The Dozen Year Charts

Last month when I published the Blog Anniversary post I lamented how yet another WordPress “update” had made it harder for me to copy the monthly post hit stats to my SelectedPosts database so I could make charts. The new table widget doesn’t allow selecting and copying [big frown].

Turns out my browser can be cajoled into making a screen grab that successfully interprets the image as a table with text, so it’s possible to capture the data, but looks to be a royal PITA, so it may be that the monthly hit stat ship has sailed.

But then I realized I had yearly hit stat data readily available.

And in some regards, yearly stats make more sense now that there are twelve years of posts. There are a few cases where the monthly resolution would be nice — usually to see more recent performance — but I’m okay overall with only seeing how posts have performed over the years. That’s especially interesting with the really old posts.

The rest of this post is just the (lots of!) new charts with yearly hit stats. Depending on how long the post gets, I’ll end by describing where the monthly and yearly post hit data is on WordPress and how you can use it.

This is one of those documentation posts likely only of interest to me, so y’all are totally excused from reading this one!

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From the Far Side (8,628): The most visited of all my posts by a wide margin (over 2,000 hits). It wasn’t a big hit when first published in 2015, but it caught on later, peaking in 2020 (which might be when Gary Larson returned to the internet). Traffic seems to be dropping off since — 2023 isn’t over but looks to top out around 1,200 hits, which would be down from last year. I don’t have any problems with the post, but it’s not one of my favorites, either.

My Grandfather’s Axe (6,169): For a while I thought this post would be more of a contender for first place, but it lags behind by over 2,000 hits, so obviously not.  On the other hand, it’s nearly 2000 hits ahead of the third-place post (below). Lately, interest seems to have dropped off rather severely, but it remains one of my favorite posts. One I’m proud of.

Sideband #17: Ready when you are, Mr. DeMille (4,248): This and the next four are all in pretty close third place but lagging quite a way behind the front-runners. This retelling of an old joke has been a steady performer once it caught on. Apparently, I told it well. Or people are curious about where that punchline comes from.

Rick O’Shay (4,089): One of my favorite posts about one of my favorite newspaper comics from my youth. In the course of writing it, I had a brief email correspondence with the creator, Stan Lynde. Fortuitous in that he died shortly after. I’m delighted this old post has done as well as it has!

Deflection and Projection (3,944): This post suddenly lit up in 2015 and grew to a maximum of 796 hits in 2017, stayed pretty strong in 2018 and 2019, and peaked again in 2020 with a huge tapering off since (only ten hits so far this year). The interest pretty obviously tracks Trump’s years campaigning and in office. And while the post was written in 2013, it absolutely was relevant.

Santa: Man or Woman? (3,353): This post was Freshly Pressed by WordPress and collected nearly all its hits in the few days after. Activity pretty much dried up as of 2020. Only one hit this year, but it’s not the season, yet.

God is an Iron (2,927): And old (and favorite) post that’s gone through a couple occasions of popularity (in 2017 and 2020). Its popularity seems to somewhat resemble the Deflection and Projection post’s above. Perhaps another political connection? Or something about that Alanis Morissette song?

Abacus and Slide Rule (2,048): A surprise hit two years after I posted it, but activity is way down so far this year. This is one example of where it would be nice to have monthly stats. They show how the bulk of the hits come in the new school year in the fall. Given that, it’s possible there will be a lot more hits later this year.

Elephant Story (1,472): At first, I thought this was suddenly popular ten years after I published it, but the data shows that its heyday was back in 2015, two years after publication. Apparently, it got re-discovered this year and has some potential to reach 2015 heights.

Why I Hated The Holodeck (1,445): An old favorite post that predates my span at WordPress. I think this is the third platform on which I’ve published it. Given that it’s about a show from the 1990s, I’m impressed it still gets views.

Madam Secretary & Scorpion (1,396): I’ve never understood why this post got the hits it did, especially once both those shows were off the air. And I’ve never known whether the attraction was the former show or the latter. (I get very few comments from passersby, so it’s hard to judge what all these hits even mean.)

Barrel of Wine; Barrel of Sewage (1,336): An old and favorite post about entropy. The first of many. I especially like the notion of the barrels of wine and sewage, although I think a better (certainly more palatable) analogy is wine and stew. The post has been a steady performer over time but note the scale change. Steady but only a trickle.

Hawkeye & Margaret (1,263): Another old and favorite post, this one about an old and favorite TV show from the 19970s. Got noticed in 2015 and has tailed off ever since but with a little bump this year. I love this post; I’m glad it gets viewed!

CNN Is Dead To Me (1,044): Again, the popularity here seems tied to recent political events. Lots of hits during the reign of P45 with a strong decline after. For what it’s worth, I’ve never gone back to CNN, and now I’ve dropped MSNBC. In fact, I don’t much bother with the news at all anymore, and I’m much happier for it.

Transcendental Territory (1,033): This post is a summary of a series of related posts preceding it. The series topic is computationalism. This post discussed the possible issues with transcendental numbers with regard to trying to compute consciousness. As usual, I’ve no idea why this post attracts hits but the others in the series don’t.

Movies: Grand Canyon (939): A favorite movie (in my Top Films of All Time) but not a favorite post. It’s an edited version of an email I wrote for a friend who asked me to pay attention to certain aspects of the film. As such, the writing tone is a bit informal, but I am glad people seem to like the post.

