Stats

CatSynth 4th Anniversary

Another year has past since we started this site four years ago.  Thanks to everyone who already wished us a happy anniversary, and to the folks at the Cat Blogosphere for their shout-out today.

And just as we have with previous anniversaries, we are celebrating with statistics of questionable import.

Over the past four years, we have written 1220 posts, and readers have contributed 6699 comments.  We have received 293,916 visits.  This comes out to about 5.5 comments per post, and about 43 visits for every one comment left.  We also have about 270 “catsynth pic” or “catsynth video” posts.  Make of these numbers what you will.

In terms of tags and categories, there are not really any surprises.  These top terms do reflect what the site continues to be about:

Cats (cat) 704
Synthesizers 449
Luna 277
Music 246
Art 190
weekend cat blogging 183
WCB 181
San Francisco 160
Personal 153
News 151
Wordless Wednesday 147
Reviews 134
Photography 132
Modernism 91
Highways 82
Art 74
analog 74
video 74
cats on tuesday 70
electronic music 62
synth 62
performance 55
carnival of the cats 45
Travel 45
black cat 44

We now turn to stats specific to the past year.  The top five days for visits since July 19, 2009 are:

November 6, 2009 1036
April 18, 2010 859
May 11, 2010 808
October 15, 2009 787
March 22, 2010 780

Hmm, November 6, 2009.  Who knew our post on Reconnaissance Fly and Noertker’s Moxie at the SIMM Series would get so much attention 🙂

The posts that received the most comments over the past year:

Wordless Wednesday: Morning Sunshine 36
Wordless Wednesday: Cooper River Bridge, South Carolina 32
Wordless Wednesday:  High Line 32
Dona Nobis Pacem: Blogblast for Peace! 31
Wordless Wednesday: Asians.com 28
Wordless Wednesday:  Bay Bridge from Pier 14 25
Wordless Wednesday: Yan’an Elevated Road, Shanghai 25
Wordless Wednesday:  Before Winter 24
Wordless Wednesday: 5946 (Vacant Lot, California) 24
Wordless Wednesday:  Three Circles 23
Wordless Wednesday: Coffee Cup on the Patio 23

And the top commenters over the past year:

kitty 203
Mickey 143
CatSynth 96
Gattina 75
SandyCarlson 51
Sukhmandir Kaur 50
Robin from Israel 38
Beth @ 990 Square 37
Katz (And Other) Tales 32
cindy 31
AVCr8teur 30
jams o donnell 47
Carver 26
Sniffie and the Florida Furkids 23
Beth F 23
Cats of Wildcat Woods 22
Ms. Latina 20
Snowcatcher 19
Digital Flower 18
Susan Adcox 18
Cafe Au Lait 17
The Chair Speaks 16
Harry Spotter 16
Jewelgirls Katz 15
Judi 15
Nikita Cat 15
jason 12

These are the stats that change the most from year to year, as we welcome new readers and others fade away for any number of reasons.  One interesting thing to note is our two top commenters (who have retained those spots for the last two years running) are both from Canada.

Our Facebook page gives us a new source of questionable stats to reflect upon.  We have received  about 30 contributions (pictures or videos).  The city with the most declared CatSynth fans is New York.  The countries with the most fans (after the United States) are Canada, the United Kingdom, and Finland.  These are all plausible, but I am a bit skeptical of Facebook’s data gathering and presentation tools.

Thanks to everyone who has read and supported us, wherever you happen to be, and we’ll look forward to more over the next year…

Fun with stats: The Year in Hate and Extremism

I heard this report last night on Fresh Air, and then went to read the original article at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Here are some not-so-fun statistics:

  • The number of hate groups in the U.S. has been going up for years, rising 54% between 2000 and 2008. The number of groups rose again slightly in 2009 — from 926 in 2008 to 932 last year — despite the demise of a key neo-Nazi group.
  • Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009.
  • An astonishing 363 new Patriot groups appeared in 2009, with the totals going from 149 groups (including 42 militias) to 512 (127 of them militias) — a 244% jump. (If you’re not familiar with what a “Patriot group” is, you can read more here.)
  • A new poll from Harris interactive finds that 40 percent of American adults think that Obama is a socialist; 25 percent believe that Obama was not born in the United States and is therefore not eligible to be president; 20 percent say Obama is doing many of the things that Hitler did; 14 percent say Obama “may be the Antichrist.”
  • According the SLPC’s map of extremist and hate groups, the state with the second largest number of groups, after Texas, is California.

It’s easy to forget sometimes, but your friends here at CatSynth could be targets for such groups. Far less of a danger than an auto accident, statistically speaking, but still…

CatSynth 3rd Anniversary

Well, this site has now been running for three years. And we’re marking the anniversary the best way we can think of: with stats of questionable significance.

