A Return to Regression

Earlier this month, as part of NBI, I discussed the sometimes futile attempt to correlate the blog author's activity on the blog with that of the readers. In other words, whether posting more often leads to more pageviews. (I made the dark charts in MS Excel, the pale graph is from Blogger.)

Due to an extreme outlier—I received almost 3x the number of pageviews this past month than I did my previous peak, which was May—my posts-to-pageviews R² is now even less than it was at mid-month. However, I realized I could put in the cumulative number of months I've been blogging as an independent variable instead. The result is much more compelling. As I understand it, there is a 40% percent correlation between my pageviews and how long I've been blogging. Remember however, that "correlation is not causation."

You'll notice, as I've posted less in the early part of this year (just to the left of the 76 month mark), my pageviews slackened as well. While I would say that there is less correlation between my posting and my pageviews than some other bloggers, that is partly because I post erratically, some months posting hardly at all, and a few months posting every day. I'd theorize that if I posted more predictably, my pageviews might stabilize, month to month.

Which brings us to this milestone. A couple days ago, I reached 50,000 hits within a 30-day window, and then, as of the early morning hours of 30 June, I reached 50k in a calendar month. By midnight UCT, I was just shy 52k, and I'm not sure when I'll reach that again. Being a bit of a realist (I'd like to think), I have a feeling this new peak is not a plateau, and I'll be seeing more conventional numbers in the near future. But regardless, it's a heady feeling to have reached such a milestone, whether I earned it or not. If you're a regular visitor, I thank you for reading my little rambles and ruminations.

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