LAWS@SRI.COM (Ken Laws) (02/27/88)
I received 30 responses to my request for messages from readers with birthdays in early February. (There were 19 from the U.S., 3 each from Australia and the UK, 2 from Canada, and 3 from Bitnet sites unknown to me.) Multiplying by the appropriate time-span factor (365/15) shows that there were about 730 readers alert, able, and willing to reply to the request. The number of AIList readers is obviously much higher than that. Bitnet alone distributes to 400 addresses (only a few of which are known to be further redistributions). Applying this factor of 3/400 to the full response of 30 implies that there are about 4000 readers physically able to reply. (Many readers, e.g. in Great Britain, do not have outgoing mail priviledges due to the expense involved. Many others in Europe, Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere may be unable to construct the necessary return path.) Another handle on the readership is the number of AAAI members with net addresses. I don't have access to the full membership list, but about 3500 of the members have net addresses short enough to list in the printed directory. If we assume that 3000 such members in the U.S. are all Arpanet/CSNet AIList readers, the full 30 replies would represent a pool of 4737 AIList readers worldwide. This is certainly imprecise, but perhaps U.S. net members not reading AIList are balanced (or more than balanced) by students reading AIList bboards and by readers with long net addresses (when viewed from the Arpanet). My conclusion is that there are probably around 4000 readers (perhaps 3000 to 6000), with fewer than 1000 able to respond to any given query or message. A more precise (or accurate) estimate of the readership would require surface mail as the reply medium. -- Ken -------
wex@SW.MCC.COM (Alan Wexelblat) (03/03/88)
There are a number of possible reasons why your survey produced low
numbers. The simplest is, perhaps, that February is a month with a
comparatively low birthrate. February births usually indicate
conception in May, which is less common than conception in June. June
birth rates are also high (I don't know what factors influence this,
though).
Anyway, there are other ways to measure how many readers you have.
Among them is the Arbitron program run by Brian Reid
(reid@decwrl.dec.com). His data for January 88 estimates that
comp.ai.digest (the form of AILIST on USENET) has approximately 8900
readers.
--Alan Wexelblat
ARPA: WEX@MCC.COM
UUCP: {harvard, gatech, pyramid, &c.}!sally!im4u!milano!wex
The Pentagon has "fire and forget" systems; I have "file and forget."
[Great; I may have more friends than I thought! My attempt
at a head count was apparently worse than useless. So --
I mail to approximatedly 408 individual on the Arpanet and
CSNet, plus 134 redistributions and bboards. With the 400
Bitnet readers and an unknown number reading bboards or on
other networks (EARNET, JANET, etc.), there are at least
12000 AIList readers. That's on the same order as the number
of AAAI members. -- KIL]