The Statman Cometh
April 25, 2000
6:19 a.m.
I did another book signing at a local bookstore this last weekend. I had been there a month earlier, and things went so well that the bookstore asked me back. So I sat there for the first hour and pretty much nothing happened. Just as I was preparing to suggest we knock off, a trickle of folks stopped by, a couple bought books. Then a guy came by and picked up four. Then a couple more. Before it was all said and done, the afternoon turned out to be not so bad.   Statistics are wonderful things. I've been reading a book titled "Worlds Unnumbered" about the search for extrasolar worlds. There is a lot of statistics associated with the study of astronomy--the most famous example, of course, being Drake's equation for possible civilizations out in space. I think humans are fascinated by statistics. Statistics are like magic, you know? Knowledge of statistics provides the sorceror the ability to naturally draw conclusions from tiny amounts of data, to make something solid where earlier nothing had stood. Anyway, it truely is a fascinating book, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in space at all. As I was sitting inthe bookstore this weekend, I got to thinking about numbers and statistics, and how real they might be. So, here is what I was thinking. Based on my pseudo-scientific estimate, I've sold some 30 copies of Writers of the Future in Columbus, Indiana. More if you count Louisville, and Indianapolis. Given Columbus's population of ~35,000 this means that I've hit just under 1 in a thousand. For purposes of this discussion, I'm going to use that ratio -- 1:1,000. This, overall, should be quite good. I mean, here are astronomers drawing conclusions about billions and billions of stars with only a dozen or so samples, wherein I'm selecting a sample set of 35 Thousand. How many people live in the US? It's certainly over 300 million by now, right? I think it was like 280 million when I was in school. So, I'll be conservative and say 300M. Again, a small figure in astronmical terms. At a 1:1,000 ratio, I could be expected to sell about 300,000 copies of the anthology. Wow. just think what the numbers would be like if it were more than a short story. Of course, maybe it's just that we need to study space a little more, huh? :)  Yeah, like the space between your ears ... Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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