Stilgherrian » statistics

Links for 22 October 2008 through 23 October 2008

del.icio.us — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:34:37 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 22 October 2008 through 23 October 2008, distilled from the finest ingredients:

How Not To Start A Corporate Blog: Telstra’s nowwearetalking Case Study | Richard Giles 2.0: Richard Giles has written a well-focussed piece about Telstra’s political-lobbying blog and the company’s behaviour, much of which overlaps with my own thoughts about Australia’s biggest telco.
Heather’s Creative Process | TwitPic: A nicely amusing diagram of one person’s “creative process”. I particularly like “Crying” in there.
Hangman, Spare That Word: The English Purge Their Language | TIME: A nice article explaining how difficult it is to purge old words from the dictionaries.
On-line transactions, streamed content, email and social networking signal changes in how Australians use the internet | ACMA: Latest statistics on how Australians use the Internet. Streaming video is now a top-2 or top-3 application, depending on the age group. 44% claim to have used the Internet to purchase airline tickets in the last 4 weeks. Can this be true?

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Links for 23 September 2008 through 25 September 2008

del.icio.us — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:37:51 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 23 September 2008 through 25 September 2008, scrubbed up with a wire brush:

Australia: Twitter statistics | Laurel Papworth: Twitter usage is up 518.12% in Australia, if you believe (1) that website traffic is the relevant metric, and (2) you can possibly measure this stuff to 5 significant figures.
Wotnews Australian News Search: Wotnews used to be called Plugger, but they’re now associated with Wotif in some way. Wotnews harvests news from over 3500 different sources including mainstream publishers, niche blogs, direct from companies and government bodies as well as from the relentless stream of company announcements coming out of the Australian Stock Exchange.
Tax Plans (that’s one for you, nineteen for me) | chartjunk: Viveka Weiley’s re-drawing of charts comparing John McCain and Barack Obama’s tax plans. The difference is pretty obvious.
Text Messages Seen as Dangerously Distracting | NYTimes.com: “The act of texting automatically removes 10 I.Q. points” and many other scare-quotes.

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The Digital Economy: just for big business?

Stilgherrian — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:27:04 +0000

[This article was first published in Crikey on Wednesday, based on Senator Conroy's keynote speech to the Digital Economy Forum. See below for updates.]

“The Rudd Government is focused on creating a platform for economic growth and is committed to leading and growing our digital economy,” generalised Senator Stephen Conroy as he opened the Digital Economy Forum in Melbourne [on Wednesday morning].

His keynote speech regurgitated budget promises, generously sprinkled with doubleplusgood words about “encouraging” figures and “driving innovation”.

Uh oh. A “Digital Economy Forum”? Already I’m seeing blokes in suits jostling for room at the trough of government largesse. So who’s at this all-day talkfest? Aha! The CEO of Fairfax Digital; reps from Cisco, Google and Intel; a past president of the Australian Computer Society, the CEO of the Australian Internet Industry Association (which overwhelmingly represents big players); the Research Director for Ovum (presumably representing their big clients)… all the usual suspects.

But if the government is truly committed to supporting innovation and economic growth, where’s the involvement from small business?

As the latest ABS figures remind us, “Most business entries (93%) continued to occur in the micro business population, which comprises non-employing businesses and businesses employing between 1-4 employees.” Despite news stories about “business” being illustrated with images of office towers, factories and coal mines, the median business is actually a sole trader, often working from home, perhaps with a part-time bookkeeper.

The Forum is a follow-up to workshops held in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne.

“A valuable opportunity for Government to hear from a range of stakeholders on the future directions of the digital economy,” Conroy said.

Stakeholders. I see blokes in suits again.

Let’s decode the Senator’s speech…

“Most stakeholders agreed about the importance of Government investments in the digital economy — in particular the National Broadband Network and the Digital Education Revolution.”

Translation: Yes, gifts of $4.7B and $1.2B would be nice.

“Participants also agreed that there is a key role to be played by the private sector by collaborating within industry and with the Government.”

Translation: Please give the money to us.

