2023: All the Charts

This post contains the post statistics charts I didn’t have room for in the 2023 wrap-up post. There are a lot of them, and I don’t imagine they’re of much interest to anyone but me. I post them mainly to document the blog. A set of milestones, if you will.

I confess to being fascinated — and utterly befuddled — by which posts receive attention and which little piggies get none. It’s particularly interesting to me when an old post — especially one that never got many views — suddenly gets noticed and sometimes even slightly popular.

Mostly the stats are similar to previous years, but 2023 did bring a few surprises.

One surprise is my most-viewed post in 2023, Flat Space of the Torus:

When I wrote it back in 2021, it was barely noticed — only 31 views. It got 161 views the next year, but in 2023 it got 1,003. With 1,195 total views, this fairly recent post shot up to #16 of all posts since 2011. Zooming in on the last three years and looking at views per month:

I think it might be slowing down. It’s had 56 views so far this month, which suggests about 100 or so once the month finishes. It’s currently #2 on the month.

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Another 2023 surprise is Elephant Story, a long-winded joke about a man and an elephant he once helped:

It’s an oldie from 2013, but it suddenly got a lot of attention ten years later. The peak was 149 views in July (with an early spike of 57 views in May). After that peak, activity dropped but remained above previous levels since 2019. It picked up a bit in November (32 views) and more in December (45 views). The 370 views in 2023 make it the #6 post. With 1,594 views total, it’s #10 among all posts.

So far this month, it’s had 96 views making it the top post so far in January. If the view rate keeps up, it’ll bust that July record easily. It’ll have to work to bust its 2015 record, though.

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A post from 2019 has both the above beat for total views, Abacus and Slide Rule:

The 2,339 views make it the #9 post overall. Its popularity — which was unexpected — seems to be tapering off, though. Just 509 views in 2023 compared to 874 in 2022 and 764 in 2021. (Even so, it still ranked #4 last year.) It seems to see most of its activity in the fall when school starts. That said, it has 19 views already this month.

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Gibbs’ Rules (should be Gibbs’s Rules), a page (as opposed to a post) with a topic I assumed was fading into history got a surprising number of views in 2023:

More last year than in any previous year! It ranked #9 last year and ranks #22 overall. Special Agent Gibbs (Mark Harmon) left the NCIS series early in season 19 (fall of 2021), which explains the increase in 2020 and 2021, as well as the decline in 2022. But what happened in 2023, that’s what I want to know.

It has 41 views so far this month, ranking it #5 on the month.

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A recent up-and-comer, QM 101: Bloch Sphere, drew a lot of views in 2023:

With 964 total views, it’s the #23 post overall but ranked #3 in 2023. Not bad for a post about quantum mechanics. It’s part of my QM 101 posts and by far the most popular post of the series (so far; hope springs eternal). It already has 45 views this month, which ranks it #4 on the month.

In contrast, the next most viewed post in the series is QM 101: Bra-Ket Notation:

Which has roughly one-third as many views (note the very different vertical scale) It’s only #54 overall but #12 in 2023. In a distant third place is QM 101: Quantum Spin, which has only 234 views (making it #88 overall but #52 last year). Other posts in the series score even lower.

Which is fine. I write these as much to solidify and test my understanding as much as anything else. If others benefit, that’s gravy and great! I’m just surprised that the one about the Bloch Sphere drew so much attention.

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Decisive Agnosticism, a post I wrote way back in 2012 has been slowly growing in popularity since 2020 (with 11, 46, 61, 136 views, respectively, most of which exceed any year previous):

No engagement via comments (let alone email), so I have no clue what the interest is. Hopefully, it’s the content and not just the pictures. With only 360 total views it ranks #60 overall but ranked #14 last year.

The post mentions vector thinking, which is what I called multi-dimensional thinking back then. I’ve tried to promote it in a number of posts, but none of them have attracted much attention.

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The 2014 post 2001: Visual Tone Poem also got an increase in views the past four years:

Views slope down some from 2021, but all four years exceed all previous years. Another surprise, really, it ranked #21 last year and #25 overall. I always thought it was a nice post; glad to see it getting some love.

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For a while, I thought My Grandfather’s Axe was going to become my #1 post, but views tapered off considerably in the previous two years:

It was doing gang-buster business 2018-2021 but fell off the map after. Be interesting to see how it does this year. It managed to get to #2 overall but was #9 last year (which, with only 185 views, says more about my low traffic than anything else).

