After takin' a swig o' grog, Roy Schestowitz belched out
this bit o' wisdom:
I've snipped for brevity.
> We collect data from the browsers of site visitors to our exclusive
> on-demand network of live stats customers. The data is compiled from
> approximately 160 million visitors per month. The information published is an
> aggregate of the data from this network of hosted website statistics. The site
> unique visitor and referral information is summarized on a monthly basis.
>
> WTF?
>
> Is this supposed to be some kind of unbiased sample? But wait, there's more:
>
> In addition, we classify 430+ referral sources identified as search
> engines. Aggregate traffic referrals from these engines are summarized and
> reported monthly. The statistics for search engines include both organic and
> sponsored referrals. The websites in our population represent dozens of
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> countries in regions including North America, South America, Western Europe,
> Australia / Pacific Rim and Parts of Asia.
>
> http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/07/is_linux_getting_the_shaft.php
The complexity of this problem is actually rather large. But I can tell
you one thing: If you were my graduate student and you came to me with
this sampling strategy, I'd send you back to kindergarten.
See ya when ya graduate, Otto Kindergartener.
--
Anger is momentary madness.
-- Horace
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