Pat, Lara, Kevin, Gabby and I: Working for Influence

On Tuesday, I went to a talk by local author Pat Farabaugh on his book Disastrous Floods and the Demise of Steel in Johnstown.  He gave a review of the 3 major floods in Johnstown's history and why the steel mills pulled out of Johnstown a few years after the 1977 flood.  In the interest of full disclosure, my mother's maiden name is also Farabaugh.  We are distant cousins.  We had a nice discussion about our books.  It's always nice to meet other authors.  Here is a link to his book on Amazon.

 

 

Also, the Out D' Coup podcast from Raging Chicken Press (I was interviewed by Kevin Mahoney in 2016) features Lara Putnam, professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh.  Like me, she has written on political shifts in the rust belt.  You can hear her interview with Kevin Mahoney above.  

Finally, I will comment on Gabby Petito.  I confess to being fascinated with this case.  Occasionally, I am taken in by social media feeding frenzies. The news came out on Tuesday about her former fiancé committing suicide by gunshot which was no surprise.  His notebook may hold more interesting revelations about what happened between the two.  I have travelled to the Grand Teton national park as seen in the photo below.

Like Pat, Lara, Kevin, and I, she was an aspiring social media influencer.  She has received much more attention than she would have if she lived.  The case has given me great examples to use in my psychology class on how appearances can be deceiving.  The contrasts between her Instagram posts where her and her fiancé seemed happy and the way she appeared in the Moab Police video where she was eager to excuse his behavior.  He made no effort to excuse her behavior.  Her family appears to be sublimating their grief over her death by creating the Gabby Petito Foundation to assist missing persons and victims of domestic violence.

Me driving through the Tetons in 2016

Other youtubers have put there two cents in on the case.  I have little to add to their commentary.  In addition to making a statement, they are also looking for views and likes of their work.  The competition is omnipresent.  

I admit that the influencing the others and I do is different than what Gabby was planning on doing.  Next week I will be back to posting on COVID in the hopes influencing people to get the vaccine.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

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The tenth anniversary of this blog is now upon us.  It just happens to coincide with the publication of my book.  The blog has been a source for much of the content for the book.  I will be having a book signing on October 9 at the Chameleon Bookstore.  

I wanted to present the top posts for the whole history of the blog but Google Analytics changed its algorithm so that is presents data for the last 3 years.  Blogger does have a built in stat counter so I will use that.  The built in counter does not filter out bot traffic very well but it's all I have.  It provides only the top 18 posts of all time.  

18. Greta Thunberg and Young Idealism

This post from Sept 2019 discusses the Swedish climate activist's trip to the US.

17. Best Nonfiction Poll Update

In November 2018, I created a poll on the blog for the greatest nonfiction book of all time (which can be voted on in the poll above) in response to the Great American Read poll that PBS conducted.  This post looks at the early results of the poll.

16. Do you Hear What I Hear? Sounds like Passing the Buck

This was a post on Christmas Eve about the song.  This post may have been buoyed by spam and/or bot traffic.

15. Do NBA Coaches who didn’t play in the NBA fare the same as NFL Coaches?

In this post I took a look at how elite NBA coaches who played in the NBA fared compared to those who did not.  I also compared the elite NBA coaches to elite NFL coaches to see if playing in the league made a difference in their performance.

14. Early Results for the Best Nonfiction Poll 

Another look at the best nonfiction book poll results.

13. The Ethics of Social Media Manipulation

This post takes a look at the algorithms that social media companies use to keep eyeballs focused on their sites.  This is the first post on this list that was made before I bought a domain name for the site.  It saw a surge in pageviews after the domain was bought.

12. Polls Preventing Trump from Shutting Down Government Again

This post looks at how Trump shutting down the government in early 2019 and why the polls were preventing him from repeating the act to get his border wall funded.

