So I managed to make it five years.  Again, I thought I would present the statistical pattern of interaction with the website in the absence of any explicit feedback.

But as the summary shows, the fall-off of visitors that began in the middle of last year has persisted throughout 2023.  I have also run out of much new material, so I am basically going to wrap it up.  I have a few things in the hopper, but they are mostly similar to puzzles already presented.  I have one or two essay ideas left, but again I have mostly said what I have to say, and the world of math has moved on.

Anyway, here is the summary for what it’s worth.

See Five Year Anniversary

Yet another year has passed, surprisingly, with perhaps the prospect of coming out from under the shadow of the pandemic.  Again, I thought I would present the statistical pattern of interaction with the website in the absence of any explicit feedback.

Perhaps due to fatigue from the height of the pandemic students seemed to have embraced returning to inclass education and abandoned online educational activities, at least as far as my website is concerned.  Visits dropped precipitously this school year.  Combined with a diminishing supply of fresh material this may finally spell the fading of the site.  Still, I may persist if for no other reason than my own entertainment.

Anyway, here is the summary.

See Four Year Anniversary

Yet another year has passed, with dimming hopes for a return to “normal” from the pandemic.  Newton’s great achievements occurred during a similar time, so maybe something positive will arise out of our current difficulties.  As always, I hope things mathematical have provided a distraction and entertainment—and possibly even enrichment. 

Again, I thought I would present the statistical pattern of interaction with the website in the absence of any explicit feedback.  I can’t draw any firm conclusions other than interest in the website seems to have reached a permanent plateau, and possibly a point of diminishing interest.  A cursory survey suggests that such websites as this have a half-life of about 3 years, so maybe it is a portent.

Anyway, here is the summary.

See Three Year Anniversary

And so another year has passed—a pretty horrible one at that.  Hopefully things mathematical have provided a distraction and entertainment.

I thought I would update the retrospective from a year ago.  Clearly, this eventful year made itself felt even through the statistics I gathered from the website.  The growth the site experienced in posts read hit a plateau, but strangely, the number of new visitors increased a bit, at least for a while.  That may have been due to the greater amount of free time away from the classroom that the virus demanded.

See Two Year Anniversary

It is hard to believe a whole year has passed since I started this blog. What is even more surprising is that by February I thought I was about done. I had more or less uploaded the math curiosities and problems I had been thinking about over the years and had presented most of the math essays I had written. There are of course only a finite number of math problems in the world, so I thought I was about done. But much to my surprise I kept finding one more thing that interested me, either an essay or math problem. So here I am. We will have to see what the next year brings.

What to say on this anniversary? I think I will give a retrospective about how the website has been received this past year. This is a challenge, since virtually all my visitors have been silent (which means I haven’t faced criticism, but then I generally haven’t received the necessary correctives either). There are ways to glean some information about visitors and I extracted what I could from the simple plugin I use to count visitors to different posts. I hear that Google analytics provides lots of details, such as the country of origin of a visitor (which would be interesting) and the like, but I have avoided Google and the other social networks as much as possible. After all, I am only an old curmudgeon with old-school notions of privacy.

See One Year Anniversary

I have almost completed my original goal of publishing articles I have written to myself over the last several years regarding matters mathematical (together with a sprinkling of more recent items). From the visit counts I can tell someone is reading them, but other than spam from porn and gambling sites and intrusions from Russian bots, I have received no feedback on the material in comments, nor via the more private venue of email: mathmeditations@josmfs.net.

Certain mysteries have arisen, such as the enormous hits on the Pool Party posting, whereas the More Pool post in a similar vein has received much less attention. I can guess the interest in the Three Jugs Problem and Three Jugs Problem Redux may have stemmed from the Bing and DuckDuckGo search results, but the Pool Party remains a mystery.

Even though I get a kick out of producing these articles for my own satisfaction, I wouldn’t mind hearing more views on my solutions and commentary, since I am quite rusty on these matters and welcome questions, corrections, and clarifications. I am also curious about further topics and postings I might consider. It seems that the Puzzles and Problems receive the most visits, whereas my own Curiosities and Questions the least, and the Math Inquiries somewhere in between. I have a few more ideas I might explore, but would welcome any suggestions that are within my ability to address.