This is the eleventh of my month-in-review posts. I started month-in-review posts in October 2014. You can see my first post here and my previous month-in-review post here.
Some overall background
The pace of work has started picking up again after a (somewhat) relaxed July, so progress for me in non-work dimensions was low overall. I expect this situation to continue (and worsen) till at least March of next year (with the potential exception of December), though I hope to better prioritize within non-work options as time goes along, so that my overall non-work output will hopefully remain roughly constant or even increase.
Wikipedia editing
For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia
I created the following Wikipedia pages this month:
- Animal Charity Evaluators, created Sunday, August 2, 2015, in about an hour. Got 165 views in August.
- Holden Karnofsky, created Tuesday, August 4, 2015, in about an hour, part of it spent on a BART ride. Got 400 views in August.
- Tracy Chou, created Wednesday, August 5, 2015, in about an hour, part of it spent on a BART ride. Got 539 views in August.
- Jim Greenbaum, created Sunday, August 9, 2015, in about an hour. Got 88 views in August.
- Operation Streamline, created Sunday, August 23, 2015, after several hours of drafts in BART rides. Got 91 views in August.
I made substantial progress with my user-space draft for particular social group but it did not reach the stage where I feel comfortable publishing it to main space.
The numbers below are for pageviews in August 2015, and are based on data collated by stats.grok.se and further summarized at Wikipedia Views. As with all numbers from stats.grok.se, note that these numbers exclude mobile pageviews but include bots.
- Pages I created over my lifetime: 150,407 views.
- Pages I created in August 2015: 1,283 views.
- Pages I created in July 2015: 4,912 views.
- Pages I created in June 2015: 365 views.
- Pages I created in 2015: 32,040 views.
Comparison with forecast: I had forecast 152,000 pageviews for all pages I created, and the actual count of 150,407 was quite close. It fell within my 50% probability interval estimate of 140,000-170,000, my 80% probability interval estimate of 115,000-200,000, and my 95% probability interval estimate of 100,000-225,000.
September forecast: Since September has only 30 days (compared to 31 in August) I will adjust my monthly estimates for September slightly downward to account for this. I have also shrunk my intervals somewhat, taking into account the high proximity of recent estimates to my point estimates. Here are my new estimates:
- My point estimate (for the median) is 147,500 pageviews. In other words, I believe there is a 50% probability that the number of pageviews will be above this number, and a 50% probability that it will be below or equal to this number.
- My 50% probability interval estimate is 141,000-160,000. In other words, I expect a 50% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 25% probability that it will fall below 141,000, and a 25% probability that it will be above 160,000.
- My 80% probability interval estimate is 130,000-180,000. In other words, I expect an 80% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 10% probability that it will be below 130,000, and a 10% probability that it will be above 180,000.
- My 95% probability interval estimate is 115,000-200,000. In other words, I expect a 95% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 2.5% probability that is will be below 115,000, and a 2.5% probability that it will be above 200,000.
I’ve also described my estimates in terms of values at particular percentiles in my probability distribution below:
- 2.5th: 115,000
- 10th: 130,000
- 25th: 141,000
- 50th: 147,500
- 75th: 160,000
- 90th: 180,000
- 97.5th: 200,000
WikiHow
For background information, see my site page about WikiHow
I created two new WikiHow pages on Saturday, August 29:
- How to Optimize Your Amazon S3 Costs: 99 views as of September 5.
- How to Optimize Your Amazon EC2 Costs: 132 views as of September 5.
My previous pages have continued to get more pageviews:
- How to Gauge the Popularity of a Topic Online now has 648 views (or, about 89 in August plus the first few days of September).
- How to Efficiently Work Offline now has 131 views (or, about 43 in August plus the first few days of September).
- How to Ride BART from the East Bay to San Francisco now has 585 views (or, about 143 in August plus the first few days of September).
Subject wikis
General background information: My site page about the subject wikis
I did not spend any time on the subject wikis this month. There was a little year-on-year traffic growth but it’s down to about 10% (from 20%+ a few months ago). This probably reflects a huge jump that occurred around July/August of last year.
Below is the traffic information for Groupprops.
| Metric | Aug 2015 | Jul 2015 | Jun 2015 | Aug 2014 | Jul 2014 | Jun 2014 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pageviews | 41,813 | 38,388 | 48,593 | 36,844 | 34,973 | 38,363 |
| Sessions | 21,775 | 19,400 | 24,136 | 17,778 | 16,495 | 18,695 |
| Pages/session | 1.92 | 1.98 | 2.01 | 2.07 | 2.12 | 2.05 |
| Pageviews in sessions with at least 5 pageviews | 13,046 | 12,616 | 16,314 | 13,205 | 12,887 | 13,065 |
Here are pageview counts for the other subject wikis:
- Market: 10,490 pageviews, versus 11,112 for August 2014.
- Calculus: 12,570 pageviews, versus 8,822 for August 2014.
Comparison with forecast: For Groupprops, the total number of pageviews (41,813) was close to my point estimate of 40,500, and well within my 50% probability interval estimate (33,000-50,000) and 80% probability interval estimate (20,000-70,000).
September forecast: My point estimate for pageviews in September for Groupprops is 66,500 (about 10% more than the September count). My 50% probability interval estimate is 54,000-80,000, my 80% probability interval estimate is 45,000-90,000, and my 95% probability interval estimate is 40,000-120,000. The estimates are a bit wider than for previous months, because the counts are a little more uncertain owing to details about when and how the academic year starts in various colleges.
Open borders
General background information: My site page about open borders
One blog post of mine was published to the site: The bait-and-switch from fiscally realistic to humane, or, the weakness of the mainstream moderate case against deportations. I also made some edits to site background pages but did not get time to draft the blog posts I had hoped to. However, two of the Wikipedia pages I worked on this month (Operation Streamline and particular social group) were related to my interest in migration policy.
Other sites and forms of online presence
- My personal site vipulnaik.com (on which you’re reading this post) got 2,000 views (excluding spam referrals and fake views in Google Analytics) (WordPress showed 2,073 views) in August 2015.
- Wikipedia Views got 312 views (excluding spam referrals and fake views) in August 2015.
Friends’ projects
- AI Impacts, started by Katja Grace and Paul Christiano, and managed primarily by Katja, got 3,001 views.
- Cause Prioritization Wiki, started and managed by Issa Rice, got 1,051 views excluding spam referrals.
Entertainment
I re-watched some episodes of Gilmore Girls. I also bought the MP3 for Rolling in the Deep.