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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘statistics’
07.08.2022
Ever since we had to reset the counter for Autocade in March, because of a new server and a new version of Mediawiki, it’s been interesting to see which pages are most popular.
The old ranking took into account everything from March 2008 to March 2022. With everything set to zero again, I can now see what’s been most popular in the last few months.
Some of the top 20 were among the top pages before March 2022, but what’s surprising is what’s shot up into the top slots.
Over the course of half a day on Friday GMT, the Toyota Corolla (E210) page found itself as the top page, home page excepting. And the Kia Morning (TA) page shot up out of nowhere recently, too.
I know our page on the Corolla is number one on Mojeek for a search of that model but that can’t be the only reason it’s done so well. I haven’t studied the referrer data. A shame that link: no longer works on search engines.
Corolla fans, thank you for your extra 6,000 page views! It’s helped our overall total, but the viewing rate is still down at 2019 levels thanks to the collapse of the Bing index, and the search engines that it’s taken down with them.
I almost feel I’ve shot myself in the foot for promoting Duck Duck Go so much since 2010! But then I hopefully spared a lot of people from being tracked (as much) by the big G.
Tags: 2022, Autocade, Bing, JY&A Media, Mediawiki, Mojeek, publishing, statistics, Toyota
Posted in cars, interests, internet, media, New Zealand, publishing, technology | No Comments »
24.07.2022
Because I have OCD, one more round of stats.
It’s not just us: Bing seems to have a reduced index for everyone. Here are a handful of sites that I fed in at random for site: searches. The only site where it beats Mojeek in indexed pages is, you guessed it, Microsoft’s. I guess since Google favours Google’s own results, Bing does a better job indexing Microsoft’s—and I doubt it’s because their own people conform to Bing’s applied-when-they-choose rules.
Die Zeit
Google: 2,600,000
Mojeek: 4,796 (0·18 per cent of Google’s total)
Bing: 3,770 (0·15 per cent of Google’s total)
Annabelle (Switzerland)
Google: 11,700
Mojeek: 405 (3·46%)
Bing: 105 (0·90%)
Holly Jahangiri
Google: 738
Mojeek: 222 (30·08%)
Bing: 49 (6·64%)
The Gloss (Ireland)
Google: 19,200
Mojeek: 1,968 (10·25%)
Bing: 71 (0·37%)
The New York Times
Google: 36,200,000
Mojeek: 2,823,329 (7·80%)
Bing: 1,190,000 (3·29%)
Lucire
Google: 6,050
Mojeek: 3,572 (59·04%)
Bing: 50 (0·83%)
The Rake
Google: 11,500
Mojeek: 1,443 (12·55%)
Bing: 49 (0·43%)
Travel & Leisure
Google: 28,100
Mojeek: 9,750 (34·70%)
Bing: 220 (0·78%)
Microsoft
Google: 122,000,000
Bing: 14,200,000 (11·64%)
Mojeek: 1,748,199 (1·43%)
Detective Marketing
Google: 998
Mojeek: 579 (58·02%)
Bing: 51 (5·11%)
In the earlier Microsoft thread I linked, the original poster found that after they joined Bing Webmaster Tools and imported their Google data, that’s when their site vanished from Bing. So, again, we’re not alone.
I’d seriously be rethinking my business model if I was running a search engine that was reliant on Bing.
Tags: 2022, Google, Microsoft, Mojeek, publishing, search engine, search engines, statistics, website
Posted in internet, media, publishing, technology, USA | No Comments »
01.05.2021
Here are May 2021’s images—aides-mémoires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Sources
Viki Odintcova, via Instagram.
Alexa Breit, photographed by Weniamin Schmidt, via Instagram.
Vickery Electrical advertisement: something I asked my Dad to photocopy for me in the 1980s. Briefly we had one of those Apple II portables, on loan from a colleague of Dad. I can’t recall if it had one disk drive or two, but it was a fun little unit to have in my bedroom for that period. Dad was prepared to buy it if I wanted to keep it, but I didn’t have much software to run, plus I already had the Commodore 64 for schoolwork.