886 posts.
195,501 visitors.
4638 comments.
Over 15,000 spam comments squashed.
Over 400 cat-and-synth pics and videos

The top 20 terms (a term is either a tag or a category or both):

Cats   516
cat   356
Synthesizers   297
Luna   215
synthesizer   185
Music   171
News   146
weekend cat blogging   136
WCB   134
Personal   120
Art   115
Wordless Wednesday   96
Modernism   72
San Francisco   68
synth   61
Photography   61
Highways   60
electronic music   52
Reviews   40
cats on tuesday   48

The 11 most commented posts:

Dona Nobis Pacem   48
Wordless Wednesday: La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona   43
"Wayback" Wordless Wednesday: Green Kitties   42
Wordless Wednesday: A Great Moment   41
Wordless Wednesday: Luna Sun Triangle   41
Dona Nobis Pacem: BlogBlast for Peace!   40
Wordless Wednesday: 43   39
Wordless Wednesday: Cat and Geometry   38
Wordless Wednesday: Centered Cat   37
Wordless Wednesday: Alley behind 49 Geary   37
Wordless Wednesday: Maneki Neko   37

And the top comment contributors:

Kitty   451
Mickey   179
CatSynth   138
Gattina   136
whaleshaman   81
Andrée   73
Daisy   71
Dragonheart & Merlin   71
sher   65
SandyCarlson   60
jams o donnell   44
The Right Blue   44
kitikata-san   42
Hendrix   41
parker   40
Matthew James Didier   40
Katie   32
Randall   31
HotMBC   30
Gandalf & Grayson   30
Dennis the Vizsla   30

This list includes sites that are no longer active, and at least one person who has passed away.

I did also go back and look at those early posts from July and August of 2006, expecting to reflect on how much things have changed over three years. But instead I found myself noticing how much things on the site have stayed the same…

Fun with stats: 100th Anniversary of Mother's Day

From the Associated Press:

55 percent of mothers are between the ages of 15 and 44.

81 percent of women between the ages of 40 and 44 are mothers. In 1976, 90 percent of women in that age group were mothers.

94.1 births per 1,000 is the number of births in Utah in 2006, the nation's highest. Vermont was the lowest with 52.2. West Virginia's was 58.3

10.4 million single mothers live with children younger than 18, up from 3.4 million in 1970.

83 percent of mothers who went back to work within a year of their child's birth returned to the same employer.

5.6 million is the number of stay-at-home moms in 2006.

And we have a winner (or two, or three)

Well, the visitor counter passed 15000 sometime after 9PM tonight.

And the winner is…well, it looks like it might be a tie (possibly a three-way tie). I'll announce names once I've successfully contacted and verified everyone.

How could there possibly be a tie for the 15000th visitor, you ask? Well, it looks like the counter might have a bit of an issue, especially for sites with a fair amount of traffic. I run a version of sphpblog, slightly tuned and modified for my own needs/interests. Indeed, that's how I was able to program in the “contest” to declare a winner when the counter hit 15000. However, the counter seems to have stayed at 15000 over three visits from three unique IP addresses, which resulted in a “tie.”

I have gone through the site logs to verify this; and I will honor the prize for each of the people who can legitimately claim to have “won.”

As for the counter, I will either have to write my own to replace the current one, or use one of those outside services. It looks like the total visits for CatSynth may have been severely undercounted because of this, and I might try some simple statistics to get a better estimate. Note that this only affects the internal site counter, not any of the outside services, like “Top 100s”, or ads.

Certainly a reminder to question the reliability of some other electronic counters out there:

Visitor 15000 Contest

Well, we are rapidly approaching visit 15,000. Not bad for a blog with such an esoteric theme that has provoked reactions like “now there is officially a website for everything.”

In honor of this milestone, we are planning to award the 15,000th visitor a free copy of my CD Aquatic and a $10 donation to the charity of his or her choice.

At the current rate, I would suspect 15000 will occur either Friday or Saturday, but it might be sooner. And RSS subscribers don't count, it's got to be a visit to this site that is logged for the counter. I just programmed in the award logic, so I know.

Good luck, and keep reading!

Fun with stats: search strings for April

The 20 most common search strings (out of 376 total) for the first week of April that lead people to CatSynth and my other websites:


1 	22 	3.49% 	mondrian
2 	15 	2.38% 	crazy cats
3 	15 	2.38% 	new world trade center
4 	8 	1.27% 	parabola
5 	6 	0.95% 	new world trade centers
6 	5 	0.79% 	New World Trade Center
7 	5 	0.79% 	betta splendens
8 	5 	0.79% 	breeding fighting fish
9 	5 	0.79% 	fishy
10 	5 	0.79% 	the new world trade center-
11 	4 	0.63% 	The Sphere WT-
12 	4 	0.63% 	black cat
13 	4 	0.63% 	cats fighting
14 	4 	0.63% 	cats musical
15 	4 	0.63% 	circuit bending
16 	4 	0.63% 	panther animal
17 	4 	0.63% 	piet mondrian
18 	4 	0.63% 	the new world trade center
19 	4 	0.63% 	vtech phone circuit bent
20 	3 	0.48% 	Mondrian

Up until this month, “Mondrian” in various combinations has topped the list, because of my popular Mondrian Machine page I did several years ago. More searches are now leading directly to CatSynth, including the variations on “New World Trade Center.” That one is a bit surprising. I did a rather lengthy article on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, and apparently it places quite well in Google's image search. Go figure.