Fun with Stats: CatSynth 2006 Year in Review

What better way to reflect upon the year than with marginally meaningful statistics?

The following table represents the frequency of tags in all 2006 articles on CatSynth.com (except for this one). Tags are either those funny words at the bottom of every post or the category names that follow the dateline at the top of every post.

With 285 distinct tags during 2006, it is rather difficult to show them all in the graph above. However, most are only used once. As can be seen in the following pie chart (hey, who doesn't love a good pie chart?), the top 15 tags account for almost 50%:

Here are the top 33 tags for 2006:

cats			85
synthesizers 54
news 34
music 33
luna 26
weekend cat blogging 20
worthless kitty 17
kitty 17
art 17
wcb 14
new orleans 9
photography 9
experimental 8
electronic music 8
lebanon 7
modernism 7
osw 6
emulator x 6
stats 6
kitties 6
e-mu 5
beirut 5
fun with stats 5
podcast 5
jazz 4
computer music 4
analog 4
improvisation 4
open sound world 4
funk 4
sculpture 4
mathematics 4
resonance 4

Happy New Year!



Fun with stats: Holiday Edition

From John Battelle's Searchblog, we have some self-described “fun stats for the holiday:”

If you were expecting something more directly apropos of the holiday season, consider a few of these gems courtesy of New American Dream:

* A typical middle income family earning around $45,000 a year saw its debt burden grow by 33.1% between 2001 and 2004, even after adjusting for inflation.

* Recent statistics show that in November of 2003 54% of consumers were still paying off credit card debt left over from the previous holiday season.

* The amount of household garbage in the United States generally increases by 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, from 4 million tons to 5 million tons.

* 50 million Christmas trees are purchased in the U.S. Of those, 30-plus million get carted to the landfill every year.

* The National Mental Health Association cites the financial stresses of the holiday season as one cause of the ?holiday blues? which, for many, transforms the holidays into a time of anxiety and depression.

So folks, lay off the credit card debt for a bit, and spend some more time with your family and friends, both furry and not so furry.

Maybe give a little something to your local animal shelter, too. You can find shelters and other organizations near you on Petfinder.



Fun with stats: 10 most rated articles

Here are the ten highest-rated posts based on 90 ratings as of this morning:

the inaugural post (5.00).
moring walk and sea lion (4.33).
In memoriam, Ruth Schonthal (1924-2006), composer and teacher (4.33).
DSI Evolver legal again in Kansas public schools (4.00).
getting ready for tomorrow's performance, part 1 (4.00).
Cat Welfare Society of Israel (4.00).
fun with Emulator X and filter response (3.83).
Luna and table in black and white (3.50).
Green Kitties (3.29).
shades of luna (3.17).

No one has left any comments, so I'm not entirely sure how to interpret any of this. But I'm pretty sure this post will get a very low rating…