Never trust a statistics you didn't forge yourself

[Ulf Wiger (AL/EAB)]

Michael Suess wrote:
> 
> Ulf Wiger wrote:
> >Why more than its share? Erlang clearly dominated the
> >"functional languages" category. This was worthy of 
> >a comment.
> 
> Yes, and I have made that comment, and a few more about 
> Erlang. Just search for Erlang in the paper, and you
> will find many results. And thats what I mean by 
> "its share of publicity". 

I didn't emphasize properly - apologies.
The question was: "Why _more_ than its share?"
(Because that's what you wrote.)

I personally didn't get the impression that Erlang
got _more_ attention than it deserved based on the
numbers.


> I would be very interested in how you or all
> the other people on this list who have been
> bothered by it would phrase it, though, as I
> cannot leave out the fact that you posted on
> this list entirely. Without this, figure 4
> gives a very wrong impression, as the Erlang
> people were the only ones (of the systems
> mentioned in this figure) notified of the
> survey (whether by you, or by me does not
> make a difference here, as others have claimed). 

How about this?

Other sites might have reported on the survey as
well. Joe Armstrong, a respected member of the
Erlang community, posted a link to the survey on the 
Erlang mailing list. While that post in itself is not
sufficient to explain the relatively high numbers for
Erlang, it is fair to assume that few Erlang programmers
would have known about the survey otherwise. Very few
other communities not specifically targeted by the 
survey managed to get mentioned more than three times.

Regards,
Ulf W