Python's popularity statistics

[Aaron K. Johnson]

In message <mailman.1039658234.21778.python-list at python.org>, Chad Netzer wrote:
> On Wednesday 11 December 2002 17:24, Mike Dean wrote:
> > On Wed, 11 Dec 2002 14:49:11 -0600 Aaron K. Johnson 
> <akjmicro at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > python 9647
> > > clipper 8960
> >
> > Now this is what I find real interesting.  Clipper, right below
> > Python? I thought Clipper was quite dying, in this client-server
> > world...  does it still have that big a following?
> 
> The most important step in any statistical analysis (except perhaps 
> for gross accuracy of the numbers themselves), is interpretation.  
> Drawing any subjective conclusions from these numbers, such as 
> "popularity of language", etc. is essentially meaningless.  Others 
> have already pointed out that "popularity of language" and 
> "activity of newsgroup" could be inversely correlated, as far as we 
> know.  Furthermore, we have no knowledge of how on-topic any 
> specific newsgroup is (not from the raw numbers anyway).

Do you really think beta might be more popular than Java?
I still contend that in some cloudy way these number directly represent usage.

-A.