Survivor Bias - logic and statistics

I've had to explain this to many people but never knew there was a name to it. And now I know... and feel a little dumber because it took me so long to learn about it. :D

Reference

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-bias/

Blogger December 2015 Stats

Google Analytics
Sessions = 905
Users = 817
PageViews = 1898

Google Webmasters
Impressions = 6392
Clicks = 710


Google AdSense
Page Views = 121
Clicks = 0

Blogger
Pageviews Last Month = 1960
All Time Posts = 374
All Time History Visits = 66818

Life: Blogger Dec 2014 Stats

Google Analytics

Sessions = 2280
Users = 2089
Pageviews = 4818

Google Webmasters

Total Queries = 362
Impressions = 10,161
Clicks = 1621

Google AdSense

Page Views = 588
Clicks = 2

Blogger

Pageviews Last Month = 3254
All Time Posts = 327
All Time History Visits = 34069

30000+ All Time History Visitors

Thank you visitors, readers, web surfers, fact questioners, and everyone else that has contributed to my blog. My last milestone of 20,000 visitors was only a few months ago in May/June of this year, 2014. I started around 12,000 at the start of the year (when I essentially started tracking my blog metrics).

YTD, I have almost 7000 sessions from Google Analytics with 13000 pageviews. I did have some analytics issues when I tried to enable the demographics. I am not sure that would be a 5000 page view difference though.

Google AdSense shows that I have about 8500 page views. This is several thousands short from both analytics and blogspot. I wonder if this may possibly be due to ad blockers.

Life: Blogger September 2014 Stats

Google Analytics

Sessions = 1120
Users = 1031
Pageviews = 2444

Google Webmasters

Total Queries = 327
Approximate Impressions = 8171
Approximate Clicks = 733

Google AdSense

Page Views = 953
Clicks = 1

Blogger

Pageviews Last Month = 2080
All Time Comments = **
All Time Posts = 287
All Time History Visits = 25195



* Approximations are rounded down
** Switching to Google+ comments removed the ability to count total comments

Life: Blogger July 2014 Stats

Missed July earlier in the month.

Google Analytics

Sessions = 605
Users = 524
Pageviews = 1383

Google Webmasters

Total Queries = 285
Approximate Impressions = 6276
Approximate Clicks = 307

Google AdSense

Page Views = 506
Clicks = 2

Blogger

Does not allow for previous data.



* Approximations are rounded down
** Switching to Google+ comments removed the ability to count total comments

Life: Blogger August 2014 Stats

I seem to have missed metrics for July.

Google Analytics

Sessions = 594
Users = 511
Pageviews = 1362

Google Webmasters

Total Queries = 292
Approximate Impressions = 6595
Approximate Clicks = 318

Google AdSense

Page Views = 588
Clicks = 2

Blogger

Pageviews Last Month = 1500
All Time Comments = **
All Time Posts = 261
All Time History Visits = 23142



* Approximations are rounded down
** Switching to Google+ comments removed the ability to count total comments

Life: Blogger June 2014 Stats and 20202+ Lifetime visitors

Odd that my analytics numbers is much lower than usual even compared to the other metrics. I wonder if something happened with the analytics scripts.

Google Analytics

Sessions = 76

Google Webmasters

Total Queries = 223
Approximate Impressions = 5800
Approximate Clicks = 287

Google AdSense

Page Views = 448
Clicks = 3

Blogger

Pageviews Last Month = 973
All Time Comments = 39
All Time Posts = 222
All Time History Visits = 20202

* Approximations are rounded down

Life: Blogger May 2014 Stats

Google Analytics

Sessions = 267

Google Webmasters

Total Queries = 232
Approximate Impressions = 5700
Approximate Clicks = 318

Google AdSense

Page Views = 638
Clicks = 1

Blogger

Pageviews Last Month = 960
All Time Comments = 38
All Time Posts = 210
All Time History Visits = 19267

* Approximations are rounded down

Life: Blogger April 2014 Stats

Google Analytics

Sessions = 321

Google Webmasters

Total Queries = 259
Approximate Impressions = 12400
Approximate Clicks = 455

Google AdSense

Page Views = 748
Clicks = 3

Blogger

Pageviews Last Month = 1275
All Time Comments = 38
All Time Posts = 201
All Time History Visits = 18144