11. Twitter Audit of the Democratic Candidates: High % of Fake Accounts for Sanders and Bullock

As preparation for the Democratic Presidential Primaries was heating up, I took a look at the candidates' social media followings.  More specifically I looked at what percentage of their twitter followers were real.

10. Con Man Carnicella

In the 2019 election, I took a look at the propaganda campaign against the Republican candidate for Cambria County Commissioner Jerry Carnicella.

9. Measuring Love Chemistry

In this pre domain post I looked at the algorithms used by onlie dating sites to make romantic matches.

8. NHS Membership, Not School Year predicts Prestige in College Admission at McCort

In this post I looked at how National Honor Society membership and school year predicted prestige in college admission at my high school alma mater.

7. The 'Squad', Trump's Tweet, and Healthcare Campaign Contributions

This post was part of a series of posts looking at campaign contributions from the healthcare industry for freshman democrats. 

6. Differences between Johnstown, Westmont, and Richland School Districts in Special Education

This post looked at the differences in special education populations in local school districts.  This is an excerpt from my book.

5. Freshman House Democrats, their Race/Ethnicity, Campaign Donors, and Single Payer

This post looked at the effect of the race/ethnicity of freshman democrats in Congress and of their support for single payer healthcare on the campaign contributions that they received from the healthcare industry.

4. Why do African Americans live to be 64.8 years in Cambria County?

This post was another inspiration for my book which looked at factors that explained why African Americans lived to be 64.8 years old in Cambria County which was 10 years shorter than African Americans nationwide.

3. Facebook Primary: Page Likes Predict Democrat Support (Except for Joe Biden)

This was an earlier post looking at how Facebook and Twitter followings predicted the poll standing of Democratic Presidential candidates last year.  There was a strong prediction for the candidates except for Joe Biden.

2. Global Warming, Wikileaks, and Statistics: What Barry Sanders Can Teach Us.

This is one of the two posts on this list from the early days of this blog.  It talks about how to use Barry Sanders football statistics to explain climate change to a sportscenter junkie.

 1. Income and Life Expectancy. What does it Tell Us About US?

This is the all time most read post for the blog.  It was buoyed by a link to the BBC Documentary The Joy of Stats in 2010.  It received more than twice as many page views that the second most read post on the list.  It looked at how income predicted life expectancy for each state in the U.S. but not for the District of Columbia. 

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COVID-19 and CSI without Dead Bodies

Since March 14, thirteen out of the last 14 posts on the blog have been on the Coronavirus pandemic.  One was on the new hate group numbers from the Southern Poverty law center.  With states starting to reopen after the I thought I would take a look at how the pandemic has affected traffic on this site according to Google Analytics.  I compared the traffic from March 14 to today (June 7) to the previous period (Dec 19,2019 to March 13, 2020).

Overall, the site has received 20.4% more traffic for the current period to the previous (1,133 to 941).  The average number of page views per session increased by 18.23% (1.47 pages/session for this period to 1.24 pages/session for the last period).  However, the average time spent on a page was 30.5% lower for the current period (0:26) compared to the previous (0:38).

Although the overall number of users on this site was up by 20.4%, the number of users from the U.S. was down by 12.46% (752 to 859).  There was number of users was up from China (49 to 2), India (19 to 3), the U.K. (18 to 10), Hong Kong (15 to 0), Germany (13 to 3), Japan (11 to 3) Mexico (11 to 5) and Canada (8 to 5).  Overall the number of users for this site from outside the U.S. was higher for this site with 381 for this period to 82 from outside the U.S.  This gives an increase of 365% from outside the U.S.

The ratio of new users to returning users for this period was 93.7% (1,103) new to 6.3% (74) returning for this period to 89.4% (897) to 10.6% (106) for the previous.  For those users that have their gender identified by Google the ratio of males to females was 51.01% (177) females to 48.99% (170) males for this period.  For the previous period it was 29.89% (55) for females versus 70.11% (129) for males.

