Statistics are a wonderful way of analyzing data. For example, over the past month, I have received over 12,000 emails. Just for kicks & giggles, I broke them down into these categories:
[ul][li]Enlarge your penis: 11%[]Enlarge your breasts: 4%[]Buy Viagra: 8%[]Buy Viagra substitutes: 5%[]Buy homeopathic, dietary and other worthless medical products: 5%[]Buy sexually oriented products like “the virility patch” and “see Par1s H1lton”: 2%[]Get free cable TV: 3%[]Auto insurance: 1%[]Mortgage loans: 6%[]I’ll go out on a blind date with you: 5%[]I’ll spread my legs for you: 6%[]I’ll blow you: 4%[]Stop spam like this one: 5%[]No, really! Stop spam like this one, or we’ll keep sending you more and more until you give in: 4%[]Incomprehensible characters that might be Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Martian or Esperanto-Klingon: 2%[]Get rich by stuffing envelopes or watching TV: 7%[]Help me, I can’t spell worth a darn, but I have several million dollars that I desperately want to give to somebody if only they will send me some money first and tell me their SSN and all their bank account and credit card numbers: 2%[/li][li]All other non-solicited messages: 20%[/ul]Email I actually want, from people I know, including SDMB posting notifications: less than 1%[/li]
And, no matter what they are selling, it has been seen on NBC, CBS, CNN and even Oprah. Wonder how they have time on TV for the really important shows like Survivor and Elimidate.
I’m lucky enough that just about all the spam I get nowadays is from one site, so I just blocked it.
Why don’t you make a chart?
Lessee…a pie chart? No, that ain’t it. A cake chart? A chopped meat chart??
Just a suggestion, Musicat, but instead of a pie-shaped chart…try a Spam-can shaped chart, eh?
Interesting stat…I particularly liked the “Email I actually want, from people I know, including SDMB posting notifications: less than 1%” bit…I suppose I empathize with that or something along those lines…
And I too take meaningless statistics…I keep track of the sizes of my IM logs every 5 days…
Frank, Musicat with you guys love of stats, you woudn’t happen to be baseball fans would you?
Not me. The only use I can think of for a baseball bat is to apply it smartly towards all sides of a spammer’s hide, then plug all available orifices. A big, notched, splintery, oversized bat coated with pine tar and tabasco…
I’ll second that.