How many people visit your website?

Whether you are writing a blog like this one, or run a major e-commerce website, it’s natural to want to know how many people visit. There are lots of tools—generally known as web analytics—to measure web site traffic. The problem is, “People don’t visit websites. Their computers do.”  But you cannot identify how many people [...]

Are Americans getting wealthier or poorer? It depends on how you measure “wealth.”

The standard measure of wealth is GDP per capita. The chart below shows that Americans have been getting continually wealthier for decades, with a few blips here and there (source of data). The measure of wealth—Gross Domestic Product, is based on the dollar value of economic transactions. Such a measure depends crucially on the definition [...]

Dead right.

I snapped this picture at a cross walk in Manhattan near Central Park over the weekend. What does it say? Stop or walk? You could walk and not, technically, be jaywalking.  You stand a good chance of getting smacked by a car though if you do. You’d be technically right. And maybe even dead right. [...]