Simple analysis of comp.text.tex traffic from January 1991 to December 2009

by Nasser M. Abbasi, Nov 5, 2009

I obtained this data from google's group page. I plotted the trend showing the number of posts per month over the period above. I also take the average number of posts per year and show how the average number of posts per year changed over the last 19 years. (Since I am writing this in Nov 2009, to take the yearly average, I extrapolated the last 2 months of 2009)

Conclusion: The peak was around 2001-2003 with average 2500 per month in those years. The number of posts has since been going down.  Wonder why?

The data

In[1]:=

"latex_1.gif"

Find the average per year, and plot it

In[2]:=

"latex_2.gif"

Out[4]=

Graphics:average posts per year for comp.text.tex from from 1991 to 2009

Plot posts per month over the same period

In[6]:=

"latex_4.gif"

Out[6]=

"latex_5.gif"

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