With 2011 just around the corner, many people are thinking about New Year’s resolutions.

But those people probably aren’t Hunch users.

That’s right — 74% of Hunch users don’t even bother making resolutions. We’re not sure if they’ve failed to lose weight or complete their novel too many times, or they just feel that New Year’s resolutions aren’t the best way of making and meeting goals.

But there are a few Hunchers who still make goals at the dawn of a new year. Female Hunch users are more likely to make resolutions they don’t keep. Males are less likely to make resolutions; but if they do, they stick with them.

Regular smokers report making resolutions they can’t keep and forgoing resolutions altogether at about the same rate of 15%. We’re guessing they can’t quit smoking.

Speaking of vices, previous success curbing a bad habit positively correlates with the desire to meet goals via New Year’s resolutions. Of the few, the proud, the resolution keepers, 38% have long given up the worst habit they ever had, and 51% are trying their hardest to quit their worst habit. (Alas, no word on what these worst habits are or whether or not hypnosis was involved).

It looks like Hunch users who make resolutions — especially those who keep them — are more likely to have some semblance of a five-year career plan. This goes to show that resolutions alone do not achieve goals, which we already knew. People who already make plans and achieve goals enjoy planning to achieve more goals.

Hunch has two topics that allow users to search for New Year’s resolutions in general or by certain personality symptoms.

When we think of typical New Year’s resolutions, a few come to mind: lose weight, quit smoking, save money… So the top 10 resolutions on Hunch came as a surprise:

1. Learn something new
2. Enjoy life more
3. Drink enough water
4. Be healthy
5. Simplify
6. Get enough sleep
7. Help others
8. Take more pictures
9. Be a better human being
10. Reduce stress

Could they be more vague? With resolutions like this, who needs pipe dreams?

These goals are all well and good, but they’re not going to be accomplished without a more concrete plan. Who better than Hunch to recommend your next steps? Here are the same resolutions with some ideas for following through:

1. Learn something new

Learn a programming language or another foreign language

Memorize a poem

Try some new card games

Be the classic film buff you were born to be

2. Enjoy life more

Take a vacation

Practice a hobby

Eat dessert (before dinner, if you want)

Make new friends

3. Drink enough water

Find a water bottle you can carry with you

Try a water filter if tap water skeeves you out

Consider playing drinking games with water (just kidding)

4. Be healthy

Exercise

Eat more veggies

Cultivate healthier eating habits

Try alternative medicine

5. Simplify

Let me count the ways…

Get organized

6. Get enough sleep

Try a sleep aid

Consider switching up sleep spots

Or maybe you just need a better mattress

7. Help others

Volunteer

Support a good cause

Do a good deed

8. Take more pictures

Get a nice camera

You might want a bag for it

Update your avatars and profile pics

Share your pictures online (Flickr’s an option)

9. Be a better human being

Some more Mr. Nice Guy

Do something special for your boo

Make people laugh with good-natured jokes and pranks

10. Reduce stress

Explore the many ways to de-stress

Get a massage

Read funny blogs

However you make and achieve goals, we wish you luck in 2011.

Happy New Year from Hunch!

Just in time for the end of finals, today we caught up with top Hunch contributor marcescence.

Hunch: Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from? You seem to like cooking.

marcescence: I’m a college student living in upstate New York. In my free time, I enjoy baking and then eating said baked goods. I also enjoy reading and walking.

Hunch: “Fake accent” is one of your tags. Do you have a good fake accent? When do you use it?

marcescence: I enjoy spicing up speech by spontaneously sporting spirited accents, particularly British, Scottish, and Irish. When participating in transient, new situations and using an accent, I seemingly convince others that I’m from across the pond, but I haven’t yet had to deal with someone who really is from the British Isles.

Hunch: You have diverse interests. So tell us: What’s your favorite movie, music, word, and book right now?

marcescence: My favorites depreciate over time, so I’ll list the most recent of the above stuff. I last read Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, which goes through the process of creating a computer from scratch in a bare bones, yet comprehensive manner. As you may be able to gather from my username, I like words that end in -ence I don’t really like listening to music as a singular activity, it works better when paired with a video game or a movie or when I’m making it myself. I recently watched 12 Angry Men, which was released in 1957 and takes place in one room.

Hunch: What brought you to Hunch?

marcescence: I first visited Hunch after reading an article on TechCrunch about the website when it publicly launched.