Lucire issue 43 cover, photographed by Damien Carney, creative direction and fashion styling by Nikko Kefalas, make-up by Joanne Gair, hair by Kirsten Brooke Anderson, and assisted by Rachel Bell, and modelled by Elena Sartison. Find out more here.
Drew Barrymore quotation from Elephant Journal on Twitter.
I still have plenty of old stamps, which I tend to save for family (though I’m less discerning about those discounted Christmas ones, which I always used to buy in bulk). This is going to my cousin’s daughter and her husband, and their family.
Comments after an article on Buzzfeed News. Business as usual for Facebook.
Happy birthday to our niece Esme!
Tania Dawson promotes Rabbit Borrows, from Instagram.
Bizarre that the only car with a manual transmission on sale at Archibalds is from the 1950s. I’m sure New Zealand was majority-manual into the first decade of this century.
More on the 1982–94 Chevrolet Cavalier at Autocade.
Citroën C5 X, as covered in Lucire.
Amira Aly (Mrs Oliver Pocher) photographed by Christoph Gellert, reposted from Instagram.
Gaza statistics, sourced from Twitter.
Even after 44½ years of living in the occident, I find certain western customs very strange. From Twitter.
Number crunching from Private Eye, reposted from Twitter.
Evaporated milk, reposted from Twitter.
Triumph Herald advertisement from the Car Factoids on Twitter.
Cadillac tailfins, reposted from Tumblr.
This photo of Sophia Loren was captioned ‘© David Hurn | Sophia Loren, Inglaterra, 1965’ on Tumblr. I wonder if she is on the set of Stanley Donen’s Arabesque. Reposted from Tumblr.
I had the pleasure of watching Peggy Sue Got Married again a few weeks ago. This was a nice scene at the end, that seemed to suggest that Peggy Sue had travelled back in time. John Barry’s score is sublime.
The Murdoch method: reposted from my old NewTumbl account.
Alexa Breit photographed by Sagaj, reposted from Instagram.
Tags: 1940s, 1950s, 1955, 1960s, 1965, 1967, 1980s, 1985, 1986, 1990s, 2021, actress, advertisement, advertising, Aotearoa, Apple, Autocade, business, Cadillac, car, celebrity, Channel 4, Chevrolet, Christchurch, Citroën, computing, COVID-19, Damien Carney, design, England, Facebook, family, fashion, fashion magazine, film, France, Germany, GM, humour, India, Instagram, Joanne Gair, John Barry, JY&A Media, Köln, Leyland, London, Lucire, magazine, Matt Lucas, media, MG, modelling, New York, New Zealand, New Zealand Post, NewTumbl, Nikko Kefalas, NY, Palestine, Peugeot, philately, photography, PSA, publishing, retro, Russia, social media, Stanley Donen, statistics, Stellantis, Tania Dawson, technology, trend, Triumph, UK, USA, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara
Posted in business, cars, design, France, gallery, humour, India, interests, internet, marketing, media, New Zealand, politics, publishing, TV, UK, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
16.02.2021
It brings me very little pleasure to do these calculations. After reading Umair Haque’s January 24 piece on the UK’s poor response to COVID-19—at the time the country had, by his reckoning, the highest death toll per capita in the world—I decided to feed in the numbers again, as of 9 a.m. GMT today. Here are the percentages of positive cases out of total tests done, based on the official figures. I know it’s not scientific, but it gives me a rough idea of who’s doing worse and who’s doing better, relative to the last set (December 7, 2020), and, I hate to say it, the slap-dash response by some countries is prolonging our pain as a planet.
