Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics.......

Hullo ma wee blog,

Here are the all time top ten visited posts on the blog according to the stats on my blogger dashboard page.

Black Agnes - Dunbar, 1338           - 185 Pageviews

Icons of the Air............                   - 155 Pageviews

153 Sqn. 4th April 1945
- Gardening/Lutzkendorf.                -143 Pageviews

153 Sqn. Nov/Dec 1944                 - 142 Pageviews

153 Sqn. 9th/ 10th April 1945
 - Keil/Plauen                                 -120 Pageviews

Virus........                                       - 91 Pageviews

153 Sqn. 29th April 1945
 - 'Operation Manna'                      - 88 Pageviews

153 Sqn. Feb 23rd 1945
- Pforzheim                                    - 77 Pageviews

Hermitage Castle                           - 75 page views

153 Squadron 8th May 1945
- VE day to the end of 153 Sqdn... - 64 Pageviews

The top five posts in the last month have been;

Black Agnes - Dunbar, 1338  - 82 Pageviews
Of Mince and Men..........       - 54 Pageviews
1752 - James Of The Glen...  - 50 Pageviews
Today I took some photo's...  - 38 Pageviews
Hermitage Castle                   - 32 Pageviews

What this all means is anyone's guess. It would have plagued my old maths teacher who provided me with the post header more than I. He seemed very determined to drum into us that it was important not to take figures at face value, especially when presented by someone else, but to analyse, check and double check their findings to confirm that what they postulated was proven. He went to great pains to ensure we understood that context and perspective could skew figures to prove an incorrect argument. I remember wondering at the time if he had lost his one and only teenaged girlfriend to a statistician who was more persuasive than he. 'Bubbles', as I called him because he had a habit of forming tiny spit bubbles when he got excited explaining some equation or other, was not a particularly good maths teacher, or more likely that I wasn't a particularly good maths student. It depends on ones perspective really.

And why, for goodness sake, am I prattling on about all this anyway? I dunno really. I was thinking about the list of posts from a few days back that I had decided was most representative of the blog and wondered idly if my list of 'best posts of 2010' would be born out by evidence.

It wasn't, which just goes to show what I know........

Made me think though.

I can understand some of it. The RAF posts were all done in the early part of the year and since then the blog seems to have found its way onto some specialist sites as a point of reference about 153 Sqdn. I was getting quite a number of hits about them at one point and even now they can be very popular on a daily basis - and it reflects on where people who view the blog come from too. It's interesting why a post about someone relatively obscure like 'Black Agnes' would be so popular that it's the No1 post of last year. {well since blogger stats started recording in June anyway} It just goes to show what a diverse lot are out there in the blogosphere.

The top ten visitor countries since June;

United Kingdom 4,756

United States 1,974
Germany 725
Canada 444
Australia 364
Netherlands 221
New Zealand 170
Russia 151
Ukraine 114
Denmark 86

I don't actively advertise the blog anywhere. I'm not on twitter or face-pest. I just scribble down what comes to mind and punt it out there. Usually I have between 25 and 30 visitors a day {although the highest daily figure is 275!}. This year has seen the number of followers rise to 48 fabby, amazing, wonderful and possibly deluded folks, there have been almost 750 comments and replies to 199 posts {including this one} and I've enjoyed every moment of it.

Thanks for coming along for the ride. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. In fact I've had so much fun I think I'll do the same thing again next year.

See you later {hopefully}

Listening to Leonard Cohen, 'Dance me to the end of love'