Hunch: How do you use Hunch — everyday? In long stretches or short bursts? Do you come always looking for something specific?

marcescence: I visit Hunch multiple times a day for a few seconds at a time to see if there are any new topics that I would like to play or contribute to, or if new features have been released. I like new features. I also visit after coming across something and thinking it needs some recognition on Hunch stat.

Hunch: What’s the best item, movie, etc. that you’ve discovered through Hunch?

marcescence: I found the blog, Hyperbole and a Half. Honestly, I’ve seen a lot of the top recommendations, so I would rather discover the obscure stuff that I would have otherwise missed. This is an interesting problem to solve, though, because the way recommendation services fundamentally function is skewed against the obscure.  I like to use Hunch simply because it’s a unique service, and I’m interested in seeing where it goes. I’ve also used it as an example in a few papers on the future of the internet — specifically, how customized content and recommendation algorithms increasingly influence how we acquire information.

Hunch: We’re writing more blog posts these days using Hunch data. We’ve written about the election, bullying, Santa Claus… Any suggestions for a topic you’d like to see us cover?

marcescence: I’d like to see a post that explores the most “important” THAY questions and topic results — stuff that’s polarizing and heavily weighted when categorizing and comparing users. A “best of” type post about the most popular topics and results would be interesting, as well.

Yes, Hunchers, this really is a report about Santa Claus.

Whether you’re having a holly jolly Christmas or waiting anxiously for it to end, you’ve no doubt had a run-in with Santa this month. He’s in department stores. On food and beverage packaging. Climbing in your chimneys, snatching your cookies up.

But spoiler alert: Santa isn’t real.

Out of more than 42,000 Hunch users who didn’t skip the question when asked, 65% report being under 10 years old when they learned there was no Santa. Do you remember what tipped you off? Realizing that there’s no way an obese man could easily break into every person’s home in one night? Noticing Santa’s handwriting looked exactly like your mom’s? Or maybe one of the kids who always knew there was no such thing as Santa — a minority of 15% — clued you in.

Still, 16% of Hunchers didn’t know the truth about Santa until they were over 10. Might the 5% who skipped this question still send wishlists to the North Pole each year?

We wondered what believing in Santa Claus as a kid has to do with holiday sentiment over the rest of a person’s life. Does suspending disbelief in Santa translate to more holiday zeal in adulthood? Do people who never believed in Santa cringe at carols? Or does it depend on growing up and having kids of your own to teach about Old St. Nick?

There’s only one other Teach Hunch About You (THAY) question concerning Santa, so let’s look at it first. Keep in mind that the question is relatively new so the sample is smaller than average.

Even now that we’re all doing the Christmas shopping ourselves (and often online, at that), 56% of Hunch users think department store Santas add a little magic to the season. The other 44% who answered the question think the seasonal worker in the red and white suit is creepy. These bawling kids seem to agree.

The surest indicator of whether or not a Hunch user finds department store Santas creepy is if he or she ever believed in Santa. People who believed longer report more positive feelings, but even the 57% who were disillusioned before the age of 10 still get all warm and fuzzy at the sight of the long line of kids waiting to see Old St. Nick. Parents also like department store Santas more than people without children.

Most people who never believed in Santa in general or due to differing religious or cultural backgrounds — 61% and 62%, respectively — find the idea of kids being photographed in Santa’s lap unsettling. We’ll assume they’re as turned off by the Easter bunny, but they’re probably okay with sports mascots.

Here are some other differences between those who love Santa and those who can leave him:

But back to the rest of Hunch users, including the few who aren’t ashamed to admit they believed in Santa after the age of 10.

It looks like they’re not ho-ho-holding it against anyone. They appear to be the most festive holiday revelers of all. They love Christmas, but they don’t let St. Patrick’s Day go by without wearing some green and they dress up for Halloween, too. They also go the extra mile on Mother’s Day, giving cards, gifts, or one-on-one time to mom.

We can’t give Santa credit for spreading all of this cheer. Looks like Christmas — and every other holiday — really is inside all of us.

Fresh out of Hunch labs (and just in time to still have stuff arrive by Christmas even without irksome expedited shipping) comes the Gift-o-matic.

Enter any Twitter username into the Gift-o-matic and it will predict specific gifts that the person might like.  The app (created by Hunch developer Ben and chief-of-content Jon) draws upon a hand-curated selection of about 500 popular gifts that are favorites among Hunch users.  So this isn’t by any means a full demo of Hunch’s Taste Graph (since the app draws on far less than 1% of all possible recommendations on Hunch). Still, it’s a nifty little app and an example of what can quickly be built to run on Hunch’s API.