Brazil 34·50% ↑
Sweden 10·66% ↑
USA 8·42% ↑
Spain 8·27% ↑
Italy 7·51% ↑
France 7·08% ↓
Germany 5·62% ↑
India 5·27% ↓
UK 4·90% ↑
Russia 3·82% ↑
KSA 2·88% ↓
South Korea 1·36% ↑
Singapore 0·88% ↓
Taiwan 0·56% ↓
Australia 0·21% ↓
Hong Kong 0·152% ↓
New Zealand 0·146% ↓
He also notes that the UK was going to delay people getting their second vaccination shots. I hope the country has since changed its tune, but looking at the likes of Johnson and Hancock, who helped to gift the world the British mutation, I doubt they have the nous. Even my fifth form science will tell me this (original emphases):
Because science says so. Animal models already tell us that if the second dose isn’t had within about a month, the immune cascade vaccines trigger fails to happen. Immunity doesn’t result. Antibodies aren’t developed …
What’s the upshot likely to be for Britain? The entire country’s vaccination program is likely to fail. There are going to be a whole lot of people who get one dose, but not the second in time, and most of those people will not develop immunity. Do you know what happens when you cross a halfway vaccinated population with a fast evolving virus? That’s right, vaccine resistance. Britain already made itself a perfect petri dish for new strains of Covid — but what Britain’s doing right now is making it the perfect petri dish for deadlier, more infectious, and much, much more vaccine resistant strains of the virus.
I have dear friends there, at least one who is immuno-compromised, and this is, to put it bluntly, a shitshow. I’m glad their daily infection numbers have now fallen under 10,000, but all this needn’t have happened.
Tags: 2021, Boris Johnson, coronavirus, COVID-19, health, statistics, UK, Umair Haque
Posted in general, politics, UK | 1 Comment »
07.12.2020
It’s hard not to be in a bubble sometimes, especially when that bubble is safe in the southern hemisphere and away from wars and COVID-19.
With TVNZ having a New York bureau, we of course hear about how poorly the US is doing with COVID-19, and we also hear from the London bureau, where the numbers aren’t as staggering, so they don’t always make the six o’clock programme. Aljazeera English mentioned South Korea’s third wave, looking worse than the second, and I knew Hong Kong’s numbers were on the up.
However, right though the month of November, I didn’t calculate positivity rates at all, even though I had been doing them most months, sometimes multiple times a month. These were going on to my NewTumbl blog, which I’ve decided not to update for the time being, for reasons already outlined.
Doing them again since late October gave me quite a surprise. I knew Europe was having a rough time with it, but there was quite a change in the numbers. In fact, it wasn’t long ago that these rates were trending downwards for the majority of countries that I had been tracking; that is no longer the case. It’s rising almost everywhere apart from India, the KSA (which has sensibly and surely got its first wave down—I’ve seen days of under 200 infections), Singapore, Australia, and, of course, here in New Zealand.
For the first time since I’ve been doing these calculations, we are at the bottom of the table, a fact that I’m relieved about, but it does make me worried about the rest of the world. I have a lot of family in the US and Hong Kong.
The data come from Worldometers and they tend to source from official parties. I believe I loaded the page around 2200 GMT.
Brazil 25·77% ↑
France 10·86% ↑
Sweden 8·07% ↑
Italy 7·50% ↑
USA 7·33% ↑
Spain 7·12% ↓
India 6·57% ↓
Germany 4·11% ↑
UK 3·79% ↑
KSA 3·62% ↓
Russia 3·12% ↑
Singapore 1·25% ↓
South Korea 1·19% ↑
Taiwan 0·64% ↑
Australia 0·27% ↓
Hong Kong 0·159% ↑
New Zealand 0·158% ↓
The arrows are in comparison to the last set of calculations from October 26:
Brazil 24·63% ↓
France 7·651% ↑
India 7·645% ↓
Spain 7·16% ↑
USA 6·67% ↓
Sweden 5·33% ↓
KSA 4·50% ↓
Italy 3·59% ↑
UK 2·80% ↑
Russia 2·64% ↓
Germany 2·15% ↓
Singapore 1·66% ↓
South Korea 1·02% ↓
Taiwan 0·55% ↓
Australia 0·32% ↓
New Zealand 0·18% ↓
Hong Kong 0·15% ↓
which were measured against a bunch from September 2.
Tags: 2020, coronavirus, COVID-19, health, Hong Kong, media, New Zealand, NewTumbl, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, statistics, UK, USA
Posted in China, France, Hong Kong, India, internet, media, New Zealand, TV, UK, USA | 1 Comment »
26.07.2020
Above: The 4,243th model entered into Autocade, now on 20,008,500 page views: the Maxus G50.