“Many participants argued that ‘industry development issues’ are critical.”

Translation: It’s critical that you give the money to us.

“The shortage of professional ICT skills was also a recurrent theme in all three workshops.”

Translation: We’d also like you to pay to train our staff.

“Ladies and gentlemen — and this is something I’ve been emphasising a lot of late — the Rudd Government hears the industry loud and clear on these issues.”

Translation: Yes, the taxpayers will bend over and you may rifle their pockets.

As we go to press, the forum’s still got half a day to run. But once the big end of town has finished gorging itself, I don’t think there’ll be much left for the 1,171,832 (58%) non-employing businesses, or the 755,758 who employ less than 20 employees but who make up 90% of employers.

Post-Crikey Update

As it turns out, there was some representation from small business.

Crikey commenter George Fong wrote:

A pity you were not there for the workshops. A pity you did not stay for the full event. A pity you did not stay for the discourse and robust exchanges between Dr Geneveive Bell, Greg Stone, Paul Twomey and others and The Minister himself on a one to one debate. And a pity you did not note the number of consumer advocacy organisations represented and contributing in the forum, including ATUG and ISOC-AU.

As a representative from Ballarat in regional/rural Victoria and as a person involved with small regional businesses (most of whom have less than 20 people and a turnover of less than $200,000pa), communities and individuals on both the supply and advocacy sides, I have not in a long time felt so optimistic that we finally have an opportunity to speak, to advocate and to participate meaningfully in the formulation Federal policy in relation to a way forward for the people and organisations we represent.

I agree, it’s a pity I wasn’t at the Forum at all, let alone “all day”. Crikey’s deadlines for a lunchtime email are such that articles need to be written before noon. I was writing in response to the Minister’s keynote and the promoted list of participants. It’s good to hear that there was discussion related to small business once things got going — and disappointing that only (mostly) big players get mentioned when such forums are promoted. I’d love to hear what the tangible results were.

Ian Birks, CEO of the AIIA, also took exception to my characterisation of his organisation.

Currently more than 300 of our 500 member companies have revenues under $5million — we advocate for the whole ICT industry and not just the big end of town.

I stand corrected, at least with regard to the claimed representation.

Still, a turnover of $5M is still a pretty decent business. My point is that the vast majority of new businesses are in the micro category. They’d be lucky to have a turnover of half a million, let alone ten times that. The AIIA’s members are also folks who are in the internet industry. What I’m interested in how businesses can be supported who are in the myriad other industries.

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Links for 23 August 2008 through 24 August 2008

del.icio.us — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:59:15 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 23 August 2008 through 24 August 2008, with shaved parmesan:

Medals per mil. Population by Country | Swivel: Sean Carmody continues his data mining on the Beijing Olympics that discover that the Bahamas is the highest medal winner per capita, followed by Jamaica, Slovenia, Australia and New Zealand.
Ohio Voting Machines Contained Programming Error That Dropped Votes | washingtonpost.com: “A voting system used in 34 [US] states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.” Yet another argument against computer-based voting.

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Links for 07 May 2008

del.icio.us — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:50:51 +0000

Here are the web links I’ve found for 07 May 2008, posted automatically.

Is Your Consumer Using Social Media? | Advertising Age: Nine Profiles of Who Your Targets Are and Where They Might Be Online
Staralicious: The guy behind this Australian-run celebrity gossip site was interviewed by 2web Crew today. The podcast should be online soon
RedZee: A new search engine (still in Beta) with a very cute animation on the home page and an interesting visualisation technique inside. Will this slow things down and annoy regular users? Or does it actually provide something of value? No time to explore today
The Inquisitr: a new website about "Tech, Pop and Penguins", or something, from former TechCrunch writer and damn nice guy Duncan Riley. good luck, mate!
the global microbrand rant | gapingvoid: Hugh MacLeod's excellent overview of how you can leverage yourself into a global brand using The Power of he Internet.
How Little Do Users Read? | Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox: On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.

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Links for 30 April 2008

del.icio.us — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:08:20 +0000

Here are the web links I’ve found over the last few days, posted a bit later than I’d intended. Cope.

