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Re: Browser Stats Say Nothing About O/S Market Share

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
 wrote
on Thu, 21 Dec 2006 19:43:46 +0000
<2336265.p0n1eJBb7C@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Why Webbrowser statistics lie and just don't say anything
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | What do we conclude from all this? The number of hits in a log file
> | doesn't say anything, it says nothing about how many people are
> | using a certain browser. Ready made statistics published by so
> | called "analysts" say even less - they lie. To get statistics which
> | are just a little bit near reality it's not enough to have a
> | program which analyzes a log file, it needs some mathematical
> | background and a good understanding of what is going on there at all.
> `----
>
> http://j3e.de/statistics_lie.html
>
> There are many more factors to consider, e.g. Squid, "Unknown" due to
> diversity (usually thrown out of stats, but accounts for ~10%), user-agent
> forging (for MSIE-only sites)...
>
> Many more reasons for error were discussed before. They work in Microsoft's
> favour and grossly underestimate the prevalence of GNU/Linux.

Possibly counterbalanced by the many installations of
Firefox on Windows, if a site mistallies their stats.

Then there's the issue of self-selection.  A site about
Linux is probably going to inflate their Linux stats;
a Windows-based site will probably get more Windows hits.

At this point I'm tempted to go for an old-fashioned phone poll... :-)

-- 
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Useless C++ Programming Idea #40490127:
for(;;) ;

-- 
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