Chart uses mayor’s tweets to track her awakenings

Curtis GilbertCurtis Gilbert May 20, 2014
3

When Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges began sharing 140 characters of inspiration every morning, she probably didn’t realize how much she was revealing.

The mayor starts each day by tweeting a brief quotation from the likes of Carl Sagan, Colin Powell and Nora Ephron to her 8,462 followers on Twitter.

Local statistician Tom Q. Johnson saw the quotes as a data set. He used the timestamp on Hodges’ tweets to determine approximately when she got out of bed each day. The average? 6:31 a.m.

Hodges apparently found the chart flattering.

“*Now* I am The Mayor,” she quipped on Facebook. “I don’t experience it as creepy – I think it’s pretty hilariously awesome.”

Johnson specializes in off-beat analyses of Minnesota topics, including one tracking the price of marijuana in various cities around the state.