Dissociative Identity Disorder | Wikipedia: This is what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. I'm reading about it because a friend was recently so diagnosed.
End Of Speculation: The Real Twitter Usage Numbers | TechCrunch: Michael Arrington's article begins: “Speculation about Twitter’s new round of financing is leading everyone to speculate on Twitter’s actual penetration into the “mainstream”, or lack thereof.
Upside Down Text Generator: A silly utility for turning text upside down. Fun for all the family. ??u??p ?s?l ???? p?? ???? ?ou plno?s ?ll??? ? [OK, so it doesn't work in this cross-feed.]
ACMA Communications Report 2006-07: The Australian communications & Media Authority's annual report to parliament. The numbers aren't as recent as they could be, but still lots of good data.
A Visit to Beijing's Exclusive Penis Restaurant | Spiegel Online: A specialist restaurant serves painstakingly decorated gourmet meals made only from the naughty bits.
Learning to Live Like an Early Bird | WSJ.com: Tips for turning a night person into a morning person. I'm already a morning person, but I know people who could use this…

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Oh, I’m a heavy user of Twitter

Stilgherrian — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:56:27 +0000

TechCrunch has some figures on Twitter usage. It seems my own Twitterings at 16+ a day makes me a “heavy” user.

March 2008
Total Users: 1+ million
Total Active Users: 200,000 per week
Total Twitter Messages: 3 million/day

What’s most interesting is the rabid Twitter usage by active users — they send an average of 15 Twitter message per day.

My Twitter stats show that my usage is spread across my waking hours right across the week. Yes, Twitter has become a core communication tool — though I’ve said that before [1, 2]. Maybe you should follow me.

[Credit: Cartoon Twitter-bird courtesy of Hugh MacLeod. Like all of Hugh's cartoons published online, it's free to use.]

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So Howard screwed up housing affordability too

Stilgherrian — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:46:05 +0000

At some point we will have to stop blaming John Winston Howard for every problem we face. For the moment, though, it does seem that whenever we lift the lid on some important issue we find something smelly whose cause was inaction or ineptitude on JHo’s watch.

Yesterday it was how we’re stuck with the Super Hornets thanks to “a lack of sound, long-term… planning decisions by the former Government over the course of the last decade”. Today let’s look at Chairman Rudd’s theme of the week, housing affordability.

It’s now more expensive to live in Sydney than in New York.

[P]roperty prices have jumped 400 per cent since 1986, while income has increased by only 120 per cent.

The mysterious but awesomely-brained Possum Comitatus explains how he ran the numbers, leading to this graph.

It’s worth reading the full analysis, but his conclusion is blunt:

[R]eal house prices remained virtually frozen over the period from 1990 through to 2000. It wasn’t until Howard started stuffing around with halving the capital gains rate and things like the first home buyers grant that real house prices started to accelerate…

It also highlights in real terms just how much the NSW market has dropped over the last couple of years.

Possum’s going to look at our policy options in part 2, coming soon. However The Australian’s George Megalogenis has already started down that path — from the suitably cynical viewpoint of which options generate the most votes for whom.

In the must-read piece Making housing more affordable, Mr Meganomics agrees with the Possum about one key point — it really isn’t about interest rates.

Rudd has nominated the second half of 2010 — when the next election is due to be held — as the time zone when inflation is meant to come back under 3 per cent. While he can’t make any promises on monetary policy, because that’s really the job of the Reserve Bank, lower inflation should, other things being equal, mean lower interest rates. Yet that won’t fix the problem of housing affordability.

The well-briefed Rudd would appreciate that house prices, not interest rates, are the main driver of housing affordability. So lower interest rates may mean housing becomes even less affordable by the next election.

Possum’s version of that statement is that “the two key metrics that are the foundation of housing affordability are income and house prices, with interest rates floating around as a third lesser order, though still important issue.”.

This demonstrates Howard’s (short-term) propaganda genius. Of the three key numbers only the least important, interest rates, was moving in his favour. By concentrating on that number through two elections, he made himself look good.