Autocade’s passed the 20,000,000 page-view mark, sitting on just over 20,008,000 at the time of writing, on 4,243 models entered (the Maxus G50 is the newest), an increase of 101 models over the last million views.
As it’s the end of July, then it’s taken just under four months for the site to gain another million page views. It’s not as fast as the million it took to get to 18,000,000 or the previous million milestone.
To be frank, the last few months have been a little on the dull side for updating Autocade. No Salon de Genève meant that while there were new models, they weren’t all appearing during the same week at one of the world’s biggest car shows. And it’s not all that interesting talking about another SUV or crossover: they’re all rather boxy, tall, and unnecessary. If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that we have certain behaviours that aren’t really helping our planet, and surely selfish SUVs are a sign of those?
I don’t begrudge those who really use theirs off-road, but as a statement of wank, I’m not so sure.
So many of them seem like the same vehicle but cut to different lengths, like making cake slices and seeing what remains.
During the lockdown, I put on a bunch of older models, too, which made the encyclopædia more complete, but I imagine those who come to the site wanting data on the latest stuff might have been slightly disappointed.
It does mean that we didn’t see much of an increase in traffic during lockdown here, but the opposite.
As is the tradition on this blog, here was how the growth looked.
March 2008: launch
April 2011: 1,000,000 (three years for first million)
March 2012: 2,000,000 (11 months for second million)
May 2013: 3,000,000 (14 months for third million)
January 2014: 4,000,000 (eight months for fourth million)
September 2014: 5,000,000 (eight months for fifth million)
May 2015: 6,000,000 (eight months for sixth million)
October 2015: 7,000,000 (five months for seventh million)
March 2016: 8,000,000 (five months for eighth million)
August 2016: 9,000,000 (five months for ninth million)
February 2017: 10,000,000 (six months for 10th million)
June 2017: 11,000,000 (four months for 11th million)
January 2018: 12,000,000 (seven months for 12th million)
May 2018: 13,000,000 (four months for 13th million)
September 2018: 14,000,000 (four months for 14th million)
February 2019: 15,000,000 (five months for 15th million)
June 2019: 16,000,000 (four months for 16th million)
October 2019: 17,000,000 (four months for 17th million)
December 2019: 18,000,000 (just under three months for 18th million, from first week of October to December 27)
April 2020: 19,000,000 (just over three months for 19th million, from December 27 to April 9)
July 2020: 20,000,000 (just over three-and-a-half months, from April 9 to July 26)
Unlike the last entry on this subject, the Alexa ranking stats have been improving, despite the slow-down in traffic.
Tags: 2020, Autocade, car, car industry, cars, COVID-19, JY&A Media, Maxus, publishing, SAIC, statistics, SUV
Posted in cars, China, internet, media, publishing | No Comments »
15.06.2020
I hadn’t done one of these for a long time: take the number of COVID-19 cases and divide them by tests done. For most countries, the percentage is trending down, though there has been little movement in Sweden. I hadn’t included Brazil, Russia and India before, but as they are in the top part of the table, I’ve included them for the first time for context. That does leave the C of the BRIC countries out, but as China does not disclose its testing numbers, I can’t work out a figure for them. Given the news, it is no surprise that Brazil has the worst percentage I have seen since I began crunching these numbers: more than half of the tests done result in a positive. The source is Worldometers.
Brazil 867,882 of 1,604,784 = 54·08%
Sweden 51,614 of 325,000 = 15·88%
France 157,220 of 1,384,633 = 11·35%
KSA 127,541 of 1,106,398 = 10·99%
USA 2,162,261 of 24,795,407 = 8·72%
Singapore 40,818 of 488,695 = 8·35%
Switzerland 31,131 of 461,128 = 6·75%
Spain 291,008 of 4,826,516 = 6·03%
India 333,255 of 5,774,133 = 5·77%
Italy 236,989 of 4,620,718 = 5·13%
UK 295,889 of 6,772,602 = 4·37%
Germany 187,671 of 4,694,147 = 4·00%
Russia 537,210 of 15,161,152 = 3·54%
South Korea 12,121 of 1,105,719 = 1·10%
Taiwan 445 of 74,409 = 0·60%
New Zealand 1,504 of 311,121 = 0·48%
Australia 7,335 of 1,830,665 = 0·40%
Hong Kong 1,113 of 275,293 = 0·40%
It shows that COVID-19 is far from over, something that we here in New Zealand need to be reminded of as we begin to rebuild. Still, nearby Fiji is also COVID-19-free, so perhaps we can begin having some travel with them?
