I do try to get these monthly readership review posts done close to the start of the month. I was busy the 1st of the month, though, and had to fit around the End 2016 Mathematics A To Z. And then I meant to set this to post on Thursday, since I didn’t have anything else going that day, and forgot.
Readership Numbers:
The number of page views declined again in October, part of a trend that’s been steady since June. There were only 907 views, down a slight amount from September’s 922 or more significantly from August’s 1002. I’ll find my way back above a thousand in a month if I can. A To Z months are usually pretty good ones, possibly because of all the fresh posts reminding people I exist.
The number of unique visitors dropped to 536. There had been 576 in September, but then there were only 531 unique visitors in August, if you believe that sort of thing. The number of likes was 115, exactly the same as in September and slightly up from August’s 107. The number of comments rose to 24, up from September’s 20 and August’s 16. That’s certainly been helped by people making requests for the End 2016 Mathematics A To Z. But that counts too.
Popular Posts:
The most popular post of the month was a surprise to me and dates back to September of 2012, incredibly. I suspect someone on a popular web site linked to it and I never suspected. And the Reading the Comics posts were popular as ever.
- How Many Grooves Are On A Record’s Side? and boy do I need to get a better picture of that record. I’d taken a pretty chintzy one because I wanted to post the essay with a picture and I didn’t balance the color or anything.
- Reading the Comics, October 14, 2016: Classics Edition in which I surprise myself with how much I talk about polls.
- How Differential Calculus Works, a subsidiary piece to my “Why Stuff Can Orbit” series and that at least gets into how to do differentials.
- Reading the Comics, October 1, 2016: Jumble Is Back Edition featuring the puzzle feature.
- Reading the Comics, October 22, 2016: The Jokes You Can Make About Fractions Edition which also has another Jumble puzzle.
I’ve been trying to limit these most-popular posts to just five pieces. But How Mathematical Physics Works was the next piece to make the top ten and I am proud of it, so there.
Listing Countries:
Where did my readers come from in October? All over, but mostly, from 46 particular countries. Here’s the oddly popular list of them:
| Country | Readers |
|---|---|
| United States | 466 |
| United Kingdom | 78 |
| Philippines | 55 |
| India | 52 |
| Canada | 32 |
| Germany | 27 |
| Austria | 23 |
| Puerto Rico | 19 |
| Australia | 14 |
| France | 12 |
| Slovenia | 10 |
| Spain | 9 |
| Brazil | 7 |
| Netherlands | 7 |
| Italy | 6 |
| New Zealand | 5 |
| Singapore | 5 |
| Denmark | 4 |
| Sweden | 4 |
| Bulgaria | 3 |
| Poland | 3 |
| Serbia | 3 |
| Argentina | 2 |
| European Union | 2 |
| Indonesia | 2 |
| Norway | 2 |
| Bahamas | 1 |
| Belgium | 1 |
| Czech Republic | 1 (**) |
| Estonia | 1 (*) |
| Finland | 1 |
| Greece | 1 |
| Ireland | 1 |
| Israel | 1 |
| Jamaica | 1 |
| Japan | 1 |
| Mexico | 1 |
| Portugal | 1 (*) |
| Russia | 1 |
| Saudi Arabia | 1 |
| Slovakia | 1 |
| South Africa | 1 |
| Ukraine | 1 |
| United Arab Emirates | 1 |
| Uruguay | 1 |
| Zambia | 1 |
Estonia and Portugal are on two-month streaks as single-read countries. The Czech Republic’s on a three-month streak so. Nobody’s on a four-month streak, not yet.
Search Term Non-Poetry:
Once again it wasn’t a truly poetic sort of month. But it was one that taught me what people are looking for, and it’s comics about James Clerk Maxwell. Look at these queries:
- comic strips of the scientist maxwell
- comics trip of james clerk maxwell
- comics about maxwell the scientist
- james clerk maxwell comics trip
- log 10 times 10 to the derivative of 10000
- problems with vinyl lp with too many grooves
- comics about integers
- comic strip in advance algebra
I admit I don’t know why someone sees James Clerk Maxwell as a figure for a comics trip. He’s famous for the laws of electromagnetism, of course. Also for great work in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Also for color photography. And explaining how the rings of Saturn could work. And for working out the physics of truss bridges, which may sound boring but is important. Great subject for a biography. Just, a comic?
Counting Readers:
November sees the blog start with 42,250 page views, from 17,747 unique visitors if you can believe that. I’m surprised the mathematics blog still has a higher view count than my humor blog has, just now. That one’s consistently more popular; this one’s just been around longer.
WordPress says I started November with 626 followers, barely up from October’s 624. If you have wanted to follow me, there’s a button on the upper-right corner of the blog for that, at least until I change to a different theme. Also if you know a WordPress theme that would work better for the kind of blog I write let me know. I have a vague itch to change things around and that always precedes trouble. Also you can follow me on Twitter, @Nebusj, or check that out to make sure I’m not one of those people who somehow is hard to Twitter-read.
According to the “Insights” tab my readership’s largest on Sundays, which makes sense. I’ve standardized on Sundays for the Reading the Comics essays. That gets 18 percent of page views, slightly more than one in seven views. The most popular hour is again 6 pm, I assume Universal Time. 14 percent of page views come in that hour. That’s the same percentage as last month and it must reflect when my standard posting hour is.
nebusresearch 
Perhaps your wide readership shows that mathematics is a universal language?
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Conceivable! Although I suppose I’ve probably hit on a couple of topics that people are perennially if slightly looking for. And I have the advantage of writing in English, which so much of the Internet still depends upon. (I suppose it can’t hurt I’ve been trying to write sentences easier to understand, which is good for all readers as long as I don’t get simpler than the idea I mean to express.)
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Popularising maths and the sciences is a valuable art – long may you continue!
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