Lies, Damned Lies and Fractal Stats

I’m beginning to question my blog stats.  I never had cause to doubt them before but I’ve been wondering lately as they seem to have plummeted over the last few days to an all-time low.  This would not be so odd if I weren’t getting a number of ‘likes’ and comments.  True, the figures for these do not exceed the number of readers, but past experience teaches that the more interaction there is, the higher the stats.  It’s very unusual to get very low stats with this level of interaction.  I’ve checked on other browsers; I’ve looked via the app on my phone and they’re all telling the same story.  But I suspect they lie.

If so, it’s more likely to be cock-up than conspiracy.  WordPress try to be encouraging rather than bringing you down, since the scale of the bar chart varies with the level of views, rather like a fractal series.  For example, if your views are in the low twenties, the chart will go up to fifty; if they’re between three and four hundred it’ll top out at five hundred – and so on.  I expect there are bloggers who get views in the thousands or even hundreds of thousands, whose stats go all the way up to eleven.  Or eleventy-one…

But for now it remains a mystery.  Any other wordpressers experienced this phenomenon?

Kirk out

By the way you may not hear from me much for a few days as I’ll be at conference.  I shall prepare my report-thingy with the utmost care…