For those users whose age is identified by google, the largest increase in users was in the 35-44 age group with a 180% increase (70 to 25) followed by the 65+ age group at 173.68% (52 to 19), and the 25-34 age group at 126.67% (102 to 45).  There were increases for all the age groups.  

The results here appear to be mixed.  There are more users for this site for the pandemic posts.  According to the graph in the image at the top of the post, the largest spike in number of users between the period occurred in the week from May 17 to May 23.  The post for this period was the one on COVID-19 testing in zip-codes in Johnstown.  The traffic for this post was almost exclusively from the U.S.  More specifically, it was mostly from Johnstown and the surrounding areas.  Without this post, the gap in users between the US and the rest of the world would be even greater.

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Top Ten Posts of 2019

As 2019 comes to a close I thought I would imitate other media news outlets and look at the top 10 posts on this site in terms of the number of page views.  The majority of the posts came in the early part of this year and in the later part.  Posts made before 2019 are included in this list.

1. Differences between Johnstown, Westmont, and Richland School Districts in Special Education

This post was on changes in enrollment and in those needing special education services in the Greater Johnstown, Westmont, and Richland School Districts.  It was posted in November.  Enrollment has decreased in all three districts while African-American enrollment has increased in Johnstown.

2. Vote for the Best Nonfiction Books of All Time

This post was made in November 2018 to introduce the poll for the greatest nonfiction book of all time.  So far the Origin of Species is leading.

3. A Documentary on African Americans in Johnstown

This post from May of this year presents a documentary on the migratin of African Americans to Johnstown.

4. Con Man Carnicella

This post from October looks at the propaganda campaign against the local candidate for Cambria County Commissioner, Jerry Carnicella.  He lost.

5.  The Civil War in a Larger International Historical Context

This post is from May 2011 the oldest post on this list.  It talks about how the conflict in the US is reflected in similar conflicts in Italy, Germany and Japan.

6.  A look at the Number of PA Abuser Priests Identified by the Grand Jury

I took a look at the numbers of abuser priests identified by Pennsylvania grand juries and adjusting them for the size of the populations that they serve in each of their respective Dioceses.  Cambria County had by far the most adjusting for population.

7.  Holiday Poverty Estimates from the Census Bureau: Johnstown SD Ranks 84th Nationally

 

This post from a few weeks ago showed how endemic the problem of poverty has become in the Greater Johnstown School District (GJSD) compared to the neighboring districts of Westmont, Richland, and Ferndale.  Nationally it ranks 84th out of 13,207 school districts.

8.  The 1st Anniversary of My Online Nonfiction Poll

This post is a follow up to the second ranked post on this list.  It is from November and gives the results up to Nov 24 of this year.

9.  Does playing in the NFL help a head coach? Not in the Playoffs

This is the first post of 2019.  It compared elite coaches in the NFL who played in the NFL (ie. Chuck Noll, Don Shula, and Tom Landry) to ones who did not (Vince Lombardi, Bill Belichick, and Jimmy Johnson).  It found that they were equal in the regular season but the one who did not play had better records in the playoffs and won more championships.

10.  Holiday Poverty Estimates for Johnstown and Cambria County

This is the next to last post of the year.  It was a follow up post to the seventh most popular post on this list.  It looked at trends in the city, county, state, and US in poverty and median income.  The gap between the county and the city and the state and the US is growing.





For this list, two of the posts were made before 2019 and six of them were on the City of Johnstown and the surrounding area.  Of the eight posts made this year, three were made in the first half of the year.  This blog almost completely covers the 2010s.  In September I will have the tenth anniversary post looking at it's all time most popular posts.

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The 9th anniversary of CSI without Dead Bodies is upon us/me.  It has been a hectic year where I purchased a domain name for this blog.  The number of users per month for the last year when the domain name was bought are summarized in the blue line in the graph below.  The number of users for the previous year are summarized in the orange line below.