Megalogenis runs through the political angles and concludes:

In the short run, that is until the next election, the social goal of making housing more affordable is incompatible with the economic and political goals of staying sweet with the mortgage belt. In the long run, however, Rudd has no choice but to deflate the property price bubble.

He should view this challenge in the same terms as he does climate change: a project necessary to keep Australia viable. Housing should, pardon the pun, become truly freestanding by Rudd’s stated date for paradise: 2020. That is, bricks-and-mortar should lose its taxpayer supports.

Presently, voters expect a handout to enter the housing market and another to buy a second property. These tax breaks make housing less affordable than it would otherwise be.

He then discusses how you might achieve that — and I won’t butcher his arguments but instead encourage you to read the whole thing, including the comments, and think for yourself. Mr Meganomics takes part in the discussion, too. Fun.

I’ll link to Possum’s policy discussion when it appears. However for now he notes:

There is very simple root cause to the lack of housing affordability in Australia, but it is also a cause that has virtually no easy solution — Australia simply has too few large cities for the proportion of our population that chooses to live in an urban environment. As a result, the supply of desirable urban locations to live — be they inner city or hilltop or hinterland or bayside locations relatively near a city centre — is swamped by the enormous demand. Desirable locations lead the charge in house price growth which pulls the price of all suburbs up with it, generally in decreasing amounts the further away one gets from the suburbs with a high desirability premium.

But since we can’t really change this situation over any time frame shorter than the very long term, even if we were to attempt to, the policy options left to address housing affordability issues become more complex as a result of our policy options being forced to try and affect the affordability ends from policy angles that aren’t necessarily the root cause of the affordability means.

John Howard was never good at “the very long term”, of course. Unless it was looking backwards to Gallipoli. Will Kevin Rudd prove any better?

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SHM gets broadband figures wrong

Stilgherrian — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:17:56 +0000

Don’t newspapers fact-check any more? In the Sydney Morning Herald, Jason Koutsoukis reckons most broadband users currently receive only 256 kilobits per second. And yet, as Richard Chirgwin points out, last year’s ABS figures were that 22% of subscribers had up to 256kbps and 45% had more than 256kbps. “Since when is around 1/3 of the broadband population equal to ‘most’ users?”

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Saturday Reading, 1 March 2008

Stilgherrian — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:46:49 +0000

Summer’s over, so time to burrow indoors and catch up on reading, yeah? Here’s a few things to kick off your weekend.

Learning to Lie, a fascinating article covering not only how lying is a sign of an intelligent child, but how we learn that no-one likes a tattle-tale and teen rebellion. Hat-tip to Bruce Schneier.
A selection of 27 images from Life’s coffee-table book 100 Photographs that Changed the World.
6 Influential Datasets That Changed the Way We Think. Hat-tip to O’Reilly Radar.
Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, an amazing series of photographic images by Chris Jordan which illustrate the excesses of human consumption.

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Australian business broadband penetration

Stilgherrian — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:44:50 +0000

While poking around the stats as part of my scrag-fight with Laurel Papworth, I found these figures for how many Australian businesses are using broadband.

% of internet-connected businesses with broadband

2003-04 41.5 %

2004-05 62.7 %

2005-06 82.5 %

Mind you…

Broadband… is defined by the ABS as an ‘always on’ Internet connection with an access speed equal to or greater than 256kbps.

Nothing to be proud of.

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Web 2.0? “Hey, wait for us!”

Stilgherrian — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:06:06 +0000

Statistics on how businesses use the Internet demonstrate how the Web 2.0 digerati are rocketing so far ahead of reality into their self-obsessed digital fantasy-land that they might as well be on Mars.

ABS figures show that fewer than a third of Australian businesses have a “web presence”.

This week the redoubtable Laurel Papworth complained about that:

Well, that sucks… Not much hope for Web 2.0 if 70% of us can’t get our heads around Web 1.0, is there?

Stephen Collins, who I’ve read for a while and chatted with recently, agrees.

