Regular readers are familiar with the tagline that ends every one of my posts, "As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to." There's a bit of truth there, as well as a bit of attempted humor.
For starters, I've been using "hochspeyer" as my online persona for years. "Hochspeyer" (upper cased H) is a village in Germany where Jennifer and I lived for a few years. My online name (hochspeyer, lower cased h) is something I've been using for years. And although the topic of data doesn't come up as frequently as I'd like, I do try to feature it when possible. One problem I have is that I don't do as much analysis as, say, when I was actually employed as an analyst... for 15 USD/hr.
Pregnant pause for effect.
Yes, I once made only $15/hr working as a data analyst (this might be lots of money in some parts of the world, but in the greater Chicago area, its not- especially when you're feeding, clothing and providing housing for five persons). According to payscale.com, it should have been (at a minimum) 39K per year. According to an inflation calculator, the USD inflation rate between then and now is ~17.6%, so I was roughly 2K under the base salary for an analyst, or roughly 5%. However, at that point in my life, it was the only gig I could score, and the plus side was I learned quite a bit about basic data analysis, Excel, Access, customers, internal and external deadlines, and adding value to both your output and your position.
As a temp, I did analysis for $12/hr. My boss there was a lady who was the Quality Manager. The plant was a contract manufacturer of aluminum die castings for the automotive industry. Although they produced products for all three of the "Big 3" (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler), their main customer was General Motors (GM). This was when Saturn was an exciting GM product line. The company had made a significant investment in equipment that was specifically designed for small cars, such as the Saturn line. Unfortunately, the Saturn line had disappointing sales for GM, and was ultimately scrapped. I apparently was doing a good job there, however: there were two rounds of layoffs in the company before I was let go. My value add there wasn't special- I integrated Excel data into an existing Access database. I also had the temerity to give reasons when they asked why I couldn't extrapolate results (when one has neither data or experience, one is up the creek without a paddle in terms of validity!)
With overtime, computer crashes and life in general, I haven't had much time to think about data as of late, much less do any analysis. However, the further I get from 10K blog viewers, the stronger the pull is to do a bit of analysis on blog hits to date.
So, here we go: blog speeds and feeds.
I started writing this blog in December of 2012. As of January 2016, I've published 196 posts to this blog- roughly five posts per month. As I'm no professional writer, I've got to say that this paltry volume is a challenge to maintain.
I've been tracking numbers from Day One, and they break down like this:
As far as continents go, only Antarctica has zero readers- Antarctica is 7th.
South America comes in 6th. With the limited amount of data I get back from Google (it's free, so I'm not complaining), I can only guess that language may be a factor in the readership here.
In terms of continents, Australia has the fewest number of countries... 1, and it is predictably 5th in the ranking. However, I think a few more countries could probably be considered a part of Australia for statistical purposes- New Zealand comes to mind immediately, but that's about it. If anyone has any ideas, please comment. The rest of the continents are as follows:
Africa (4th) is actually tied with Australia in terms of total readers, but these readers are distributed among a few countries, so I have to award the spot to Africa.
Europe comes in 3rd, which is slightly surprising because of the widespread use of English there. Twenty-seven countries represent Europe.
Asia is represented by seventeen countries and comes in 2nd, mainly because of Chinese readers.
My top market, again not a surprise, is North America, with a bit over 75% of my global total in readership.
That's it from here for now. Before signing off, I'd like to extend special e Day (2/7) greetings to Prof. Diego Kuonen!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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