Xref: utzoo news.groups:12503 news.misc:3647 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!pacbell!indetech!david From: david@indetech.com (David Kuder) Newsgroups: news.groups,news.misc Subject: Re: accuracy of arbitron "reader" data Summary: Beg for better data Message-ID: <1989Sep23.204749.24369@indetech.com> Date: 23 Sep 89 20:47:49 GMT References: <18401@looking.on.ca> <790@uvaarpa.virginia.edu> <34921@apple.Apple.COM> <19376@looking.on.ca> Reply-To: david@indetech.com (David Kuder) Organization: Independence Technologies, Inc. Fremont, CA Lines: 32 In article <19376@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: >71,000 for rec.humor.funny? Not a chance in the world. If you want a better number why not ask for it. Just post a demand in your playground/newsgroup. Ask every reader to send you e-mail to some address that has a counter on it. >But all this is not important in calculating readers per site, unless >you feel that the readers/site figure for arbitron sites is extremely >atypical. NNTP doesn't affect this figure, other than to plump it >up, since adding reports for sites that read by NNTP would add >thousands of single-user sites that can't possibly increase the >readers/site figure over 1. Well, the problem is "feel". I may feel that the readers/site from Brian's data is bogus while you feel otherwise. We won't be able agree because it isn't great data. The selection mechanism is poor, the data collected overlooks at one mechanism for reading news, the definition of site is strange (any thing that ever showed up in a "Path:", we used to send out workstation names here while running arbitron from our server, what's that do to the numbers), the timeliness of the data is queer (we last sent in an arbitron about 3 months ago, this will probably be the first month since then that we aren't counted), and there are all the things Brian lists himself. Not that any of this makes the data less interesting. It is interesting. It just isn't good enough to prove anything. You, Mr. Survey, ought to know better than putting trust in anything collected from the net. -- David A. Kuder david@indetech.com 415 438-2003 {sun,sharkey,pacbell}!indetech!david