Coffee and statistics

Posted by: Meredith Whittaker, Program Manager

We recently came across Jon Lin, a Canadian out of Alberta who puts Google Docs spreadsheets to work managing and cataloging his commitment to coffee, winning and statistics (great combo, no?).

Says Jon, "I'm currently using Google Documents to manage my Tim Hortons [a Canadian coffee chain] Roll Up The Rim statistics for this year. Roll Up The Rim is a contest where customers purchase coffees and then roll up the cup rim to see whether or not they have won a prize.

"Google Spreadsheets has become my pseudo web-publishing tool. I update my statistics online in an entry sheet, and then those changes flow to a publicly viewable spreadsheet that I've embedded in my page."

Two simple, and totally justifiable reasons drive his interest in the contest: "In addition to being able to fulfill my daily caffeine intake, I got to watch my own purchases and winnings get tracked. Its like watching a statistical experiment progress daily."

Not to be greedy, Jon shares the fruits of this commitment on his blog. Note the tidy spreadsheets charts, the embedded spreadsheet, and the photos of many, many coffee cups :)

The simplicity and effectiveness of Jon's methods really impressed us.

Obviously, Jon's creative use of spreadsheets could be applied to much more than coffee contest tracking. Anyone could use his method to track and neatly display the statistical conclusions of events over time.

So what do you want to track and share?

• Your running time?
  
• The length of your daily train ride?
  
• The monthly stats from your global sales team?

Whatever it is, if you're interested in doing something similar, Jon has been kind enough to provide us with some detailed instructions, linked on this document.