Hunch's Gift-o-matic: helping you to avoid the dreaded #FailGift

As some examples of the Gift-o-matic’s top predictions:

• It predicts Elle magazine for Kim Kardashian
• It predicts brainy books (and Dom Perignon) for Fred Wilson
• It predicts the intense “Settlers of Catan” strategy board game for former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

Give the Gift-o-matic a spin using your own Twitter name (or anybody else’s).  You might just find a personalized gift recommendation that hits the spot.

Decked out in twinkling lights and nostalgic ornaments, the Christmas tree is one of the most beloved traditions of the holiday season. Part of their charm is that no two Christmas trees are alike. How you decorate your tree — whether it be in all Disney ornaments, monotone colors scheme, old-fashioned popcorn strands or the kids’ holiday crafts — is a reflection of your tastes and traditions.

Enter the real vs. artificial tree debate. Of Hunch users who have answered the THAY question “What type of Christmas tree do you put up?” 45 percent chose artificial trees, 31 percent opted for real trees and 21 percent don’t get a tree at all or otherwise declined to answer (bah, humbug!).

A stats caveat: the “type of Christmas tree” question is relatively new to Hunch and has just a few thousand responses so far (as a point of comparison, many Teach Hunch About You questions have hundreds of thousands of responses).  So before the statisticians among you get your knickers all in a twist, we’ll acknowledge that in some cases the correlations below are more directional than statistically significant. But, hey- it’s the holidays. So relax and just try to have fun with this.

HOLIDAY CORRELATIONS

The robust data reveals that there are distinct correlations between an individual and the type of tree they prefer. Before we get into broader correlations, here’s a quick snapshot of some holiday-specific matches:

SYNOPSIS

Artificial Trees: Females living in suburban neighborhoods tend to favor artificial Christmas trees. They’re not as physically active as their real tree loving counterparts, commuting to work by car and preferring to use a vehicle to get between short distances. They’re more likely to carry purses and have hand sanitizer on hand. On vacay, they’re more likely to over pack (it’s better to be prepared). Artificial-tree lovers would probably prefer to catch up with their DVR than put up with a noisy, crowded environment.

Real Trees: Active men tend to favor real Christmas trees. They’re the sort to be seen sporting a messenger bag, reading the newspaper — or checking their e-mail on their smart phones — on the morning commute. More fit than the average person, they wear a helmet when they bike and can complete an under 10 minute mile, no problem. They’re good about eating their fresh fruit regularly and can handle dishes with heat. These real-tree lovers are more likely to identify as environmentalists.

No Tree: And those of you who don’t put up a Christmas tree? You’re a pretty intense bunch of hyper-connected adults that prefer dramatic movies and and are more likely than others to eschew hamburgers.. There’s a good chance you don’t have children or pets and, of course, you’re more likely to be called a Scrooge than call someone else a Scrooge.

Here are the findings:

	Artificial Tree	Real Tree
Gender	Female	Male
Children	More likely to have one child (if any)	More likely to have two children (if any)
Reside	In the suburbs	More likely to live in a city
Income	< $75,000	> $75,000
To get between short (1 mi.) distances …	… prefer to take a car, motorcycle or other motorized vehicle	… prefer to walk
Flooring	More likely to prefer a mix of carpet and wooden floors	Would enjoy living in a modern loft with cement floors and exposed brick
Burgers	Most likely to order their burger well done	Most likely to order their burger rare
Spicy food	More likely to prefer mild food	More likely to prefer spicy food (The hotter, the better)
Habits for health	More likely to drink milk with dinner	Eat fresh fruit daily or regularly
Alcoholic beverages	Good chance they don’t like beer	More likely to regularly drink white wine
Body type	Tend to be less active outside than the general average	More likely to be in better than average shape
Identify as an environmentalist?	No	Yes
Eco-consciousness	More likely to use plastic bags when grocery shopping	More likely to use cloth napkins when dining at home
Carry	A purse	A backpack or messenger bag
Packing for a trip	Over pack to be prepared for anything	Pack light to travel easy
Travel experiences	Good chance they haven’t visited the capital city of their country	More likely to have a valid passport
Precautions	Avid hand sanitizer users	More likely to wear a bike helmet when cycling
Running	Would have a more difficult time completing a mile in under 10 minutes	Could run a mile in under 10 minutes, no problem
Would rather see a concert in …	A concert hall or amphitheater – somewhere with seats	Outdoor fests or small, hole-in-the-wall clubs
Commute to work	More likely to drive themselves	More likely to take public transportation, walk or cycle
Books	More likely to enjoy mysteries and thrillers	More likely to enjoy non-fiction
Newspapers	Rarely read newspapers	Prefer broadsheet format newspapers
On art	When making a work of art, the subject is most important	Have almost certainly been to an art gallery
Television	More likely to watch upwards of two hours of television per day	Watches less than two hours of television per day
Family values	Put family above all else	Are more likely to carry a photo in their wallet
Ideological beliefs	Support the right to carry a firearm	Are more likely to believe that community is more important than personal freedoms
Comedy	Are more likely to watch “Friends” reruns	Prefer the heart-warming comedy of “Little Miss Sunshine”
Cell phone technology	More likely to have more than one ringtone	More likely to have their e-mail pushed to their cell phone
Olympic sports	Enjoy watching gymnastics the most	More likely to enjoy soccer (football) or hockey
People skills	More likely to get annoyed in a noisy, crowded environment	More likely to know their nearest neighbors by name

