I've been keeping tabs on how much I sleep over the last few months. Normally, there's no need to do this because most people sleep regularly, following the clock in a perfect solar cycle. However, over the college years, my cycle got messed up, so I usually end up sleeping "on-demand", meaning that I get sleep when I desire sleep and would rather be doing something else if I don't feel tired. After all, the light/dark cycle no longer has an effect on me.
| Descriptive Stats: | |
| Average: | 8.2 hours |
| StDev: | 2.3 hours |
| Max: | 12 hours |
| Min: | 3 hours |
| Range: | 9 hours |
Inference: The estimate of any night of sleep:
The probability of sleep between 5.9 hours and 10.5 hours is 64%
The probability of sleep between 3.6 hours and 12.8 hours at 95%
The trend line on this graph shows the change in approximate sleep length over time. The slope of the equation says that my sleep time per day decreases about 0.019 hours every day over the 50 day time period.
You can see the high variance evinced in the trend of spikes and dips. The main reason for the large variance is because a night of low sleep leads to more sleep the next night to make up for the loss. The reason for this is not insomnia, but rather, the increased fatigue makes me demand more sleep. Similarly, a long period of sleep leads to less sleep the next day because I feel excessively rested and demand less sleep. This means that each night of sleep partially affects the next, and the next, and the next. It is a long cause and effect chain over 50 days long.
Here is the same graph including sleep records from the period at the tail-end of Fall Quarter. You can see that it flattens out the trend because I hoard more sleep during this time.
For a normal person, you expect the trend line to be flat at m=0, unless there is some life style shift going on. My graph shows a slight decrease, probably due to the effect of the quarter classes, but it could just be because of the high variance.
People are also supposed to sleep more as the calendar date progresses into winter and the days get shorter. The fact that my trend doesn't show this means that I do not follow the light/dark cycle. Possible reasons: My retinal ganglion cells are desensitized, or my circadian free-run cycle is more than 24 hours.
Conclusion: Avoid taking morning classes. They'll fuck you up.
4 comments:
This is ll good, but you are ignoring the big confounding factor: urine. That's right, sleep is proportional to urine production so in order for this study to be conclusive you need to start storing your daily urine output in bottles and measure it for volume, color, specific gravity. Do this now.
You sleep more than any person I've ever met. You also sleep through class more than anyone I know.
12 hours? Been bitten by any tse tse flies lately?
christ sake
lol if u drink hella water before u sleep then u will wake up --u better hope u will
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