Fun With Statistics

As some of you may know, one of my interests is reviewing books. I have had my reviews featured as far away as New Orleans, but try as I might, I do not seem to be able to attract the attention of the local newspaper, in fact they did not even have the courtesy to acknowledge my communication with them. Now that's just damn rude. It does not cost anything to write back and say 'no we are not interested'.


I decided to do some investigating, OK, I will fess up, I was bored, and I thought this might be fun! Alexa.com is a site that ranks and monitors web sites, it is a great source for information. Better still it displays the data in a graphical format.


My first exploration was to compare the popularity of the Calgary Herald with the two online sites that I write for (www.bloggernews.net and www.blogcritics.com ).

You really do not need to have a PhD in math to see that the green line (Blogcritics) is much more popular than the red line (The Calgary Herald).

My next adventure was to include one of the sites that my reviews get syndicated to (The Times-Picayune New Orleans).

Hahaha as you can see The Calgary Herald is once again a very poor third.

You would think that the local newspaper would be interested in carrying locally written articles, but that is not the case. Calgary is a city with a population of over one million. That's a big market, one would think that with such a large market the local paper would look for local talent, but alas that is not the case.

I must admit that I am pissed off, I can get published with the big league, but can not even get a job as bat boy with the local team!