We’re all familiar with the Benjamin Franklin aphorism, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” But sleep research from the London School of Economics concludes that people with higher IQs tend to be night owls who sleep in. Early risers may catch the worm, but could it be that they’re not the brightest birds in the nest?

Research says it’s evolution: Humans are naturally diurnal, but everyone exhibits more of a preference for “morningness” or “eveningness.” Presumably those of us who work best after the sun goes down are more evolved and thus, smarter. If only we’d known this as bedtime- and curfew-arguing kids!

Of course, being an early bird doesn’t mean you’re a dodo. Other research from the University of Bologna shows that people who go to bed earlier are more well-adjusted — more cooperative, considerate, and persistent. They cope better with deadlines and tend to do better in school. They’re less grouchy when they wake up. Meanwhile, night owls are less reliable, more moody, and often struggle with addiction. They’re more likely to drink, smoke, and have eating disorders. (What else is there to do in the wee-est hours)?

We wondered whether Hunch data confirms all this. Are Hunch users — who tend to be better educated than the norm — more likely to be early birds or night owls? Do their traits match what sleep research shows? And we’ve asked many questions, but IQ isn’t one of them. How could we conclude whether early birds or night owls are smarter?

We started here:

Out of more than 20,000 Hunch users, the majority consider themselves night owls. But the older a Hunch user is, the more likely he or she is to claim the early bird title. This corresponds with a finding in sleep research — that “eveningness” peaks from ages 17-21 and then becomes less prevalent.

Some people think staying up for Letterman is a wild nocturnal endeavor. Lest we disagree on what constitutes a “late night,” we looked at what time self-identified morning and night people were actually going to bed. It looks like we can all agree that regular weekday activity at midnight and later makes one a night person. (Activity at these times on weekends merely make one a person). Still, 20% of early birds regularly go to bed around or after midnight.

There are many famous night owls, including Winston Churchill, Bill Clinton, and Margaret Thatcher. Martha Stewart gets four hours of sleep each night — and says it’s a good thing.  But Hunchers aren’t necessarily getting much done while burning the midnight oil. A surprising 46% of night owls say they’re most productive in the morning and afternoon. Could the fact that night owls are slightly more likely to have recently danced in a club until 4 a.m. have something to do with it?

How are early birds and night owls different?

	Early Birds	Night Owls
Morning routine	Refreshed when they wake up Make the bed Prefer eggs, bacon, etc. for breakfast Don’t rely on an alarm clock	Tired when they wake up Don’t make the bed Prefer a bagel or toast for breakfast Need an alarm clock to wake up
Food/Drink	Order tried and true items on the menu Drink diet soda Eat fresh fruit daily Eat in more	Order new things on the menu Drink regular soda Eat fresh fruit weekly Eat out more
Legal matters	Broke the law (not traffic or parking) longer than a year ago Have a will	Broke the law (not traffic or parking) in the last year or more recently Don’t have a will More likely to smoke marijuana
Miscellaneous	Are on time or early to appointments More likely to have a graduate degree Do things in advance	Run late to appointments Have library books they never returned Wear more black More likely to describe themselves as artists/performers
The perfect late night is spent…	At home	Out on the town
Optimist or pessimist?	Optimist	It depends on the situation
Friends complain…	“You try to plan everything!”	“You’re too disorganized!”
First thing they’d teach a pet parrot to say	“Polly wants a cracker.”	Something obscene
Sundays are for…	Reading	Sleeping
Getting together “last minute” means…	Later today	In a few hours or less

Hunch data appears to confirm some of the findings of previous sleep research about early birds. They’re upstanding citizens who are on top of their business. Night owls tend to be disorganized and more spontaneous. But we were surprised that some correlations we predicted weren’t present in Hunch data at all.

