It seems like about fifteen minutes ago I was looking over how 2018 treated my mathematics blog. But who am I to argue with the calendar? I have a hard enough time convincing the calendar that 1998 was at most eight years ago. My arguments are useless. Look, I clearly remember watching Star Trek Nemesis, opening weekend, alone except for the friend I talked into seeing this with, and there is no possible way that this was one minute more than six years ago. Well, here’s what I can say about my readership and how much blame I can take for it, within the scope of the first month of 2019.
I posted twelve things in January, and two of them were looks at what was popular previously. Considering that, though, people were interested. I suspect it’s spillover of the A-To-Z posts. There were 1,375 pages viewed, down a little from December’s 1,409 and November’s 1,611. Considering how much less effort January was, this seems like a great tradeoff. There were 856 unique visitors, compared to December’s 875 and November’s 847. In November I had 23 posts and December 17, so I’m at least being very efficient, per post, at drawing readers. I hadn’t had a 12-post month since July, when there were 1,058 page views and 668 unique visitors. Probably people were hanging around hoping to see more A-To-Z grade stuff.
The number of items liked dropped to 63. There had been 82 in December and 85 in November. Again, per post, that’s a pretty good rate of growth. There were 22 comments, up from December’s 17, down from November’s 36, and still pretty close to nothing when you consider I try to answer every comment, so half of all that writing is just me.
There was an outright surprise among the most popular posts of the month. Do you see which one doesn’t seem to belong here? And can you spot in which one I originally wrote ‘2018’ in the subject line, and corrected it, but it’s too much trouble to correct a WordPress URL for me to bother with?
- How Many Grooves Are On A Record’s Side?
- Theorem Thursday: The Five-Color Map Theorem
- Reading the Comics, January 5, 2019: Start of the Year Edition
- Reading the Comics, January 12, 2019: A Edition
- Reading the Comics, January 1, 2019: New Year’s Day Edition
Well, I’m delighted to see interest in the Five-Color Map theorem. It’s not so famous as the (correct) Four-Color Map theorem. But it’s one with a proof a normal mortal can follow.
The Insights panel tells me there were an average of 1.9 comments per post, through the end of January. 4.8 average likes per post, too. There were a meager 11,588 words posted in January, but that still averages to 966 words per post. That’s down from the 2018 average. It’s still my second-highest word count, though. It’s all right. I’ve thought of some things I could post that would be amusing and quite short to write, and that require I do calculations that might be fun in my spare time. This supposes that I have spare time.
How about the running of the countries?
| Country | Readers |
|---|---|
| United States | 835 |
| Canada | 84 |
| United Kingdom | 61 |
| India | 60 |
| Philippines | 54 |
| Denmark | 26 |
| Italy | 21 |
| American Samoa | 18 |
| Macedonia | 18 |
| Slovenia | 18 |
| Germany | 17 |
| Australia | 13 |
| Poland | 11 |
| Netherlands | 10 |
| Ireland | 9 |
| Singapore | 9 |
| South Africa | 7 |
| Brazil | 6 |
| Croatia | 6 |
| Sweden | 6 |
| United Arab Emirates | 6 |
| France | 5 |
| Malaysia | 5 |
| New Zealand | 5 |
| Czech Republic | 4 |
| Indonesia | 4 |
| Israel | 4 |
| Mexico | 4 |
| Turkey | 4 |
| European Union | 3 |
| Pakistan | 3 |
| Romania | 3 |
| Russia | 3 |
| Spain | 3 |
| Taiwan | 3 |
| Bangladesh | 2 |
| Nepal | 2 |
| Norway | 2 |
| Argentina | 1 (*) |
| Austria | 1 |
| Bosnia & Herzegovina | 1 |
| Chile | 1 |
| Colombia | 1 (*****) |
| Ecuador | 1 |
| Finland | 1 |
| Georgia | 1 |
| Greece | 1 |
| Hong Kong SAR China | 1 |
| Iraq | 1 (*) |
| Jamaica | 1 |
| Japan | 1 (*) |
| Jordan | 1 (*) |
| Kazakhstan | 1 |
| Lithuania | 1 |
| Morocco | 1 |
| Saudi Arabia | 1 (**) |
| Switzerland | 1 |
| Thailand | 1 |
| Ukraine | 1 |
There were 59 countries listed as sending me any readers in January. That’s way down from December’s 68 and November’s 70. 19 of them were single-reader countries, up from December’s 17 and November’s 13. Argentina, Iraq, Japan, and Jordan were single-reader countries last month too. Saudi Arabia’s been a single-reader country for three months now. Colombia’s on a six-month streak now. I could swear Colombia has done this before, too, although good luck my finding the time when. Searching for ‘Colombia’ in my archives is not as helpful as you might imagine. Oh, I can find a time in late 2015 through early 2016 when I had a single European Union reader each month, six months in a row. Maybe that’s what I was thinking of.
I began the month having ever had 74,290 page views, from an acknowledged 37,119 unique readers. I’m glad you’re one of them, at least right now. You can put my posts in your RSS reader and enjoy them at your convenience. If you do that, you won’t show up in any of my statistics. I’ll never know you read any of this unless you comment. And that’s fine by me. I’m happy with people keeping their privacy. If you’re using WordPress regularly you can also add me to your WordPress Reader. That’s from the button at the upper-right corner of the page. On Twitter I’m @Nebusj. and at least once a week I go around Reading the Comics for the mathematics stuff. Thanks for being here.
