Sun Protection
Adventure
Crispy is not always better
How decisive were these results?
Hat is the odd one out this week with three options, so it gets its own test; everything else is a straight two-way race.
TL;DR: Burn Care was the most one-sided call of the week — Aloe beat Moisturizing Lotion 57–15 (79%), with Sunscreen right behind it. Shades was the real toss-up: Aviator edged Wayfarer 38–34, about as close to a coin flip as it gets.
| question | N | Leader (votes) | Trailer (votes) | Leader share | Margin (votes) | Margin (points) | p vs 50/50 | Leader 95% CI | Votes to flip |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burn Care | 72 | Aloe (57) | Moisturizing Lotion (15) | 79.2% | 42 | 58.3% | 7.00e-07 | [0.68, 0.88] | 22 |
| Method | 77 | Reapply Sunscreen (48) | Long Sleeves (29) | 62.3% | 19 | 24.7% | 3.95e-02 | [0.51, 0.73] | 10 |
| Shades | 72 | Aviator (38) | Wayfarer (34) | 52.8% | 4 | 5.6% | 7.24e-01 | [0.41, 0.65] | 3 |
| Sunscreen | 80 | Lotion (62) | Spray (18) | 77.5% | 44 | 55.0% | 8.00e-07 | [0.67, 0.86] | 23 |
The three-way race: Hat
| option | votes | share |
|---|---|---|
| Baseball Cap | 50 | 63.3% |
| Wide-brimmed Floppy Hat | 18 | 22.8% |
| Bucket Hat | 11 | 13.9% |
Baseball Cap isn’t just the leader, it’s the clear favorite: 63% of the vote. Wide-brimmed Floppy Hat (23%) pulls ahead of Bucket Hat (14%) for a distant second, no longer the even split it looked like before RTP weighed in. A chi-square goodness-of-fit test against “all three hats equally popular” gives p = 7.41^{-8} — nowhere close to what we’d expect if hat preference were random. Both offices have a type, too: HQ and RTP each independently put Baseball Cap on top.
Does HQ agree with RTP?
RTP’s votes are in for this poll, and it’s the most eventful HQ/RTP comparison we’ve had yet.
| question | Leader (overall) | HQ share | RTP share | Gap (pts) | p-value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burn Care | Aloe | 83% (35/42) | 73% (22/30) | 10% | 0.4620 |
| Method | Reapply Sunscreen | 70% (32/46) | 52% (16/31) | 18% | 0.1760 |
| Shades | Aviator | 48% (21/44) | 61% (17/28) | 13% | 0.4040 |
| Sunscreen | Lotion | 86% (43/50) | 63% (19/30) | 23% | 0.0381 |
Two milestones this week. First, Sunscreen clears p < 0.05 for the first time since RTP joined the poll — HQ went 86% for Lotion, RTP only 63% (p = 0.038). Every office gap before this one had a p-value comfortably above 0.1 — this is the first one we can call a real difference rather than noise.
Second, the Alignment Index drops to 0.43 this week, its lowest reading yet (cumulative across the whole RTP era: 0.81, so the long-run picture is still solidly aligned — one rough week doesn’t undo five good ones). And Shades flipped outright: HQ’s real preference was Wayfarer, RTP’s was Aviator, and the combined total ended up siding with RTP. That brings the running tally to 8 questions since RTP joined where the two offices would have crowned different winners on their own.
Do the sun-safety-conscious cluster together?
Reapplying sunscreen and reaching for aloe after a burn both sound like the habits of the same sun-safety-minded person. Let’s bound the overlap.
Of the 72 overlapping voters, somewhere between 28 and 48 (39%–67%) could be both Reapply-Sunscreen and Aloe people, versus about 36 (49%) expected if the two habits were unrelated. Given how popular both options already are on their own, there’s a good floor under the “actually sun-safe” coalition — good news for everyone’s skin.