From: edc@evolution.bchs.uh.edu (edward s. chen)
Subject: Re: Readership Statistics
Organization: Little to none, or maybe not......
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 19:53:59 GMT

In article <1asnl9INN7g1@master.cs.rose-hulman.edu> williasr@NeXTwork.Rose-Hulman.Edu (Steven R. Williams) writes:

        +-- Estimated total number of people who read the group, worldwide.
        |     +-- Actual number of readers in sampled population
        |     |     +-- Propagation: how many sites receive this group at all
        |     |     |      +-- Recent traffic (messages per month)
        |     |     |      |      +-- Recent traffic (kilobytes per month)
        |     |     |      |      |      +-- Crossposting percentage
        |     |     |      |      |      |    +-- Cost ratio: $US/month/rdr
        |     |     |      |      |      |    |      +-- Share: % of newsrders
        |     |     |      |      |      |    |      |   who read this group.
        V     V     V      V      V      V    V      V

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 517  17000   560   73%   478   762.1     1%  0.06   1.2%  rec.music.beatles

[1]
(plenty deleted)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 505  33000   722   74%   339   601.0     0%  0.04   1.3%  rec.music.beatles
[4]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] The numbers for r.m.b. - September 1992
[...]
[4] The numbers for r.m.b. - August 1992

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since I'm the one who posts them, sure.

For the exact details, I point you to the group news.lists, where almost any
conceivable statistic on "the net" is posted monthly.  Earlier this year there
were a number of "how many people read r.m.b. anyway?" type of questions, so
I excerpted the appropriate numbers, and posted them, and have been doing so
on a monthly basis.

The numbers marked "estimated" are very rough, as only a small percentage of 
sites actually on the net do, so these numbers will be *way* off.  It would be
much more reasonable to look at some of the reported data rather then the
entire thing:

1) Actual number of readers in sampled population:
    Which (in English) means - "of the sites reporting data to the collecting
    center, how many people read, looked at, or even hit 'n' for at least one
    message in r.m.b."  This shows a definite decrease from last month
    to this one (560 vs. 722)

2) Propagation: how many sites receive this group at all
    Translated means - "what percentage of legitimate sites receiving Usenet
    news receive the group r.m.b."  This has also decreased somewhat.

3) Share: % of newsrders who read this group.
    Which tells you something about the sample size, when compared with (1).

(The position of the newsgroup in relation to other newsgroups is also a 
good indicator)

So, it is not quite so simple as 

>the numbers of readers has dropped from 33,000 to 17,000 in one month

The decrease in estimated readers has a number of causes, two of which are:

1)  The estimated size of the net decreased from 55,500 to 46,700 during that
    month

2)  The number of sites receiving r.m.b. decreased during the last month

The upshot (to me) is that there was a decrease in people reading 
rec.music.beatles, but it is a 10% decrease rather then the 40% implied by
the "Estimated total number of people who read the group, worldwide" statistic.

<ESC>
-- 
..You either kiss the future or the past goodbye...
                          -- Ringo Starr (written by O'Deherty / Velez)

                                
Newsgroups: rec.music.beatles