1000 Days, 3281 Happy Memories
November 7th, 2007 at 21:42
If you’re a long time reader – and I mean long time – you might recall that in a bid to give myself an obsessive compulsive disorder, I’ve been tracking the amount of Coke (or more accurately, cola products and derivatives) I’ve been drinking. Not because I’m weird, you understand, but because I liked the idea of generating graphs to show something unnecessary – and the trouble is, once you start logging something, you don’t want to stop as you’ll be breaking the habit. Like chain smoking.
The reason this all began, some two and a half years ago now, was because I went to the dentist and he said I was fucking my teeth up (that’s an Orthodontic term) with the amount of Coke I’ve been consuming. I started the logs on the basis that I’d cut down and then take the graphs to him and say “look how excellent I’ve been”. If you look at the graphs, you’ll understand why I haven’t been back since.
I see it as a great scientific pursuit. After all, all of the great scientists have at one time or another experimented on themselves – I’m hoping that my tracking of my coke intake will allow me to better Marie Curie, who experimented on herself by giving herself radiation poisoning and promptly dying.
So yeah, I’ll just repeat what I’ve been doing, as I guess this revelation could come as something of a shock to the casual observer: I’ve been writing down every day how much Coke I’ve been drinking. And Monday was, somewhat incredibly, day one thousand.
But what does this mean?
What conclusions can I draw from the statistics I’ve generated? Er, not a lot really. In fact, I cannot think of a more pointless and unnecessary thing to log. But lets have a look at the numbers anyway.
In the last 1000 days, I have consumed 3281 Cokes. That averages 3.281 a day. If you break it down by brand of Coke consumed, which I’ve only been logging for a mere 674 days (since January 1st 2006 – it was a New Year’s Resolution) – 54% have been pure-bred Coca-Cola, 7% Diet Coke (a horrifying thought), 13% Coke Zero (yet I still haven’t turned into one of the wankers from the advert), 20% Pepsi (presumably due to my brand loyalty to Scream pubs) and 10% Pepsi Max. This gives Coke an over all James O’Malley-specific market share of 68% to Pepsi’s 31%. Which compared to eleven months ago is something of a fall for Pepsi.
Turning to the graphs now (click the tabs at the bottom on the link) to look at the trends, the Cokes per day average (cpd) is still consistently rising slightly from the all time low back from when I was still in sixth form – although it appears that I’m pushing my threshold for coping with Coke at 3cpd, as things seem to be levelling out slightly.
The sliding average, meanwhile, which is made up of three day averages shows the slow upwards trend to be continuing. What is interesting (I mean, in the loosest possible sense of the word – but you must be slightly captivated to have read this far in) is the massive spikes in Coke intake which have occurred every September on record. The analyst within me would put this down to it being “really warm at that time of year”.
Cumulatively, the trend is predictably upwards. I haven’t been sick in the last three years – in fact, I think the last time I was sick I was about twelve years old – so there’s not been any negative Coke to note. If I were a betting man, I’d say the cumulative Coke intake will probably increase constantly.
But… but… what does it all mean?
Nothing. It means nothing. Which I guess is a bit unfortunate. I reckon I’d make a damn good economist though if I could harness my power of graphs for good, instead of neutral.
Post to: [ del.icio.us ][ Digg it ][ Furl ][ Netscape ][ Newsvine ][ reddit ][ StumbleUpon ][ Yahoo MyWeb ]Categories: Coke, Silly Stuff, Stunts |