Story behind data

I was browsing through this data here : http://www.crisistextline.org/trends

Crisis Trends is a platform of data to understand the crises American teens face so that people can work together to prevent future crises from happening.

Anyways, as I was browsing the their graphs which show "Crises by Time of the day" , by day of the week, etc.. I found I could predict which day a particular crises may peak.. For example Bullying crises peaked on Fridays, Eating disorder crises peaked on Sunday & Monday, etc..

For each of the data I could come up with some story to explain it.

Eating disorders : Weekends are free time, else teens are mostly busy with college/school. During weekends if you are depressed or you go out to enjoy, you will indulge in eating a lot. This triggers guilt the next few days in most teens who are concerned about it and therefore the messages about "Eating Disorder" issue peaked during Sunday & Monday (Effect of Sat & Sun eating)

Bullying: Teens too, like us, feel happy when the weekend is around. They tend to have a lot of energy and do naughty things on Friday. Therefore, chances that one of the student becomes a victim of bullying are high on a Friday and hence the messages peaked on Friday. And If my story is anywhere near truth, these messages should have peaked in the evening/night of Friday, let me check now. Yup, they peaked from 3PM - 8PM.



For Anxiety: Teens too, like us, dread weekdays sometimes. For us it maybe fear of boss, undone work,etc.. For teens it could be fear of that bully, fear of teachers, friend issues, etc..
So basically people feel anxious before Monday. And so I predicted Sunday. Right on it was. Sunday peaked in Anxiety crises. I haven't checked peaked time, but i'm sure it'll be Sunday night time. Checking now.. 7, 8 , 9 PM Peak but there are peaks around 11 AM and 2PM too. These might be weekday peaks.

Stress: It peaked on Tuesday. Understandable isn't it ? We go to office on Monday, work builds up. Tuesday is worse, we are stressed out. Wednesday we get used to it. Thursday and Friday we get though with thoughts of the Weekend.

Sexual abuse: Peaked on Tuesday, same day as Stress crises peak. My story was "stressed people are more likely to indulge in sexual abuse. Their frustration and stress affects their behaviour and hence the peak on Tuesday.

Family Issues: Peaked on Sunday. Obviously. In today's busy world we spend time with family on weekends only.

Big data is the effect, some digging reveals the cause - The story behind it.
There is always a lag in the Data, it comes after the story has played out.

Meaningless Net Neutrality Debate

Net Neutrality - treating all data as equal is necessary when we have paid for Internet data pack. Telecos should not, cannot and now with this debate - "will not" charge separately like- "Whatsapp pack" , "Youtube pack" etc.. I totally support Net Neutrality in this scenario.

But in having this debate we are harming something else.
Don't get carried away by all the online outrage that exists, beware of it, cause we are all easily affected by it. We just love "Online outrage" , online public shaming, etc.. google it and find out.
Reason out this time, think calmly.

What is it we are harming or not thinking about ?
Ideas like Internet.org and Airtel Zero give part of internet access for free. So people who never had the experience of internet can get a taste of it now.


Internet.org and Airtel Zero give people free access to some of the services on the internet even though they haven't paid for any data pack.
Yes it is against Net neutrality but it is Free!
Hellooo.. do you not notice the term free ? Are you used to only the big colourful fonts of  "FREE!!" ?

If you are get something for free how can you argue for its neutrality ?

My point - Plain , simple and clear is ...
"If someone is giving something for free you cannot accuse them of any crime." (Unless its drugs/weapons)

1) Everyone who gives away freebies has an intention behind the act. Free samples in supermarket are given so that you buy their product. Free Ola cab rides are given so that you enjoy the ola experience and use it for all future cab needs. So why does it matter if Flipkart signs up on Airtel Zero to provide free access without buying an internet pack ?

2) Its your choice to accept/use those freebies or not, its not a compulsion.

How can anyone have a problem with something that is given for free. Argue for Net-neutrality when you have paid for internet, not when you are enjoying free services.

There are few people who paint a picture of what happens if ideas like Internet.org and Airtel Zero are allowed; my counter arguments are :

- If Flipkart charges more because its spending to be on Airtel Zero, people are clever enough to move to cheaper options where they get good deals.
- Its only for e-commerce that these plans make sense. Why would anyone else pay for your data usage if they don't get big returns from you.
- The only way to make people to survive on Airtel Zero plan "only" ( i.e without Data pack) would be to provide services like Fb, Youtube, twitter, google & Whatsapp for free. Which burns big holes in their pockets and they can never do it.

These plans will only encourage non-internet users to buy data packs to access full internet. Which is good. More and more people will be on Internet. Nothing much to it. But if you have paid for Internet services then these ISPs have no right to control your data traffic - Fight only for this.

Lets not indulge in outrages and shaming like this one - to Sachin Bansal and Airtel here : http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/forget-the-big-billion-fiasco-flipkarts-net-neutrality-stand-is-a-whole-new-level-of-social-media-fail-262987.html