STATISTICS FOR THE ISMHO ONLINE CASE STUDY GROUP
The "Millennium Group"
Here's a message John Suler sent to the members of the Case Study Group after we completed our first round of case presentations:
Below are some rough statistics that people might find interesting. Stats are useful, but they surely aren't the only way to evaluate something. Remember what Mark Twain said..... "There are 3 types of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics."Topical discussions began 1st week of November 1999 (with ethics discussion)
Last case finished at end of first week of April 2000
approx 5 months (21 weeks)
16 active members
STATS REGARDING TOPICS/CASES DISCUSSED:
18 topic areas discussed (16 cases plus ethics discussion and format/process thread)
total messages sent to list = 960
total number of messages for topics/cases discussed = 684
total number of messages for misc issues = 276
mean # messages per week = 41
mean # messages per topic/case = 33
range of messages per topic/case: 20 => 61
STATS REGARDING MESSAGES PER PERSON
(Note: You can probably guess who the blabbermouth was. Yep it was me. Actually my 277 total messages to the list is inflated due to the fact that a big chunk of those messages were devoted to scheduling and other organization stuff. So I offer below some stats with and without my inclusion):
range of total # of messages sent per person: 11 => 277
range of messages sent per person per week: .5 => 13
range of total # messages sent per person (excluding John): 11 => 104
range of messages sent per person per week (excluding John): .5 => 5
mean total # messages per person = 60
mean # messages per person per week = 3
mean # messages per person (excluding John) = 46
mean # messages per person per week (excluding John) = 2
SUMMARY
I guess the most critical conclusions from these statistics is this: Participating in this group meant receiving about 35-40 messages per week (about 5 per day) and sending to the list about 2 messages per week. Of course the length of the messages varied greatly, from one-liners to those containing several paragraphs. And some days were much slower than others.