User talk:Opabinia regalis/Article statistics

Uncertainties

Your random article survey table is very interesting. I would just add an estimated uncertainty for the fraction for each type of article. As a rough estimate, especially for the less common topics, you can say that the standard deviation is the square root of the mean. That means that for an type with that "should" produce 4 hits, the standard deviation is about 2. That means that it is not too unlikely to actually observe zero hits for such an article type, as going two standard deviations away from the mean in a given direction is certainly not impossible (happens about 2.5% of the time). For example, chemistry certainly suffered this fate, as there are more than 20 000 chemistry articles by estimates based on categories, which is more than 1%. Cheers, Itub 11:53, 3 May 2007 (UTC).

Smashing article

I hope you don't mind me referencing you on a similar survey:

"In idle moments, I have been known to press the random article button on Wikipedia. What a mistake! Depressingly the Encyclopaedia is just packed with articles which in the broadest sense we might call topographical: albums, single, football players, rocks, plants, townships, high schools, shipping firms etc. etc. And it is only going to get worse. This detritus of the human existence knows no limits to its extent.

"To counterbalance this trend, I thought that it would be fun to filter out articles which in the broadest sense we might call conceptual or treating of concepts. Here is the story of my journey:

"21'46: Five minutes in using the Random Button and still nothing. It is clear that I am going to have to be a little forensic about digging out articles on concepts. Here is one user's experience of 250 pages and their multifarious contents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Opabinia_regalis/Article_statistics."

When finished I will put it on my blog. [1] Orthorhombic, 21:53, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism Studies Update - August 2012

Hello, members of the Vandalism Studies Project! As some of us are quite new with the Vandalism Studies project, it would make sense for us to re-read some of the past studies, as well as studies outside the project. Please do so if you have a chance, just so we can get into the groove of things. We're planning on attempting to salvage the Obama study (or possibly simply convert it to a new Romney study), as well as hopefully begin our third study this November. If you have any ideas for Study 3, please suggest them! If you have any questions please post them on the project talk page. Thanks, and happy editing - we can't wait to begin working on the project! --Dan653 (talk) and Theopolisme _:)
11:31, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
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