Thursday, September 16, 2010

Stats Follow-Up

I wrote here about being a Data Girl, and how frustrating it is to realize that I cannot reliably predict any aspect of this job with any kind of detail. In general, I can track averages, but (a) I can rough-guess those based on gut-level impressions and eyeballing raw numbers, and (b) that's disappointingly boring.

But my saving hope was the "Stats" tab on the blog. At least I could analyze web traffic and predict reader trends, right? Do my Twitter posts correlate with a rise in readership? Does my call volume increase when I have more readers? Do I get more traffic on weekends? Do more posts convert to more page views? Surely? Please?

No. NO. Did you hear that, I said no. Grrrrrrrrrr. Not at all. There is not one bit of predictable correlation between any of the factors mentioned in the previous paragraph. I've tried to find them. I've stretched. I've gone beyond standard deviations into very non-standard ones and what have I found? Correlations just ain't there.

You know what? Fuck you, Stats Tab. Fuck you, with your sweetly whispered broken promises. Just... Fuck you in half.

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