* Approximations are rounded down

Life: Blogger March 2014 Stats

Google Analytics

Visits = 361

Google Webmasters

Total Queries = 299
Approximate Impressions = 7400
Approximate Clicks = 500

Google AdSense

Page Views = 792
Clicks = 1

Blogger

Pageviews Last Month = 1788
All Time Comments = 34
All Time Posts = 192
All Time History Visits = 16930

* Approximations are rounded down

Life: Blogger January/February 2014 Stats

Analysis

Seems that my traffic is decreasing a little bit. I think this is due to the decrease in a couple of my older posts that have been driving most of the traffic. My guess on that is due to the age of the posts as they over a year old. 

I still have not figured out what keeps causing the 1 or 2 visits on each of my pages. The first visit almost always occurs within a few minutes of posting, but sometimes could take up to a day or two. The second visit is more erratic in that it could be within a day to a few days (maybe a week).

I am glad to see that my traffic sources are now search engines. Last year there were a couple that would always sneak onto my list that were for other advertising. I do not think that I did anything to change that, so hopefully that is just blogger cleaning up the data or the ad sites disappeared or the ads do not think it is worth there time anymore.

I am trying to reuse my lables, so hopefully the number of single tags will decrease over time. Or perhaps, I will be trying to increase the higher count labels.

Google Analytics

Visits (January) = 450
Visits (February) = 371

Unique Visitors (January) = 403
Unique Visitors (February) = 330

Page Views (January) = 615
Page Views (February) = 436

Pages per Visit (January) = 1.37
Pages per Visit (February) = 1.18

Google Webmasters

Total Queries (January) = 275
Total Queries (February) = 266

Approximate Impressions (January) = 8,500
Approximate Impressions (February) = 6,960

Approximate Clicks (January) = 600
Approximate Clicks (February) = 437

Google AdSense

February = 794 Views
January = 951 Views
All = 2037 (since 12/19/2013)

Ad clicks = 0

Blogger

Comments (January) = 9
Comments (February) = 2

Posts (January) = 24
Posts (February) = 18

All Time History Visits = 14,967
Last Month History Visits = 1,285

Life: Practicing Basic Math while Reading Random Blogs

Sometimes I just enjoy reading random blogs to see what people write about. When I do so, I also track how long they keep their blogs going.

One of things I also look for is the number of posts they blogged. Of course, I only record the ones that have the list of blogs that are countable (typically blogs with list of years with the number of blogs in the year). I count these in my head for my table of data.

While trying to do the math in my head, I have found that I can "see" the numbers quickly in my head... but it takes a while for me to recognize the number. What I mean by that is that it takes me a while to "say" the number especially if I had to carry a number. For example, 88 + 33 = 121. For some reason, I doubt myself even though I see "121" in my head so I double check that 80 + 30 = 110 then add 8 + 3 = 11, thus carry the 1 for the tens, thus 110 + 11 = 121. After warming up, I am able to just ignore the step where I have to read out the number and just type what I see.

I have also noticed that teens really mess how quickly I can calculate because see 14 and saying fourteen really throws my mind for a loop. I think I already have some problems with dyslexia-like memory. So seeing 1 while saying 4 then see 4 when saying teen, triggers my mind to triple check that I have the correct numbers in the correct places. But like above, I go much faster once I ignore the urge to say the numbers.

For some reason, my recall is in reverse order and I cannot really tell. The most common example is when someone gives me there phone numbers. First, I rarely can repeat 7 to 10 digit numbers. And in the rare cases that I can, I almost always repeat the last 4 digits backwards but not the first 3 to 6. Even when copying numbers from one spreadsheet to another. I have just gotten in the habit of double-checking which I notice that I do this quite often.


Reference
https://sites.google.com/site/douglastclee/sociology/numbers

Review: 2013 metrics for Honda Civic 2012

Gas Data for 2013

First full year of data for my Honda Civic 2012.

Total Miles Driven	10696
Total Gallons of Gas	311.72
Total Cost of Gas	$1,025.22
Gas Milage	34.31
Average Price per Gallon	$3.29

MPG

Gas Mileage has dropped from 35 mpg to 34.31 mpg. Now average 34.86 mpg lifetime. I'm not sure if this is due to my mom using my car for a month but somehow her mpg is much lower than mine.

