Brunches and events are the most exciting time to visit Dacie Moses House. Students, parents, prospies, alumni, faculty, and community members each flock to Dacie’s… but when? for what reasons? At what times of the year?
Nacho and Aaron bring you visual charts that demonstrate the attendance of various groups at Dacie Moses brunches and events from the school years 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, and 2018-19. After viewing the charts, check out our analysis of the significance of this data to the Dacie Moses mission. Note that the values for number of attendees varies for each graph in order to maintain a consistent representation of trends. When months are spaced close together or on top of each other in the radial chart, it means that very few, if any, events were held during that month.
Event data clearly demonstrates a disparity between the events of June and events during the rest of the year. The data also serves as a proxy for Carleton events that are bigger than the Dacie Moses event on its own, such as the red spike in April, representing prospective students, that occurs during accepted students days. Since some events are not held consistently from year to year, the overall pattern changes among the different graphs.
However, some of the events associated with graduation and reunion in June are staples of the Dacie Moses community and occur each year without fail. For the month of June, we have compiled separate data charts in a linear stacked format corresponding with each annual graph. The purpose of these graphs is to offer a closer look at the important events of June and better understand the groups of people and their quantities that attend these events. We have named this series of graphs the “June Zoom.”
One intriguing aspect of the data is the beginning of each year in the month of July. Of course, the academic year begins in September while the calendar year resets in January. However, with graduation and reunion bringing so much attention to the house, it makes sense for the month of June to conclude the Dacie Moses year. Brunches and events take place year round, and the new Dacie’s year begins in July with smaller attendee numbers, except for the popular annual pie baking contest. Beginning the data fresh in July offers the house an opportunity to reset its goals, numbers, and resources prior to the relatively slow summer season and busy academic year that follows it.
While the brunch data varies from year to year, there are some consistent factors present across different years. First and foremost, the bulk of the attendees for Sunday brunches are students, as students are generally on campus on Sundays during the academic terms. We originally tried to separate the student population from the data to see if there were any interesting patterns, but found that brunches mostly consist of students. However, one exception to this trend occurs during the month of June due to the big events surrounding Reunion and Commencement for parents and alumni. Additionally, the two brunches which consistently receive the largest attendance are the first brunch of the year in September and Dacie’s birthday brunch in January (clearly visible in the 2017-18 and 2018-19 graphs). Aside from these two events, the attendance of Dacie Moses brunches varies from year to year with a slight increase in attendance during the warmer spring months as opposed to the winter. This difference seems to be correlated with the timing of winter break, when most students return home.