Overall there was a 128.8% increase in the number of users in the past year (mostly in the first three months of last year).  Likewise there was a 130.21% and a 129.06% increase in the number of new users and sessions respectively.  There was a slight increase in the number of sessions per user (0.11%).  However there was only a 20.65% increase in the number of pageviews and a 47.33% decrease in the number of pages per session.  There was a smaller decrease in the average session duration but a larger increase in the bounce rate.  This suggests that while the number of users has increased, the level of engagement hasn't.  

Looking at the countries where the users came from, there was a 4,426.09% increase from India, a 2,400% increase from Nigeria, a 2,000% increase from Bangladesh but an 85.13% increase from the United States.  Looking at the United States, there was a one second increase in the average session duration.  There was a decrease in the pages per session in the US but It was higher there (1.85 pages per session) than it was in the page overall (1.71 pages per session).  This suggests that the low engagement comes from outside the US which makes sense as most of my posts are about the US.

I counted 50 posts to the blog in the last year.  With 415 total posts on the blog over the last nine years, that averages out to 46.1 posts per year so it has been a productive year.  I will continue the domain name from google to promote my blog. On to the tenth year.

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Facebook Primary: Page Likes Predict Democrat Support (Except for Joe Biden)

Four years ago I showed that a candidate's following on Facebook predicted their support in the polls at this point four years ago.  It predicted 70.6% of the variability for Republicans and 75.6% of it for Democrats.  I thought I would lake a look at how the candidates fare with Facebook and Twitter in the Democratic primary this time around.  The 13 candidates that appear in the RCP poll Average are summarized in the graph below.

The graph above shows the number of Facebook page likes for the candidates on the x axis and the Real Clear Politics (RCP) national poll average % for that candidate.  The linear regression model accounted for 42.1% of the variability in the RCP average.  The fit line plot above show a good fit for each of the candidates except for Joe Biden who has the highest RCP poll average at 28.9% but only 1,487,733 Facebook page likes.  Biden has name recognition because he was Obama's Vice President.

If the model is rerun with Biden excluded, Facebook page likes now account for 87.1% of the variability in the RCP poll average.  The model predicts that for every increase on one million page likes for the candidate's official Facebook page, the RCP poll average is expected to increase by 3.62%.  If 100% of the variability were accounted for, all of the candidates would form a perfect straight line on the graph.  

I did look at the candidate's Twitter followings and their poll averages.  A similar pattern was found but the relationship was not as strong as it was for Facebook.  The model with Biden included accounted for 34.3% of the variability and without him it accounted for 55.4%.  

One should be careful not to assume a strong Facebook or Twitter following causes a candidate to have high poll numbers.  Strong poll numbers could cause a high Facebook following.  The Twitter and Facebook followings were highly correlated with a coefficient of 0.9018 accounting for 81.3% of the variability.

Kirsten Gillibrand and Jay Inslee dropped out of the race with 381,476 and 75,202 page likes respectively.  Michael Bennett, Bill De Blasio, and others remain in the race despite not registering in the polls and not qualifying for the Sept 12 debate.  Bennett has 103,933 page likes and De Blasio has 66,070.  Tulsi Gabbard just missed the debate because she did not have enough individual donors.  

The candidates poll numbers and Facebook and Twitter followings are summarized in the table below.  Facebook has taken steps to curve foreign influence in the upcoming election.  It will remain a force in the election.

Candidate	RCP Poll Avg %	FB Following	Twitter following
Biden	28.9	1,487,733	3,706,982
Sanders	17.1	5,104,561	9,619,000
Warren	16.5	3,281,315	3,087,005
Harris	7	1,148,762	3,090,636
Buttigieg	4.6	441,495	1,396,792
Yang	2.5	178,036	747,425
Booker	2.4	1,192,725	4,344,745
O'Rourke	2.4	916,711	1,565,273
Gabbard	1.4	377,434	542,790
Castro	1.1	141,257	379,882
Klobuchar	0.9	258,582	755,517
Bullock	0.8	32,231	185,238
Williamson	0.8	814,883	2,759,880

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