Google Reader: 2 November 2008

I’ve been collecting stats for six months now, which I think is enough time to post some more detailed information.

My Google Reader habits seem to be becoming more volatile (the right side of the top graph looks a lot more jumpy than the left side), which seems to have contributed to the average articles read for each day smoothing out a bit.

I steadily pick up new RSS feeds, and don’t tend to drop old or crappy ones as much. A lot of feeds stop updating, but I keep them around just in case.

As well as logging aggregate information, Google Reader also allows you to look at stats for particular feeds. However, it only gives you information for the top 40 feeds every 30 days. Because of this, the data isn’t very reliable: if a given RSS feed is the feed with the 41st highest traffic in all of my subscriptions, I have to pick it up as having zero posts. Still, it gives some indication.

Here are the biggest sites I’ve subscribed to:

Site	Total Articles Posted	Average Posted Per Month
NZ Herald – National	7,054	1,176
NZ Herald – Sport	5,936	989
SMH – News	5,079	847
NYT – International	4,295	716
Boing Boing	3,491	582
Consumerist	3,139	523
Pitchfork: Today	3,076	513
NYT – National	3,021	504
OzBargain | Recent Deals	2,411	402
Next Generation	1,946	324
NYT – Technology	1,736	289
SA: Coupons	1,283	214
Overheard in the Office	1,132	189
MTV Multiplayer	1,125	188
New Scientist – Latest Headlines	1,087	272
NYT – Science	1,083	181
SMH – World	1,039	173
SMH – National	965	161
Economist’s View	936	156
Marginal Revolution	916	153

The feeds I most frequently read the articles of:

Site	Total Articles Read	Average Read Per Month
Overheard in the Office	889	148
Marginal Revolution	523	87
SMH – News	499	83
Boing Boing	459	77
OzBargain | Recent Deals	386	64
i am neurotic.	374	94
Consumerist	294	49
kottke.org	240	60
NZ Herald – National	199	33
Freakonomics	198	33
Nudge	180	30
Economist’s View	172	29
The Onion	169	28
Greg Mankiw’s Blog	168	28
MTV Multiplayer	143	24
Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Economist Brad DeLong’s Semi-Daily Journal	122	20
SMH – National	121	20
Dinosaur Comics	117	20
Economists for Obama	116	29
garfield minus garfield	115	19

The feeds I have shared the most:

Site	Total Articles Shared	% of Articles Shared
Boing Boing	76	2%
Marginal Revolution	66	7%
The Onion	31	4%
Economist’s View	29	3%
kottke.org	24	3%
Dinosaur Comics	21	18%
SMH – News	19	0%
Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Economist Brad DeLong’s Semi-Daily Journal	19	3%
Freakonomics	19	3%
Greg Mankiw’s Blog	18	5%
Nudge	16	8%
NZ Herald – National	15	0%
Consumerist	12	0%
Economists for Obama	12	4%
TED | TEDBlog	12	7%
OzBargain | Recent Deals	10	0%
Overheard in the Office	10	1%
garfield minus garfield	10	24%
Nedroid Picture Diary	10	10%
NYT – National	9	0%

Candy

I was looking at the Census Bureau’s statistics on confectionery and thought they were kind of interesting. Here are some graphs about candy.

Candy Consumed by Americans, 2000-2007

The average American consumes 24.5 pounds (11.1 kg) of candy (excluding chewing gum) every year.

Here is another what kind of candy Americans prefer. Americans categorise both chocolate and lollies into the candy family. It seems like they prefer chocolate.

Distribution of Candy Consumption, 2007

I also thought this was interesting:

Quantity of Sugar and Corn Syrup Used in Production of Candy, 2002-2006

In the period from 2002 to 2006, the amount of corn syrup used in the production of candy decreased by 3.8%. The usage of cane sugar decreased by 6.3% over the same period. Unfortunately they don’t publish this series anymore, so I can’t get more up to date information.

Money: 19 October, 2008

Summary Stats

Total spending: $13,821
Mean spending per day: $132 [-26%]
Median spending per day: $32 [-12%]
Most spent in one day: $2,475

One new graph: the distribution of spending by day.

The inner ring is the number of days I spend that amount of money, and the outer ring is how much money in total I spend on each of those days. So most days I don’t spend much at all (57% of days I spend less than $50, which would leave me with a reasonable amount of savings. But these days make up only 7% of my total spend. The problem really is at the far end of the distribution; the days where the total spent is more than $200. The average spend of these ten days is $908, and 10% of my days account for 66% of my total spending. So I tend not to spend that much, but when I do spend, I make very large purchases.

ps sorry if this updated like five times

Google Reader: 4 October, 2008

A quick post because I am tired. I might make another post with more detailed data later.

Total Articles Read by Date

The slope in the middle of the graph is where i forgot to collect data for about a week.

Average Articles Read by Day

I still have no idea why Wednesday is my busiest Google Reader day. Possibly because I go to uni in the morning and then work late, and at about 6-7pm I zone out and start reading the internet.

Domino’s

I usually don’t get Domino’s, but I might have to start. After you order a delivery it keeps you updated about the status of your order in real time:

Blue: Processing
Red: Making the pizza
Yellow: Cooking the pizza

This is awesome.

Update: The pizza was crap though.

Money: 25 August, 2008

I’ve been keeping track of what I spend my money on since 23 June, 2008.

Summary Stats

Total spending: $10,193
Mean spending per day: $179
Median spending per day: $36
Most spent in one day: $2,475

I haven’t been on holidays yet, so the holiday spending only includes the airfare so far. It’ll be interesting to see whether I spend more money in the long run on travel or on ridiculous electronics I don’t really need.

I categorised each of these expenditures into non-avoidable (rent, car, phone, food etc) and avoidable (clothes, electronics, holidays), to see whether I was truly wasting my money.

I feel this is skewed quite a lot, as I bought television ($1,800) and air fare ($1,600) within a relatively short space of time. In the period I have been recording, I saved only about 10% of my income. Usually I save around 30-50%. It does show that I am definitely spending too much money on crap I don’t need, though.

A definite pattern here. It’ll be interesting to see if this holds in the long-run (I suspect the Saturday-Sunday-Monday pattern will always be like this), or if it is skewed by the three days I made very large purchases (see the first graph).

A side benefit to keeping track of where I spend my money is that I also keep track of where I eat my lunch (I rarely take my own lunch to work because I dislike cold or reheated food and also I am incredibly lazy).

I’ve trying to be good, Subway and Thai food are relatively healthy right? I will probably be eating Indian more often because I found this awesome place that gives you three curries, a naan, poppadom, rice, and salad for about ten bucks. Ten bucks!