October 2014 was my fourth-best month in the mathematics blog here, if by “best” we mean “has a number of page views”, and second-best if by “best” we mean “has a number of unique visitors”. And now November 2014 has taken October’s place on both counts, by having bigger numbers for both page views and visitors, as WordPress reveals such things to me. Don’t tell October; that’d just hurt its feelings. Plus, I got to the 19,000th page view, and as of right now I’m sitting at 19,181; it’s conceivable I might reach my 20,000th viewer this month, though that would be a slight stretch.
But the total number of page views grew from 625 up to 674, and the total number of visitors from 323 to 366. The number of page views is the highest since May 2014 (751), although this is the greatest number of visitors since January 2014 (473), the second month when WordPress started revealing those numbers to us mere bloggers. I like the trends, though; since June the number of visitors has been growing at a pretty steady rate, although steadily enough I can’t say whether it’s an arithmetic or geometric progression. (In an arithmetic progression, the difference between two successive numbers is about constant, for example: 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40. In a geometric progression, the ratio between two successive numbers is about constant, for example: 10, 15, 23, 35, 53, 80, 120.) Views per visitor dropped from 1.93 to 1.84, although I’m not sure even that is a really significant difference.
The countries sending me the most readers were just about the same set as last month: the United States at 458; Canada recovering from a weak October with 27 viewers; Argentina at 20; Austria and the United Kingdom tied at 19; Australia at 17; Germany at 16 and Puerto Rico at 14.
Sending only one reader this month were: Belgium, Bermuda, Croatia, Estonia, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Italy, Lebanon, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, Oman, the Philippines, Romania, Singapore, South Korea, and Sweden. (Really, Singapore? I’m a little hurt. I used to live there.) The countries repeating that from October were Estonia, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden; Sweden’s going on three months with just a single reader each. I don’t know what’s got me only slightly read in Scandinavia and the Balkans.
My most-read articles for November were pretty heavily biased towards the comics, with a side interest in that Pythagorean triangle problem with an inscribed circle. Elke Stangl had wondered about the longevity of my most popular posts, and I was curious too, so I’m including in brackets a note about the number of days between the first and the last view which WordPress has on record. This isn’t a perfect measure of longevity, especially for the most recent posts, but it’s a start.
- [9] Reading The Comics, November 4, 2014: Will Pictures Ever Reappear Edition (you have to understand, there were a lot of comics roundups where I didn’t have any images to share)
- [957] How Many Trapezoids I Can Draw (six that are any different, really)
- [11] Reading The Comics, November 9, 2014: Finally, A Picture Edition (so the answer above was “yes”)
- [3] Reading the Comics, November 28, 2014: Greatest Hits Edition? (now how did it get to be one of the most popular of the month when it had two and a half days to do it?)
- [15] Reading The Comics, November 14, 2014: Rectangular States Edition (do you suppose this one feels under-performing given the popularity of the November 28 edition?)
- [11] Reading the Comics, November 20, 2014: Ancient Events Edition (which is noteworthy because it allowed me to work “proleptic” into my essay)
- [12] Echoing “Fourier Echoes Euler” (about a neat trigonometric identity that amuses me)
- [13] About An Inscribed Circle (pointing to that Pythagorean triangle problem)
- [7] No Conjecture For 19,000 (a milestone piece and a promise for a future essay)
- [8] Another Reason Why It’s Got To Be 2 (one of the geometric-based arguments about that Pythagorean triangle problem)
As ever there’s no good search term poetry, but among the things that brought people here were:
- trapezoid
- how many grooves are on one side of an lp record?
- origin is the gateway to your entire gaming universe.
- cauchy funny things done
- trapezoid funny
- yet another day with no plans to use algebra
Won’t lie; that last one feels a little personal. But the “origin is the gateway” thing keeps turning up and I don’t know why. I’d try to search for it but that’d just bring me back here, leaving me no more knowledgeable, wouldn’t it?
nebusresearch 