in it, and is interesting to ponder about. I was surprised that the school related topics had a smaller number than others.

  4. Great analysis. Like Terje, I’m surprised that teaching didn’t have a larger percentage. I’m going to look at mine and see how that compares. Thanks for this.

  5. This was very interesting. I think the data about what people wrote about was the most interesting because I don’t read every slice but try to read some familiar and new.

  6. This is very cool Kevin! I love that you took the time to put this together. I think it’s interesting that even though the numbers keep increasing, the number of men who slice doesn’t seem to change very much. I wonder why?

  7. Kevin – What a great way to summarize the month. I loved seeing each slide. I also need to try out Haiku Deck.

  8. Such a cool idea! I loved looking at our community from a bird’s-eye view. Fascinating! (And Haiku Deck is just gorgeous — you’ve reminded me to move it up on my list of tech-tools-I-want-to-play-with-soon!)

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