Today's statistical analysis:

43% OF ALL STATISTICS MADE UP ON THE SPOT! As is posited here, in this blog. Well, 18% of what they had to say on a specific topic concerning their target audience, and they fully admit it. Well, as we say in the statis-teering business, its absence proves the negative.

PAY OFFERED VERSUS PAY REQUESTED: A focus group convened recently, sponsored by a local market research concern. The participants were given one hundred dollars and all the beer they could drink. An informal poll conducted after the official polling suggested widespread satisfaction.
The next day, an ad was posted on Craigslist by this office. It read "PAY ME ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS AND GET ME DRUNK". That was all; nothing was promised by this office to the potential benefactor (though that certainly didn't prevent several of the respondents from assuming something else), short of an evening of conversation.

Somewhere in the ninety percentile responded positively to this happening in their lives (being given 100 USD and unlimited alcohol), while only a paltry 13% responded positively to this idea (giving someone else 100 USD and ulimited alcohol) being presented as a suggestion in a public marketplace.
Specifically: if people are enticed toward (say) a focus group with this tactic, the result will be overwhelmingly good for the party attempting to raise interest. Inversely, just putting up an ad on Craigslist in which you request that someone do this for you seems to have almost no interest generation, except among some groups who need more study. This was surprising.

'MILLENNIALS' MOST DIVERSE GENERATION! There has been an ongoing controversy surrounding this statement since it was made on Sunday, March 8, 2009. (Specifically; "As the most diverse generation to hit adulthood in this nation, we are used to recognizing and celebrating our differences.")
How to prove or disprove such an extravagant claim was discussed at length. Criteria needed to be determined.

A 'millennial' (also known as Generation Y, generally said with a slight whine, as in 'whyyy?'), at least has a concrete definition: one born between 1975-1990. It does not mean 'anyone born during a thousand-year period', i.e. everyone.
It seems that all of them are from the United States, though literally this definition would extend to include someone in their twenties-to-early-thirties who is from (say) Guinea-Bissau. Despite this, the thoughts of this age group living in the second and third worlds are somewhat under-represented, perhaps due to factors like warfare and starvation.

Since diversity itself is a highly subjective criterium, it pays to stick to sheer numbers, wherever possible. By the yardsticks laid out by the scientist/author quoted above, 'millennials' (again, as delineated from denizens of other millennia, or even those also living in this millennium, though not in said age group; it is important to be scientifically accurate):

• are of several minds concerning issues of faith
• are likely to work a low-paying job in the hope of attaining a better-paying job
• drink either in moderation or excess (op cit.?)
  
• were raised on 'Sesame Street', by Vietnam vet (or "Baby Boomer") parents (or "our shared love of Sesame St and other national media efforts aimed at us")
• are somehow more adaptable to the change that is an inevitable constant
  
• consistently refer to themselves as 'us', as contrasted with an easily identified 'them'
• have remarkable ideas concerning biological determinism

[Further yardsticks as elucidated by the scientist/author:
"our selfishness and unfounded feelings of entitlement
our liberal-leaning social politics and our social activism
our understanding, use, and abuse of digital technology"
(This office feels that this post will go on long enough as it is, without having to delve into the sticky issues suggested by that first one.)]

While the numbers for any one of these items may seem hard to come by, in fact they run exactly like this:
Confusion about religion & faith-based issues- Millennials: 100%; rest-of-world: 100%= no diversity points.

Numbers are not available for the amount of people who started out in low-paying jobs, and attempts to do any serious demographic survey were met with negative responses, to be polite. However, by any anecdotal yardstick, this office feels it's fair and accurate to say- Millennials: 100%; rest-of-world: 100%=no diversity points.

Drinking alcohol, in societies that permit the drinking of alcohol, is a personal choice ranging from not drinking alcohol to drinking excessive amounts of alcohol. Some choose to drink moderate amounts of alcohol. Since no millennials were cited in the study who abstain entirely, we may conclude that all millennials drink to the same degree. This makes them quite different indeed from the rest of the world, which boasts a significant number of people and even a representative amount of societies who do not drink at all. Diversity points: 50.

Only some can claim to have been raised since 1969, when 'Sesame Street' first began broadcasting, or since 1959, when the first advisory troops (from the United States) went to Vietnam, later to raise children.
So the numbers would seem finite, until one considers that the subcategory 'Vietnam vet' includes several generations of Frenchmen, Japanese and countless more Chinese. In this, the millennials are dwarfed by the sheer scale of world history, and the extreme population curves it produces. Diversity points: -50.

It is even less easy to determine the numbers (soberly measured, anyway) of people who use the bifurcation 'us & them' in their daily life as contrasted with the use of this phrase among those who, somewhat unfairly, claim an entire millennium. It would seem again that history has produced large numbers of people who would use this somewhat limited view (just imagine how many people have sung along to the Pink Floyd song of the same name!), doubtlessly dwarfing the finite number of people born between 1975 and 1990. Diversity points: -100.

But the ideas concerning biological determinism contained in the above-cited essay (and the fanciful language employed in making the argument) cancel out all other considerations.
If any arbitrarily determined 'generation' can claim to have even one person espousing views so openly bizarre and at odds with the whole of human society (i.e. women cannot be priests in the Catholic church because they can give birth to children, and men can become priests because babies die), it deserves One hundred diversity points.

Which leaves them, all totalled, with fifty points left over. This makes them the winner, as no other generation seems to have ever claimed to be the most diverse.
Although, the generation two above them has been said to be "The Greatest", which would be interesting to attempt to prove. Perhaps tomorrow.