Tags: 2020, Aotearoa, Brazil, China, COVID-19, health, India, New Zealand, Russia, statistics
Posted in China, India, New Zealand, Sweden | No Comments »
01.05.2020
A lot of the world’s population has come together in the fight against COVID-19. Except Facebook, of course, who is exploiting the virus for profit. Facebook has done well in the first quarter of 2020 with positive earnings. Freedom From Facebook & Google co-chairs Sarah Miller and David Segal note (the links are theirs): ‘Facebook has exploited a global pandemic to grow their monopoly and bottom line. They’ve profited from ads boasting fake cures and harmful information, allowed ad targeting to “pseudoscience” audiences, permitted anti-stay-at-home protests to organize on the platform, and are now launching a COVID “Data for Good” endeavour to harvest even more of our personal information.
‘Make no mistake, Facebook having more of your data is never “good”, nor will they just relinquish the collected data when the pandemic’s curve has been flattened. Rather, they’ll bank it and continue to profit from hyper-targeted ads for years to come.’
It’s been a few weeks (April 19 was my last post on this subject) since I last crunched these numbers but it does appear that overall, COVID-19 infections as a percentage of tests done are dropping, several countries excepting. Here is the source.
France 167,178 of 724,574 = 23·07%
UK 171,253 of 901,905 = 18·99%
Sweden 21,092 of 119,500 = 17·65%
USA 1,095,304 of 6,391,887 = 17·14%
Spain 239,639 of 1,455,306 = 16·47%
Singapore 17,101 of 143,919 = 11·88%
KSA 22,753 of 200,000 = 11·38%
Switzerland 29,586 of 266,200 = 11·11%
Italy 205,463 of 1,979,217 = 10·38%
Germany 163,009 of 2,547,052 = 6·40%
South Korea 10,774 of 623,069 = 1·73%
Australia 6,766 of 581,941 = 1·16%
New Zealand 1,479 of 139,898 = 1·06%
Taiwan 429 of 63,340 = 0·68%
Hong Kong 1,038 of 154,989 = 0·67%
Emmerdale fans will never forgive me. I’ve not been one to watch British soaps, finding them uninteresting. However, in this household, we have had Emmerdale on since it’s scheduled between TV1’s midday bulletin and the 1 p.m. government press conference on COVID-19, or, as some of us call it, The Ashley Bloomfield Show, named for our director-general of health who not only has to put up with all of this, but took a hit to one-fifth of his pay cheque. Naturally, one sings along to the Emmerdale theme, except I have no clue about its lyrics. Are there lyrics?
Not a single like on Twitter or Mastodon. I’ve offended a heck of a lot of people.
We are supposedly at Level 3, which someone said was Level 4 (the full lockdown) with takeaways. However, we’ve gone from the 1960s-style near-empty motorways to this almost immediately.
Tags: 2020, Aotearoa, COVID-19, deception, exploitation, Facebook, health, humour, ITV, Mastodon, media, music, New Zealand, news, photography, privacy, statistics, TVNZ, Twitter, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara
Posted in business, culture, humour, internet, media, New Zealand, TV, Wellington | No Comments »
16.04.2020
Don’t worry, I won’t make this too regular, but as I had done some more number-crunching of the available stats during the daytime, I thought I’d share them. I’ve noticed that some countries update their test numbers on a less regular basis, e.g. France, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland, though Worldometers now has updated ones since my last COVID-19 post. France’s test figure hasn’t changed, so we can safely conclude that its infection rate as a percentage of tests done is lower than what’s cited below. The same applies to Singapore.
New Zealand has dipped below 2 per cent, finally, but thanks to rounding it’s cited as 2·00 per cent below. These figures include what Dr Ashley Bloomfield announced an hour ago. Happily, the US has started to see a fall since I last did these figures—there’s one post I didn’t write even though I had the calculations ready (it was too late at night for me to compose something cogent). Goes to show how quickly the landscape changes.
