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Ask HN: Does season affect Y Combinator results?

8 points by malanj ↗ HN
The summer versus winter batches makes for an interesting experiment in seasonal effects.

I would think that longer days mean more distractions, but perhaps also more energy. Personally I find that I'm somewhat more productive when I have longer days.

Does anyone have hard data on the differences (or an idea to easily test it)? Other than season, are there other differences between the summer and winter batches that would influence the data?

5 comments

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pg
We haven't noticed any difference in results between batches. The only difference we've seen is that summer batches get more applicants, presumably because graduations mean more people are free to do something new June 1 than January 1.
malanj
Thanks. I guess the increased applications will probably pollute the data enough to make it impossible to find evidence (if it exists) of seasonal effect.

I had hoped one could perhaps see the effect of something like Subsyndromal Seasonal Affective Disorder (affects ±14% of population) or Seasonal Affective Disorder (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002499/).

infinitebattery
Is there any data available for acceptance to the program? If so, someone (or I) could run a T-test and find out if there is any statistical significance.
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