Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

A week or so ago a study was released that suggested Fox News viewers were actually less informed than people who watch no news at all. Fox News viewers were probably shocked and offended by this - well might have been, but I'm guessing Fox News didn't even put this on its ticker and it's doubtful Halloween Mask Nancy Grace reads anything but her own teleprompter so she probably never got offended by the report in the first place - but it did stir up quite the tit for tat on various Facebook walls on which it was posted.

One such Facebook debate, a debate I regrettably got involved in, led off with a tired saying by a self-proclaimed Fox News fan that there were, "Lies, damn lies, and statistics," suggesting that any survey can be tweaked and spun so that it supports a certain bias. While I somewhat agree with this, I often find that this argument is used by people who don't want to even contemplate that the survey in question has any validity to it. It did however get me to thinking about statistics and emboldened me to click on the "stats" tab at the top of my Blogger home page for the first time to see, statistically anyway, who it is that reads this blog. Here are the results from the last month:

699 page views - Apparently I'm not the people's first choice in blogging entertainment. I've not written much recently...that must be the issue.

Blogger's Choice Awards, Google, Twitter, and Facebook lead the referring URLs, but there are some notable referrals from other bloggers that are greatly appreciated! Specifically, Nomad With Glassware, Life As We Make It, and Petite Pasteque (sorry, I can't do the accent on this keyboard).

There's also a significant number of referrals from a particularly odious and parasitic crap bag of a website called Nasty Banners that takes other people's work and tries to pass it off as its own. More on them later. I don't have the energy right now.

Breakdown by country:

USA - 492
UK - 38
Canada - 34 (Thanks, Canada!)
Australia - 21
Germany - 17
South Korea - 8
India - 6
Poland - 5
Russia - 5
Latvia - 4 (WTF?)

So far, everything makes sense. Statistics seem pretty solid. Fox News viewers must really be morons. But for what, you ask, are these readers searching?

Well, in the last month, Boss Hogg beat out Uncle Jesse with 54 searches to 35. Also, given that The Gospel According to Duke is far and away my most popular post, statistics say there are a lot more "Dukes of Hazzard" fans out there than I thought possible.

"Genie" led 25 online searches to my blog.

"Drinking Stories" appropriately accounted for 21 hits.

"Frogdog" comes in at 12.

"Mordecai" Children of the Corn gets a respectable 9.

Still, I get it. All of these are things I've posted about and form a logical pathway through the intertubes to my humble cyber affectation...but then there's this:

"Dad son masturbation stories." 1 search.

Fuck statistics. I'm watching Fox News.