Signal to Noise Charts

This morning I finally got around to parsing my blog to put together a chart of the Signal to Noise Ratio numbers that I keep in my Interesting Finds.  Seems even though I keep adding blogs to my opml file, my ratio stays pretty constant.  The Logrithmic chart shows it even better, but I thought I would just publish this chart to show the large amount of noise out there ... There are a few spikes in the charts, which are mainly due to me taking a day or two off here and there - causing the total to read to spike, but not really causing the items found interesting to spike.

The Signal to Noise chart is a chart of the interesting finds out of the total read.

This is a chart of the total read ...  Seems to show an increasing trend.

This is a chart that shows the percentage of items found interesting out of the total ... Seems to go up and down, no real trend.

posted on Saturday, September 30, 2006 11:28 AM

Feedback

# re: Signal to Noise Charts

wicked. i'll have to take a closer look at this later.
9/30/2006 4:31 PM | lb

# re: Signal to Noise Charts

If you're really interested in the numbers, I put the data files out at http://jasonhaley.com/files/Ratios.xls or http://jasonhaley.com/files/Ratios.csv
9/30/2006 6:24 PM | Jason Haley

# re: Signal to Noise Charts

Alright! Some data analysis of everyone's favorite feed! When I think about it, 5% average of subscription content found interesting is probably about right for anyone, maybe even a little higher than most.

Keep it up, Jason.
10/1/2006 7:03 AM | Dave Burke

# re: Signal to Noise Charts

Sorry for the double comments, but I just realized that I find about 5% of your Interesting Finds personally interesting. That 5% is still quite valuable to me though, but thought I'd extend the percentage spread to second generation noise-to-signal use. :-)
10/1/2006 7:07 AM | Dave Burke

# re: Signal to Noise Charts

Dave: Thanks for the comments. I'm actually working on a reader survey that is going to have a question like - "what percentage of the links are interesting/helpful to you?". Once I get that done and out, I'll of course post the results ... should be interesting :)
10/1/2006 7:58 AM | Jason Haley

# re: Signal to Noise Charts

I'm reading about 1/3 to 1/4 of your links. would'nt it be interresting to redirect the links again thru you, so you can see how many people really clickin on the links? or to see, what categories are more interresting than others?
what i miss really is such a feature in an Rss Reader. that you can mark posts as signal or noise and than see your subscribed feeds with their ratio.
10/3/2006 6:01 AM | Christoph Richter

# re: Signal to Noise Charts

It's amazing that you can keep track of 200+ feeds per day! I read about 25/day, which includes yours. From your posts I click-through probably 5-15% of the time, although that's a guess. I [and several others I think] owe you a big thank you for doing what you do. It saves me vast amounts of time and I truly appreciate it. :)
10/6/2006 9:10 PM | tod hilton

# re: Signal to Noise Charts

Christoph: I've been thinking about doing something like that ... just never enough time :)

Tod: Thanks for the compliments, I'm a little behind on my reading right now due to the move but look forward to catching up late Sunday (my unread items grows at between 400 - 600 items a day). It is also always nice to know that the links are useful for other people.
10/7/2006 8:48 AM | Jason Haley

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