Janet D. Stemwedel (whose nom de blog is Dr. Free-Ride) is an associate professor of philosophy at San Jose State University. Before becoming a philosopher, she earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. Email her at dr.freeride@gmail.com.
Because I know some people in these parts like numbers, I thought I'd give you a few stats for the Sb/DonorsChoose bloggers challenges currently underway.
At last count, we've gotten $12,325.59 (not counting the $10,000 match from SEED) from 152 generous donors -- that's an average of $81.09 per donor. (Potential donors, don't be put off -- as little as $10 can make a big difference when you're combining forces with other donors!)
You've heard by now that the Pharyngula challenge already wrapped up. Those unholy, soulless, pirate zombies dug deep and ended up funding 313% of PZ's goal.
However, there are some metrics by which the Pharynguloid are not the most awesome people (or zombies) participating in the drive. For example, donors to the Stranger Fruit challenge top the charts on pledge size, with an average pledge of $132.64 per donor.
And, when we work out the awesomeness of our readers normalizing for traffic, we end up with top 5 lists that may surprise you:
Donors per 1000 unique views:
- Terra Sigillata (11.5)
- Afarensis (4.2)
- (Tie) Evolgen and Stranger Fruit (3.5)
- The World's Fair (3.3)
Average amount donated per unique view:
- Terra Sigillata ($1.11)
- Stranger Fruit ($0.46)
- Afarensis ($0.36)
- Good Math, Bad Math ($0.19)
- The Questionable Authority ($0.16)
Far be it from me to set ScienceBlogs readers against each other, but if you don't see your favorite blog from the Sb galaxy in these rankings, it's time to represent! (Links to all the active challenges in my left sidebar, right below my thermometer thingy.)
Coming up: is there any correlation between a blogger's shoe size and the size of donations made to his challenge?
Comments
Wow, what a neat way to look at it and make me feel good for being in the cellar on traffic!
All I can say is that my few readers are quality readers, wealthy readers, and generous readers - thanks for doing this.
Posted by: Abel Pharmboy | June 20, 2006 11:32 PM
It takes a while to grow an audience, but you're staring it with a lot of good folks -- definitely the best way to go!
Posted by: Janet D. Stemwedel | June 21, 2006 12:07 AM
Hmmmm, my "daily average" just fell from about 5100/day to about 1600/day (the Digg hit is older than a week now). So, I should be steadily moving up on your scale....
Posted by: coturnix | June 21, 2006 12:18 AM
Happy to see that the World's Fair is on the list, although to be fair since we're working with the SCQ (which gets between 3000 and 7000 visitors a day), we're actually well below the average. The SCQ has, however, been getting a dozen or so emails about the sign-in for donations restricted to folks putting down a US only locale. I'm guessing since it's predominantly Canadian based, we're losing out on a couple dollars here.
Posted by: dave | June 21, 2006 12:29 PM