I am disappointed. It indicates just how far behind the 8-ball most business in Australia is…

Laurel associates this lack of penetration with the widespread lack of understanding of the power of the Web, and specifically Web 2.0 technologies, amongst Australian business. I’d have to say I agree.

Really? Disappointed? I see steady growth in those “web presence” figures. I’ll show you in a moment. First, though, I need to tell you why I reckon you’re wrong.

“Disappointment” shows a misunderstanding of what constitutes “business”, even in the 21st Century. And there’s still a lot of work to help businesses lay the digital foundations before we start building so many crystal castles.

Most of us have the wrong idea about business. In part that’s because TV news is lazy, and shows us stock images of office buildings, factories, coal mines… yet there are 3 million active registered businesses in Australia, and fully 72 percent don’t have any employees. And in part it’s because it’s sometimes useful politically to make “business” sound like some Big Scary “Them”.

The median “Australian business” is a single man or woman — probably a sole trader because sole traders are the most common form of businesses (39%).

Now here are those “disappointing” numbers:

% businesses with… 2002-03 2003-04 2004-05 2005-06

computer use 83.0 85.2 88.6 88.5

internet use 71.4 74.2 76.8 81.3

web presence 23.0 25.1 26.7 29.8

% businesses who have…

placed orders via internet 27.8 31.3 32.7 37.3

received orders via internet 13.3 12.0 12.2 20.9

% businesses with…	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06
computer use	83.0	85.2	88.6	88.5
internet use	71.4	74.2	76.8	81.3
web presence	23.0	25.1	26.7	29.8
% businesses who have…
placed orders via internet	27.8	31.3	32.7	37.3
received orders via internet	13.3	12.0	12.2	20.9

The “web presence” figure went up 3.1 percentage points between the last two surveys. In just one year, 93,000 Australian businesses created a new web presence. That’s one hell of a lot of websites: more than 350 every working day!

That’s even more impressive when you consider that it’s only been 12 or 13 years that most of these businesses could even connect to the Internet.

And consider the profile of businesses…

On a brief stroll yesterday I saw a late-night pharmacy, a barber, a locksmith, a carpenter whose van was parked outside a building site, a laundromat, a $2 shop, 2 x cafés, a local pub, a greengrocer, a watchmaker, a local medical centre, a masseur and a corner shop. Most of them will still be getting used to using email in their business, if at all. Only one had a website that I know of — can you guess which one?

I think we should be very, very happy.

[Photo: Bell Aviation's Rocket Pack, demonstrated at the 1964 New York World's Fair, from the book Exit to Tomorrow: World's Fair Architecture, Design, Fashion 1933-2005. Hat-tip to Paleo-Future.]

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The world’s population explosion

Stilgherrian — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 02:26:57 +0000

Yeah I just said that it’s the wrong sort of day for numerical analysis. However I stumbled across these numbers and had to draw a graph immediately.

The world’s population reached 1 billion people in 1804. The second billion was added by 1927. And so it goes. In 1999 we hit 6 billion, and current estimates are that we’ll hit 7 billion in 2013.

You all know the drill from here…

A small proportion (us Australians, Americans, Europeans, Japanese and some others) chew up the vast majority of the world’s resources and are dumping our shit everywhere. We know we need to stop. But those other billions reckon they’ve had the rough end of the pineapple for too long and now it’s their turn.

And we’re surprised when they get stroppy about it.

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Oz stock market “crash” in perspective

Stilgherrian — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:59:50 +0000

Yes, there was a 7.1% drop in the ASX All Ordinaries yesterday, the 4th biggest one-day fall in our history. But before you throw yourself out of the window, let’s put that in context.

That’s a graph of the All Ordinaries for the last 20 years, thanks to Robert Merkel in Lavartus Prodeo. See that little wiggle at the far right-hand side? That’s yesterday. Short-term thinking is perilous.

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Country music fans have highest suicide rate

Stilgherrian — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:17:12 +0000

US research shows that country music fans have the highest suicide rate. “The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability.” Hat tip to The Road to Surfdom.