Last Night's Tally - 302 on Halloween 2016

Last night, we had 88 'kids we know', 210 'kids we don't know' and just 4 adults with no kids.  That's a grand total of 302 trick-or-treaters.

Comparing to last year's number of 346 total, we were down 12% overall.  And it felt that way in terms of kids coming to the door.  The weather was perfect, but there weren't as many cars parked up and down the block.

In the specific categories, we had 73 'known kids' last year and 88 this year.  Could be because we recognized more kids or that more kids moved to the neighborhood.  However, last year we had 264 'unknown kids' compared to 210 this year.  That's a 20% drop.

The reason?  Last year was on a Saturday.  And in looking at the historical numbers, I'm not calling this year a 'drop', but rather a reversion back towards the norm.  Therefore, 2015 was more a 'Saturday Surge' than anything.

Historical totals:

• 2016: 302 total.
• In 2015, we had 346 total.
• In 2014, we had 308 total.
• In 2013, we had 326 total.
• In 2012, we had 327 total. 
• In 2011, we had 269 total. 
• In 2010, we had 236 total.
• In 2009, we had 184 total.

What is pretty amazing is that if we throw out 2009 as an outlier, and we average 2016 through 2010, we end up with 2114 total trick-or-treaters.  Divided by 7 and we end up with EXACTLY 302.

In fact, if you remove 2016's total of 302 from the pool of data and just look at six years of data from 2015 through 2010, guess what?  You end up with a 302 average, too!  (a doy, right?!?  Take a 302 data point from a sample set that has an average of 302 and of course you end up with the same average, right??  But, it took me doing the excel summary tool to figure that out!)

Thus, last night was a TOTALLY AVERAGE night over the past seven years.