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ROBOT HOBBYIST TRENDS 2009
age, gender, and region

Last year, you may have read my 2008 Robot Hobbyist Trends. I will occasionally refer to that data as if you are already familiar with it.

This year, as the statistics are similar to that of 2008, I instead have decided to point out other interesting robotics related age and gender statistics around the world. Given the massive traffic SoR has, the data I collect should be very representative.

note: If anyone is interested in more detailed data for your own research, such as year by year trends, market size, financial value of the market, browser, operating system, etc., I'd like to point out this is far from an exhaustive study. So a little financial support will get you all the data you need for your own research =P



YouTube Insight
As I mentioned last year, statistics from YouTube *does not* count those who actually build robots - only those interested in watching robotics related videos. My videos are all created by me, a guy, who designs the videos to be 'cool' from my perspective. I target my site to those who have similar robotics interests to me. So as such, those of different age groups or gender might not be as drawn to my site, thereby possibly scewing results.

That said, data collected was from Oct 8, 2007 to Jan 27, 2010.
Total Youtube Views: 1,425,656

Gender
This time I've decided to look at gender per country. The result? American women are far more interested in watching robot videos than women from any other country.



gender trends in US

The percentage of women, per country:
US 22%
South America 16%
Africa 14%
Asia 13%
Europe 13%
Middle East 13%

Age
Last year, I found an interesting trend in age. And although that trend is true for the world average, when you look at each individual continent the results are different.

The US and Europe had this following already known trend, where teenagers and 'old people' were most interested in robotics related videos. The leading theory is that western bread winners and college students don't have the time or money for their hobby, while retired folk and teenagers with a big allowance do. That whole marriage and buying a house/car thing just squashes your dreams, you know?



age trends in US

Unlike the US, South America and the Middle East had a nice bell curve as shown below. Its actually almost the opposite as that seen in the west, so perhaps there something else at play? For those more familiar with the region, I'm open to theories!



age trends in South America

Just to confuse the situation, Asia had to be even more special (see below). The older an asian gets, the more likely they are to watch a robot video. Simply put, old asians like robots, young asians don't. Go figure. I myself live in SE Asia and have traveled the region quite a lot, so I know it fairly well. My theory is that asians send all their money to their parents (very common in Asia), and the parents use the money to make robots. Or they have too much free time so they watch robot videos? Obviously! Again, I'm open to theories, as mine is definitely not solid . . .



age trends in Asia

Of interesting note, by far the most popular video of mine watched in Asia is that of a life-like female robot wearing a Japanese Kimono. Perhaps that particular video scewed the result. Japan and Thailand were the top asian countries in terms of views of my videos. I've been actively pushing my site especially to Thailand, so again, the results are probably a bit scewed.

As for Africa, its all over the place (see below). I'm not even going to bother trying to figure this one out . . . Egyptians were the most likely to watch.



age trends in Africa

If you have any comments or suggestions relating to these statistics, feel free to comment here on the Robot Hobbyist 2008 Statistics forum thread.

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