For me, 2/2/22 is a day of converging events. It’s “2’s day” — a meaningless yet fun string of 2’s in the date (even 02/02/2022 is fun). It’s Groundhog day (maybe my favorite holiday). A day of snow in STL (a foot or so is predicted). And it is The IFOD’s fifth birthday (and will be starting Kindergarten in the fall).

Thanks to all of you who read my blog. I enjoy researching and writing it and I am flattered that anybody at all reads it ever. A thing I find that is super interesting is to see which posts get more or less clicks and when. Here are a few things I’ve found interesting:

1. www.theifod.com gets 25,000 – 30,000 pageviews a month or about 1,000 per day. Only about 1/3rd of the daily views are from the new daily post while 2/3rd are from old posts that people connect with through Google or wherever.

2. Overall, the pageviews follow a power-law distribution with relatively few posts getting a huge number of clicks but most getting just a few hundred. Here’s what all-time clicks look like:

With a power-law distribution, relatively few inputs generate the most significant effects, with the rest tapering off quickly; it’s the “trivial many vs. the vital few,” where a relatively small number of observations have outsized effects. In my upcoming book on investing I have an entire chapter on power laws (it’s more interesting than it sounds).

A characteristic of a power-law distribution is that the average is above the median. With IFOD clicks the average is 1,168 while the median is 537 pageviews.

Here’s two IFODs about power laws: Zipf’s Law, City Size and Walking Speed (346 clicks) and The Pareto Principle (464 clicks). Both are pretty interesting IMO.

3. The top 10 posts of all-time are:

Turning 16 – Things 16-Year-Olds Can Legally Do (58,846 clicks) I find it a bit of a bummer this is such a popular IFOD because I think it is dumb. I think the clicks come from a lot of newly-minted 16-year-olds seeing what they can legally do beyond just driving. Case-in-point is this question in the comment section: “can a 16-year-old use his passport with a residents visa and fly where ever he wants without parental permission?” LOL.

Why Do Females Generally Have Neater Handwriting Than Males? (23,627)

Why Do Competitors Often Put Their Stores Next to Each Other? (23,412)

How Many People are 7-Foot Tall? (16,482)

How Many New Books are Published Each Year? (And Other Related Books Facts) (16,180)

Great Life Advice from a SEAL – Staying in Your Three Foot World (14,072)

What Happens to a Bullet Shot Straight Up in the Air? (8,145)

Top Innovations That Didn’t Exist 10 and 20 Years Ago (7,619)

Within Group vs. Between Group Differences (6,659)

Brandolini’s Law: the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle (6,498)

4. The Post with the Least Number of Pageviews is Astrology and the Forer Effect with just 328 clicks (maybe give it some love — it’s super interesting).

5. Sometimes an old IFOD just has a day or two with tons of clicks. For example, the post What is the Shape of Falling Raindrops had only 362 pageviews coming into 2022, then in a single day was viewed 774 times. I guess someone had posted a link on a Reddit board or something. That sort of thing happens all the time. Which I find fascinating.