Do the numbers lie, or just fib?

I have written and posted 222 blogs on math (before this one), since August 7th of 2009  last year.

In that time we have had lots of different folks visiting here. How many? Well, it's difficult to say at this time. Let's say about 6700 or so.

I can hear some of you saying "Hmm. 6700 or so? Don't you know precisely?"

No we don't. Even though I did lots of research on monitoring software and set up 3 different counting systems, the numbers continue to vary. Here's what we can measure:

FLAG Counter says 5,666 unique visitors from 124 different countries. About 58% are from the USA and 8.9% from the UK. On average 25 new people a day look at this site, while there are 41 page views.

SITE Meter says 6,634 unique visitors. About 55% are from the USA and 5% from the UK. On average 25 new people visit per day.

STAT Counter says 7,828 unique visitors. About 58% are from the USA, and 9% from the UK. On average 24 new people a day look at the site.

The highest day ever was April 28th, when I deliberately tried to get more visitors. I used popular search terms, put up pictures of flashy cars and attractive men and women, and made some promises I had no intention of keeping. And I embedded a video.

Here's the link if you care to see it.

The effort worked, because the number of visitors increased four-fold.

We don't sell advertising on this site but we do hope you will go look at the Excel Math website and buy some math curriculum for your school or for home-schooling your kids.

If not, we hope the blog will help you think about math, and why you need to know some math, and how you can use math. It certainly has made me think very deeply on the subject, at least 222 times.

Here are some reasons we are not more precise;
1. some people use more than one computer to come to our site, or more than one browser
2. counters use "cookies" saved by the browser to see if you've been here before. Some people block them
3. some users are behind "screens" the block the counters, etc. etc.

Maybe it's time to "wind the clock back" and start counting from zero again? Or not?