Wednesday, January 6, 2016

A correction










Yesterday I reported here that, despite having roughly a million readers, clerkmanifesto, due to a common statistical peculiarity, is still capable of passing through dark periods lasting several days wherein virtually no one visits my blog. The first couple of times I ran the numbers on this my math was borne out, despite it being counter intuitive. It fundamentally explained how, as I called out to my readers in my blog post, despite there being a million of those readers, I received no answer. It all had to do with this strange and interesting counter intuitive statistical oddity.

However, certain pieces of information have since come to my attention that require me to correct my original statements.

First of all, the math system I used to analyze the data was unfortunately faulty. I used the "Let's pretend I used math" system to explain this quirk of the numbers. When I replaced the "Let's pretend I used math" system with formal division I found the following:


Figuring that a million regular readers means that each of them are visiting my blog roughly once a week, then, based on even distribution, one to two readers are thus going to my blog every single second. If their average visit is a mere three minutes, enough to read just a couple posts and get out of the blog fast, then, again based on even distribution, around 250 people are on my blog every single second of every single minute of every, well, you get the idea. From this point I played around with systems of uneven distribution and, while I can come up with some ridiculous explanations, I cannot come up with any reasonable system that can spread that many people around. It would be like dropping a thousand pennies into a mason jar and expecting there to be some empty space at the bottom.

So this correction raised an even more perplexing question. How can there be a significant constant presence of people here on this blog and yet, when I raise a fundamental question I hear not a single response? I spent hours searching for the answer to this on the Internet to no avail. Oddly enough, the true answer simply came to me, and when it did, it was obvious. 

When I am writing, I cannot hear you.

I apologize for my past errors.













3 comments:

  1. Interesting.... Except the math. Math has always mystified me. I am impressed with your formula's for analysing the number of your following and the visits per whatever though. Glad I came out of by Illness Fog tonight, for a little while anyway and caught your Post.
    Happy New Year Dude.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am glad you are well then. Happy New Year to you too!

      I was going to say all the math here is really "Let's pretend I used math" Math, but, no, that breakdown of the million does roughly check out.

      Delete
  2. Interesting.... Except the math. Math has always mystified me. I am impressed with your formula's for analysing the number of your following and the visits per whatever though. Glad I came out of by Illness Fog tonight, for a little while anyway and caught your Post.
    Happy New Year Dude.

    ReplyDelete

If you were wondering, yes, you should comment. Not only does it remind me that I must write in intelligible English because someone is actually reading what I write, but it is also a pleasure for me since I am interested in anything you have to say.

I respond to pretty much every comment. It's like a free personalized blog post!

One last detail: If you are commenting on a post more than two weeks old I have to go in and approve it. It's sort of a spam protection device. Also, rarely, a comment will go to spam on its own. Give either of those a day or two and your comment will show up on the blog.