“No Serviceable Parts Inside” (762): Not a huge performer (note the scale only goes up to 200), but a post I like a lot and which I think addresses a meaty topic, so I’m glad to see it gets some traffic. Here again, the popularity seems somewhat to track politics.

Flat Space of the Torus (762): This post attracted almost no attention when first published, but this year it really took off (and the year isn’t over yet). I suspect people just like the big image of Torus Earth, but — as always, and yes, it bugs me — I have no idea what the draw actually is. Oddly, perhaps, I wrote it to try to explain something to someone who persisted in thinking I didn’t know what I was talking about. For all the good it did (hint: none).

Gibbs’ Rules [page] (730): This is a list of Gibbs’s Rules that I gleaned while watching NCIS (2003-present). I don’t watch the show anymore, but it used to be one of my favorites. The page doesn’t get a lot of hits (note the scale), but they trickle in. Not sure why activity increased in 2020 and 2021.

Octopus Brains (684): A rare case where a post took off when first published and then tailed off into obscurity. I’d think that would be the more normal progression, but it’s the only one here showing that pattern. (The Physical vs Abstract post below somewhat has that pattern though it languished for two years before being discovered.)

The Imitation Game (669): Another movie review that, like the above post about Grand Canyon, is noticeably more popular than other my posts about movies. Note the reduced scale, but I’m still surprised at the post’s popularity. Note that, unlike the Grand Canyon post, this review is unfavorable.

Physical vs Abstract (660): Another surprise. Only eleven hits when first published in 2019, with only nine hits the following year. And then, boom! Activity dropped off quickly but is still way above where it started. No clue whatsoever what the attraction is.

Infinity is Funny (640): An old post, my first about the countable versus the uncountable. Not a big attraction (note the scale) but visitors have trickled in from time to time over the year. Looks as if it has faded in recent years.

QM 101: Bloch Sphere (625): One of my Quantum Mechanics 101 posts that really took off. Even the second-best post in that series (see below) has only half the hits. As usual, no feedback, but I hope people are getting something from it. It’s possible they’re just attracted to the big images of the Bloch sphere.

QM 101: Bra-Ket Notation (336): The popularity runner-up in the QM-101 series, this one was about the |bra〉〈ket| notation introduced to quantum mechanics by Paul Dirac. Just as the most popular post is far ahead of this one, this one is far ahead of the third-place post in the series, QM 101: Quantum Spin, with 208 hits. All the other posts in that series have less than 100 (usually much less).

Leon Wieseltier (529): A post near and dear to my heart because of things Wieseltier said when appearing on The Colbert Report in 2014. I suspect the popularity bump in 2020 might be associated with Wieseltier’s personal behavior (as in #metoo) but I’ve not researched it. A large number of the hits seem to come in September (another case for monthly granularity), perhaps linked with the school year.

Rotation Matrices [page] (441): Another surprise. I initially made this page to test LaTeX codes in WordPress posts (they work great), and later improved it a bit to just have the information nicely in one place. I can, perhaps, understand the attraction, the topic is pretty foreign until understanding dawns.

BB #45: Jerky Jerks (350): This one got a fair number of hits when first published (more so than most) and then tapered off strongly. But starting in 2020 it begins to grow in popularity and kind of explodes (comparatively) this year. Which isn’t over, so the post may break its previous record. All that said, note the tiny vertical scale.

Decisive Agnosticism (340): Another post that mostly fizzled and vanished, but which suddenly is growing in popularity. None of which in any of these is leading to engagement or comments, but hopefully people are getting something out of it. I do rather like this post, so I’m happy to see it being visited (after ten years).

“Imaginary” Parabola (326): Yet another post that’s become more popular over time. As seems often the case, the popularity with this post doesn’t seem to translate to the other posts in the series it’s part of. (“Imaginary” Numbers is before this one, and The Complex Plane and The Heart of the Mandelbrot are after it.) Once again, I suspect people are attracted to the images. (You’re welcome.)

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As promised, a few words about where this data comes from. The following assumes you’re using the WordPress website, not their JetPack mobile app.

First, navigate to the stats page (the one with the bar graph). The URL depends on your website but looks something like this:

https://wordpress.com/stats/day/your-blog-basename

Note that, above the bar graph, you can select for Days, Weeks, Months, or Years. You should select the time frame for the kind of data you want. I usually select Years for reasons that’ll become apparent below.

Scroll down to the Posts & Pages section and click the View all link at the bottom of the section. (Sigh, the link is also called View details because the WP developers aren’t consistent or very good at user interface design.)

This takes you to a new page that lists the posts (and pages). Again, notice the helpful possible time frame selections across the top if you want to change the time span (which otherwise depends on what you selected for the bar graph previously). Up to 1000 posts (and pages) may be listed.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Download data as CVS link. That delivers a comma-separated values text file to your download directory containing all the posts listed on the page. The page hit data covers whatever time frame you selected.

The CSV files have three fields: Post-Name, Number-of-Hits, Post-URL. Use the data whatever way you see fit. I use Python to read, massage, and create the charts (using the matplotlib library). If anyone wants more details, I can post something on my programming blog.

To see the data source I lost, from either the Stats page or the Posts & Pages page, click any post name for a page of stats for just that post. Scroll down to the All-time insights table. It’s a table of post hits by month. That used to be a regular HTML table, easy to copy-n-paste. Now it’s some kind of image widget with text that can’t be selected. D’oh!

I can use my browsers Web Capture feature to outline and copy the table, and the browser converts the image to text, but it’s kind of a PITA.

Stay charting, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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