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One of my oldest posts, Barrel of Wine; Barrel of Sewage, an early post about entropy, saw a slight uptick after years of declining views:

Its 1,368 total views rank it #13 overall. Its 101 views last year ranked #18. I’ve written more detailed posts about entropy since, but I think it’s still a good introduction to the basics. (And a bit poetic about it, if I do say so myself.)

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I have to mention Hawkeye & Margaret, an old post from 2012:

M*A*S*H (1972-1983) was one of my all-time favorite shows. In fact, I’ve just started re-re-re-watching it (on Hulu but probably available elsewhere). Views had been steadily tapering off after a big spike in 2015 but saw a slight uptick in 2023. It ranks #15 overall but ranked only #37 last year. This is one of my favorite posts (I had a major crush on Margaret for a while). Glad to see it getting some love.

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Another favorite post, Rick O’Shay, has earned, on average, 380+ views per year:

Although 2023 was its worst year (2016, my gap year, was the best). It has 16 views so far this year, so it’s hard to say if the decline in the last three years reflects a trend. With 4,251 views, it ranks #4 overall, and its 288 views last year rank it #7 in 2023.

It’s nice that one of my very favorite posts — one that’s very meaningful to me — is ranked so high. Thank you!

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Lastly, The Imitation Game, my rather negative review of the same-named 2014 movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch:

This is one of the inexplicable ones to me. The post ranks only #29 overall and only #22 in 2023, so it’s not a huge attraction. But it averages about 88 views per year. It was big in 2020 and saw an uptick in 2023. For a movie that’s almost ten years old now. I wonder a lot about what people find interesting about the post. I didn’t think it was a very good movie.

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That’s enough charts. It’s most of the interesting ones, anyway. I have a lot more that I generate, but they mostly illustrate what they’ve illustrated for years. The steady performers steadily perform.

The list above jumped around a lot in terms of ranking, so here is the list of Top 25 Posts 2011-2023:

1. From the Far Side (9,016)
2. My Grandfather’s Axe (6,214)
3. Sideband #17: Ready when you are, Mr. DeMille (4,394)
4. Rick O’Shay (4,251)
5. Deflection and Projection (3,950)
6. Santa: Man or Woman? (3,367)
7. God is an Iron (2,946)
8. Bushido Code (2,450) [page]
9. Abacus and Slide Rule (2,339)
10. Elephant Story (1,594)
11. Why I Hated The Holodeck (1,465)
12. Madam Secretary & Scorpion (1,404)
13. Barrel of Wine; Barrel of Sewage (1,368)
14. BB #27: Far Less (1,335)
15. Hawkeye & Margaret (1,280)
16. Flat Space of the Torus (1,195) [surprise!]
17. CNN Is Dead To Me (1,066)
18. Transcendental Territory (1,053)
19. Here Today; Pi Tomorrow (1,042)
20. Assassin Movies (1,007) [page; deprecated]
21. Movies: Grand Canyon (992)
22. Gibbs’ Rules (966) [page]
23. QM 101: Bloch Sphere (964)
24. About (939) [page]
25. 2001: Visual Tone Poem (828)

And here is the list of Top 25 Posts in 2023:

1. Flat Space of the Torus (1,003) [surprise!]
2. From the Far Side (997)
3. QM 101: Bloch Sphere (603)
4. Abacus and Slide Rule (509)
5. Sideband #17: Ready when you are, Mr. DeMille (442)
6. Elephant Story (370) [surprise!]
7. Rick O’Shay (288)
8. Gibbs’ Rules (267)
9. My Grandfather’s Axe (185)
10. Plato’s Divided Line (171)
11. Physical vs Abstract (153)
12. QM 101: Bra-Ket Notation (147)
13. “Imaginary” Parabola (142)
14. Decisive Agnosticism (136)
15. BB #45: Jerky Jerks (118)
16. Friday Leftovers (117)
17. Fall: or, Dodge in Hell (116)
18. Barrel of Wine; Barrel of Sewage (101)
19. Movies: Grand Canyon (98)
20. Solar Derivative (97)
21. 2001: Visual Tone Poem (96)
22. The Imitation Game (95)
23. The 4th Dimension (87)
24. Fairy Tale Physics (85)
25. Euler Spirals and Pi Paths (81)

Except for the surprises, no surprises. Many of these have been in or near their slots for a long time.

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And that concludes this year’s Janus pair. Regular blogging resumes next post. Here’s to a no doubt interesting 2024.

Because remember:

Twenty-Four, oh, dear.
This is an election year!
Send in all the clowns.

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

∇