Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!m2c!ulowell!page
From: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: comp.sys.amiga.tech vote ABOUT TO FAIL!
Message-ID: <5965@swan.ulowell.edu>
Date: 4 Apr 88 15:09:39 GMT
Reply-To: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Organization: University of Lowell, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 34

Brian Reid's "arbitron" report just came out (see news.lists & news.groups),
and it was pretty interesting.  Thought you might like to see a highlight:

Subject: TOP 40 NEWSGROUPS IN ORDER BY POPULARITY (MAR 88)
Message-ID: <12417@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: 3 Apr 88 03:41:57 GMT

TOP 40 NEWSGROUPS IN ORDER BY POPULARITY
A companion posting explains the statistics and the algorithms that produced
them.

  +-- Rank
  |    +-- 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)
  |    |     |     |      |     |      +-- Participation ratio
  |    |     |     |      |     |      |    +-- Cost ratio: $US/month/reader
  |    |     |     |      |     |      |    |       +-- Share: % of newsreaders
  |    |     |     |      |     |      |    |       |   who read this group.
  V    V     V     V      V     V      V    V       V
 13 21000  1637   97%   168  306.2     8   0.10    8.8%  comp.sys.amiga.tech

Analysis: almost 9% of the net reads amiga.tech
	  over 21000 readers (8K more than comp.sys.amiga)
	  97% of the sites on the net get it.

Yes, I understand some of the problems with Arbitron's "self-selected
sample," but it's still not bad for an unofficial newsgroup.

..Bob
-- 
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept.  page@swan.ulowell.edu  ulowell!page