Warning -- if statistics make you sleepy and you're not ready to go to
call it a day, please skip over this.

As some of you may have gathered from comments that our editors have made
from time to time, I have been working on a project to build a version of
the MMD Archives that is read with a web browser.  This requires
"processing" the old archives.  Much of that work has been completed.
When the web-based archives are available, you'll hear about it here.

In the meantime, I have some compiled some interesting statistics about
the MMD activities.  To explain this, I need to define two terms.
"Words" are pieces of text that may include embedded punctuation, and are
set off by spaces, tabs or line breaks.  This means an e-mail address or
acronym (like B.A.B.) is one word.  Secondly, each time someone sends in
something to include in the Digest, I call that an "article," even though
I know some of you don't like that term.

Now, for the statistics.

From inception through March 31, 1997, the MMD has been published on 596
days.  There have been 4,887 articles, containing a total of 1,207,971
words.

The longest article (measured in bytes or words) is a forwarded copy of
the rec.music.makers.piano FAQ, which is 6,988 words long.  It appeared
in Digest 960319.  The second longest article, by either measure, is an
article by Craig Brougher entitled "AMPICO Misconceptions" in Digest
961110. [ Subject: Re: Walter Tenten's New Webpage ]

The brevity award goes to George Bovard, whose entire message was
"Wunderbar!!!" appearing in Digest 970123.

46,704 unique words were used in this period.  Just under half of those
words appear only once, so I suspect that some of them are e-mail
addresses, URLs, or typographical and spelling errors.  Of the 100 most
frequently used words, the following are the only nouns I spotted.
Granted, some words may be used as more than one part of speech, so
there's some subjectivity involved.

  Rank   Word    Occurrences
  ----   ------  -----------
    25   piano     5,304
    30   music     4,480
    32   rolls     4,260
    45   roll      3,262
    47   player    2,808
    65   organ     2,180
    76   MIDI      1,806
    77   note      1,759
    85   box       1,630
    98   AMPICO    1,393
   100   Robbie    1,374

I look forward to making the data from which this is drawn available to
all of you in the future, for your convenient searching and browsing.

Bob Fitterman
bobf@ilx.com

 [ I'm always concerned that music box subjects don't become swamped by
 [ by player piano talk.  Could you please check, Bob, for occurrences of
 [ the phrases "music box" and "musical box."  -- Robbie