I had overestimated the number of tests Sweden had done: it turns out they haven’t increased in number at the same rate as the fortnight before, though my use of 75,000 in the previous table wasn’t far off. Despite my overestimation, their infection rate continues to rise.
The UK has also risen but not at the same rate, though judging by Twitter there, some are questioning whether deaths in aged care facilities are being included.
Germany should be happy with its rate going from the 9s into the 7s.
France 147,863 of 333,807 = 44·30%*
Spain 180,659 of 650,755 = 27·76%
UK 98,476 of 398,916 = 24·69%
USA 644,089 of 3,258,879 = 19·76%
Sweden 11,927 of 74,600 = 15·99%
Italy 165,155 of 1,117,404 = 14·78%
Switzerland 26,336 of 199,000 = 13·23%
Germany 134,753 of 1,728,357 = 7·80%
Singapore 3,699 of 72,680 = 5·09%*
KSA 5,862 of 150,000 = 3·91%
New Zealand 1,401 of 70,160 = 2·00%
South Korea 10,613 of 538,775 = 1·97%
Australia 6,462 of 377,024 = 1·71%
Hong Kong 1,017 of 116,273 = 0·87%
Taiwan 395 of 49,748 = 0·79%
* Test number has not been updated
Tags: 2020, Aotearoa, COVID-19, France, Germany, health, New Zealand, Singapore, statistics, Sweden, UK, USA
Posted in France, New Zealand, Sweden, UK, USA | No Comments »
13.04.2020
I can cite these COVID-19 calculations (infections as a proportion of tests done) with a bit more confidence than the last lot, where many countries’ testing figures had not updated. I see the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has released its total test numbers now, and they show a pretty good result, too.
Compared to my post of the 7th inst., there are improvements in France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany, while Spain has shown a marked and positive improvement (from 39·58 per cent to 28·25 per cent).
The UK’s delay and its initial reliance on herd immunity, with sycophants up and down the country agreeing, is showing up now as its number grows slightly, from 20·4 per cent on the 7th to 23·88 per cent with the latest data.
The US’s numbers are holding fairly steadily with an increase of 0·8 per cent since the 7th (to 19·78 per cent).
Sweden’s total test figure is one of two inaccurate ones here, having remained unchanged since the last tables, which obviously cannot be right. I estimate they have done around 75,000 tests so far, which would bring the figure to 13·98 per cent, fairly close to the 7th’s, rather than the 19·16 per cent that the Worldometers’ table would have me calculate.
Also statistically similar are Switzerland, South Korea, Australia and Hong Kong, though Hong Kong’s total test figure is also inaccurate (unchanged from the 7th). Singapore is showing a rise with the reports of community transmission. New Zealand is showing a small drop (2·71 to 2·15 per cent), though the percentage change here is less than what the US’s is.
Taiwan continues to see its percentage decline with another 8,000 tests done and only an additional 17 infections since the 7th’s post.
France 132,591 of 333,807 = 39·72%
Spain 169,496 of 600,000 = 28·25%
UK 84,279 of 352,974 = 23·88%
USA 560,433 of 2,833,112 = 19·78%
Italy 156,363 of 1,010,193 = 15·48%
Sweden 10,483 of c. 75,000 = c. 13·98%*
Switzerland 25,449 of 193,800 = 13·13%
Germany 127,854 of 1,317,887 = 9·70%
KSA 4,462 of 115,585 = 3·86%
Singapore 2,532 of 72,680 = 3·48%
New Zealand 1,349 of 62,827 = 2·15%
South Korea 10,537 of 514,621 = 2·05%
Australia 6,359 of 362,136 = 1·76%
Hong Kong 1,010 of 96,709 = 1·04%*
Taiwan 393 of 47,215 = 0·83%
Tags: 2020, Aotearoa, Australia, COVID-19, Europe, France, Germany, health, Hong Kong, Italy, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, statistics, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK, USA
Posted in China, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Sweden, UK, USA | No Comments »
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