Average Gas Price

Interestingly, gas price is lower than total average $3.34 and a 2012 average $3.43. 

Insurance

Premium went up $10 with Geico.

Reference

http://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2013/08/review-honda-civic-2012-age-450-days.html

Life: Blogger 2013

Google Analytics

Average Visits = 38

2 full months, started in October.

Google Webmasters

Total Queries = 183
Approximate Impressions = 2000
Approximate Clicks = 1000

Started in October.

Google AdSense

Page Views = 286
Clicks = 1

Started 12/19/2013

Blogger

Comments = 12
Posts = 129
All Time History Visits = 11948
Max Month Visits = September 2248

Review: Honda Civic 2012 - Age 450 days

It has been almost half a year since my last cost analysis of my car.

In general, the car still drives well. In a long drive, I have actually managed to get around 49 miles / gallon for about a mile. I am not sure how much historical data the car uses to calculate that, but that was around 2 hours into my trip. My gas efficiency for the entire trip (calculating from my gas receipts) was around 44.5 miles / gallon. The ticket efficiency for highway is 41 mpg, so I am still quite happy about that.

During that trip and judging from the gas efficiency meter, the car drives most effectively between 55 mph to 65 mph. I think it is most effective around 55 mph including all the slight hills. When I reach 70 - 75 mph, the efficiency drops sharply just to maintain a constant speed. Also to note, there was a lot of rain during my trip. This may be a factor but I am not knowledgeable to know.

As for the life of my car, I am averaging around 35 mpg and $3 per day on gas. The cost per day for the total cost on the car has dropped to $54.28 per day from $81.73 per day since the previous post. This cost is estimated to reach $6.78 when the car reaches 10 years assuming gas and insurance remains the same.

It is still cheaper to not own a car in New York City and pay per trip ($2.50 per trip) if you go out once a day (including work). A monthly pass is clearly a cheaper alternative to a car. To top it off, the cost of the car would be greater than $6.78 if you need to pay for parking and lower fuel efficiency. The positive of owning and using a car is the convenience and possibly safety.

Life: What is the cost per day to owning a car (Take 4 of infinite)

Purpose: There was a period of time that I lived in the city and did not own a car. I have always wondered what are the cost benefits of not owning a car. Besides the cost of the car, I also wanted to include gas and insurance.

Assumptions: Cost of the car is the total cost. This includes tax, fees, paperwork, registration, and basically anything to the one-time payment to purchasing a car. If you do not know how much those are, the cost of the car alone will probably be around $20-21k depending on where you live. The metrics that I have provided are from a 2012 Honda Civic which is about 10 months old. I did not include any other maintenance costs at this time but given a 10 year period, this cost should be negligible. I used 10 years because I figure almost all car models should be last at least 10 years. Calculating months, I assume month is approximately 30.42 days or (365 days / 12 months).

Estimate corrections: The car is newer so will be slightly more gas efficient than older cars. Gas efficiency is mix between regular mode and gas efficient mode. 80% of trips are within 15-30 miles; 20% 120 miles; about 2-4 trips over 500 miles.

Conclusion: The metro is approximately $2.50 / trip or $112 / month (45 trips to break even) or about $1350 / year, so commuting would save approximately $4000 / year. Living expense is much cheaper outside the city. On rent alone, I save approximately $800 / month or $9600 / year. Also, I expect my car to last more the 10 years (hopefully, 20 before any major problems occur) so effectively the final cost will be $6.58 less per day after 10 years. If you expect about $1000 in maintenance, then add approximately $2.80 per day.

Metrics:
Car: $24,000

Expected life: 10 years (~365 * 10)

Car per day: $6.575

Insurance (comprehensive): $1600 / year

Insurance per day: $4.38

Miles per day: 35 miles / day

Gas efficiency: 35 miles / gallon

Gas usage: 1 gallon / day

Cost of gas: $3.50 / gallon

Cost of gas per day: $3.50 / day

Total cost / day: $14.45 / day
Total cost / month: $439.52 / month

Total cost / year: $5,274.25 / year

Costs do not include repairs, oil changes, and other maintenance costs.