For starters, early birds and night owls on Hunch identify as liberal, middle of the road, or conservative at pretty equal rates. They also tend to have made the same grades in high school and drink the same amount. (But early birds are slightly more likely to be teetotallers). The two groups have been jailed and fired from a job in nearly identical numbers — well, night owls are slightly most likely to have been put in the clink or on unemployment.

There’s no unbiased way to measure IQ through Teach Hunch About You (THAY) questions. But if you’re interested in another number, we can talk annual income. At $50,000 and up, early birds beat night owls when it comes to bringing home the bacon. We can presume that early birds are more likely to fry it up in a pan, too.

So which are you, and which would you rather be — an early bird or a night owl? We’ll let you sleep on that.

Speaking of our most prolific contributors, today we caught up with top contributor Tim B., otherwise known on Hunch as dystopic_thinker.

Hunch: One of your tags is Luddite. Another is computer programmer. Why the contradiction? Which do you consider yourself more?

Tim: I’m a living, breathing contradiction in terms. I delight in discourse but shrink from confrontation. I love a good problem but find myself distrustful of and uninterested in quick and easy solutions. I consider myself foremost a writer and visual artist, but I pay the bills by programming Java code in a cubicle dungeon. I am passable at my job, some might even say good, but I despise today’s deplorable excess of trivial techno-gadgetry. Though many come to love technology as they work with it more, I have had the opposite experience.

Hunch: You’ve created 11 topics on Hunch. Two that really stood out to me were Ways to learn about oneself and Ways to be nice. What inspired you to create these topics?

Tim: I had gone for years wondering why I was so unsatisfied with where I was going and what I was doing. I had a lot of unanswered questions and a website specifically designed for such things seemed to be just the ticket.  I found that the topics I was interested in didn’t yet exist, so I created them and discovered more than I could have imagined.

The topic about being nice was a response to my earlier topic about making mischief. I felt that if I was giving people ideas for causing annoyance, I should also provide some place for them to consider some form of kindness. It’s good to have balance.

Hunch: Why dystopic_thinker? What’s your favorite dystopian novel?

Tim: Dystopic thinker because I don’t think in straight lines. Rather, I’m prone to spurts of disjointed haphazard wandering thoughts. I like to look at a problem from the backside, the outside, the inside, and every other side and naturally gravitate toward dystopian novels and ideas.

I don’t know if I have a single favorite dystopian novel, but a few of my recent most loved and those would be Cormac McCarthy’s The Road for its word artistry and utter humanity and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven, which explores multiple dystopian societies that are all the result of man’s unending hubris.

Hunch: What brought you to Hunch?

Tim: It was primarily a desire to learn about myself. Reading about Hunch, the decision engine, on a news website got me to put aside my general distrust of online social websites and take the plunge. In time, Hunch helped me to see that I was a lot more like artists, writers, and musicians than programmers or scientists. This may seem odd to you, but to me it was a revelation and has literally changed my life.

Hunch: How do you use Hunch? Every day? In long stretches or short bursts? Do you come looking for something specific?

Tim: I use Hunch sporadically. I’ve been taking some time off these days, just dropping by to answer the newest Teach Hunch About You questions. I’m sure I’ll think of another topic to do some time in the future, and that one will likely lead to another one. I rarely come looking for anything in particular. Most often, I let Hunch surprise me. That’s not something I can say about many other websites.

Hunch: What’s the best item, movie, etc. that you’ve discovered through Hunch?

Tim: That’s an incredibly hard question. I’ve found many things to love through Hunch, which is very surprising because I’m not a person usually interested in things. My wife bought a large portion of my Christmas gifts directly from my Hunch favorites last year. I received included Suntory Whiskey (delicious) and several books suggested by Hunch, including Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart. If I had to put a finger on a single thing though, it would have to be the novel World War Z by Max Brooks. It was a wonderful read.

Hunch: We’re writing more reports these days using Hunch data. We’ve written about the election, bullying, and more. Any suggestions for a topic you’d like to see us cover?

Tim: I added the question about finger length to the Teach Hunch About You questions, and I anxiously await the possible correlations. I’m very interested in how the different mixes of people sort themselves, given all the interactions between their environment and their genetic heritage.