Hiccups

Anna got the hiccups tonight, which she apparently really hates. After a few minutes, I wondered aloud “how regular are hiccups”? Neither of us knew the answer, so I figured it would be pretty easy to collect the data. Furthermore, it put us in a win-win situation: it would be good if Anna’s hiccups stopped since she would then stop being annoyed by them, but it would also be good if Anna’s hiccups kept going since then we would have more data points for my plot.

So I pulled out the stopwatch app on my iPhone and hit the lap button every time I heard a hiccup. Well, this apparently went on 25 times after I started recording (leading to 24 intervals) lasting exactly 209.37 seconds.

It was surprisingly regular in that most hiccups were between 7 and 10 seconds apart, though it varied a bit between those numbers (without a clear central “peak”), and there were a few outliers as well. I’ll try to remember to time her hiccups from now on, and add them to this chart. And if I ever notice myself with hiccups, I’ll time those too, and add them to the chart as well. Is there person-to-person variability? Your guess is as good as mine.

Lastly, I think turning a bad situation into a win:win situation is a win itself.

 

PS. I have not done a google search to see if anyone has actually studied this before. And I’m not going to do it in the near future; It would kill the magic of this game, and I’d also rather collect an untarnished / unbiased dataset now as I always have the option of googling for results later.