Economists, statisticians, scientists - want a good laugh?

Have a look at the red arrow on the new economic statistics graphs posted today - you can link from the log-in screen. Oh wow!

But listen, don't get all uptight about statistical deception etc - just use it as a student assignment. How SHOULD those data have been presented? Has there been an economic upturn in SL? How strong is it? Where would YOU extrapolate the line to?

bleh!

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain

I'm too tired to look at the underlying info right now. Gets a big "whatever" from me. What does the user hours matter, in light of high camping bot/alt farm activity?

The "trend" line they drew is okay.

If the trend was taken over a shorter recent history it would be flatter, that is true, but equally if they drew it over a longer time period (the full chart), it would be steeper. If they extended the chart right back then the trend would be flatter to take into account the flatter development in the first few years.

It is the "Q4" growth statement (which is true, over the quarter) coupled with a steep trendline over the best quarters that is slightly misleading on first glance.

The stats are useless as anything other than a positive PR tool.

To make the stats useful:

1) How many alts are there? They used to post this info but when more alts were being created than new original members they squashed the unique user stats with the excuse the numbers were not accurate enough....

2) How many hours traffic farmers use up vs. total hours. I counted over 20,000 traffic farm bots so far and only covered a few hundred sims with lots of green dots. I gave up on that quest. Many many more sims use traffic farms.

3) How many accounts get removed. All the griefers create hundreds of accounts a month then get deleted by LL. How are these numbers used?

Those 3 are just off the top of my head.

More problems not mentioned are activity. What are people doing in SL? Is what they are doing actually helping SL? More doesn't mean better. I also find Philips comments a little disturbing about SL shifting to Education and Business......... How can this be possible when the majority of SL residents have nothing to do with either of those? The simple answer is Education and Business have the deeper pockets. So it is pretty obvious LL with cater to whoever gives them to most money and in this case not the majority of SL. If business and education become the main focus of LL then I have a feeling all adult related activities in SL will slowly be squashed and we can rename SL There2.com. They will be able to get away with this simply because bsuiness and education are currently paying their bills. Everything else is break even or loss and can be removed if needed.


It is what it is though. I can't even get myself to log into SL anymore anyway. RL hobbies and intrests are far more rewarding. I have lost that in the last 2 years in SL and now realizing RL is far more important to spend time in. The return is a lot greater and not just money wise.

This is why they need to link all alts to one unique user, like WoW does. It's frustrating to see these false values (we all know they're false!) and know that LL is using them as PR.

79% of all statistics are made up.

Deleted/cancelled accounts aren't counted (supposidly).

My research indicates that it's actually closer to 82.5%.

But only on alternate Tuesdays in months that begin with an "R."

Sure, but how many accounts removed from abuse and how many accounts removed from user preference?

Don't kid yourself------LL knows how to make the statistics varifiable and clearly understood. My god they build one of the most sophisticated internet programs in the world.

There are lots of ways to dig out revealing data though------A good one when a stat is about money and people is to use percapita figures (Money amount/ Number of People). I think someone did that in the blog.

Interestingly--even though LL does not give us true users anymore, if you do that you can see the effects of alt armies.

LL is really not hiding much--even if they think they are and people are beginning to figure it out. The trouble now is that lots of people are suspicious of a lot of things here--and they are not going to let it go I don't think.

I would not want to be LL. The press is going to grap this before too long and have a heyday. These kinds of policies are really not very smart at all.

I reality, the economy here is very soft and growing distrust in LL is'nt going to help reverse that.