Comments on: How many birds are killed by cats? How many people subscribe to the Boston Globe online?

By: davidw

davidw — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 16:52:51 +0000

“John Trapp rounds up the literature here and figures the best guess is around 10 billion birds in spring and 20 billion in the fall. Meanwhile, the aptly named book, “How Many Birds Are There?” estimates 200-400 billion birds for the entire world, which is pretty consistent with 10-20 billion in the U.S.”

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/03/how-many-birds

By: Mark DIonne

Mark DIonne — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 22:09:43 +0000

So what is the total population of birds on which these cats prey?

By: davidw

davidw — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:12:57 +0000

Ewout, what a wonderful response! I appreciate your frankness and good humor. And, yes indeed, it’s so hard to read emotions and intentions through brief text across multiple languages, cultures, and milieus.

And one might well ask why I bristled at how I took your response. I’m not sure. Perhaps a bit of embarrassment on my part at not knowing that such questions — more and more common in job interviews, at least in the US — have a name, and the name is Fermi’s no less! In larger part it’s out of defensiveness for my friend, who I have known long enough (about 25 yrs) to know that he is not a person who takes credit for others’ work.

So, I apologize for my own snippy response. And thanks again for your good-humored response.

By: Ewout ter Haar

Ewout ter Haar — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 12:31:53 +0000

Hi David! Non-native speaker here, I’m sorry if the expression seemed aggressive. Still, you’re right, I felt some indignation. Nothing serious, just “something wrong on the internet”, from someone I very much enjoy reading. Why the indignation? Good question.

Trying to reproduce what must have happened last night, it must have gone something like this: I clicked on the link, to see who is the person that had an idea which in my context always has been attributed to someone else. Now I see the Wikipedia page. It seems to be a young silicon valley entrepreneur, probably enormously privileged, just got humongously wealthy from flipping his company (remember, this is all in my head, I am reproducing my thought process, I realize this is not who your friend Paul is). Oh no, I must have thought, again the Matthew / Merton effect, the rich getting richer. Justice must be done!

So, sorry. I should have put myself in your position, in which you simply, graciously, acknowledging a friend from who you got the idea. You did a good thing! Why the indignation, indeed.

Thanks for the opportunity thinking a bit about how subtle differences in contexts and worldviews change the interpretation of even the simplest facts. I’ll try harder to always try and to imagine the perspective of the other side.

And, don’t drink and comment, off course!

By: Andrew Weinberger (Yes, he is my brother)

Andrew Weinberger (Yes, he is my brother) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 04:58:16 +0000

Maybe that is one reason why the NY Times is selling the Globe? At quite a loss, NPR said.

I had read the cat item (in the NYT) so that doesn’t count. I guessed 40,000 online subscribers to the Globe. How many does the NY Times have?-we get it as part of the home delivery service.

By: David Weinberger

David Weinberger — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 02:12:56 +0000

Well, Emil, the Globe last year took in $183M in ad revenue and and $155M in subscriptions overall [1], which means online subs were about 3% of their subscription revs and about 1.5% of their overall revenues. Seems pretty low to me.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/new-york-times-co-said-to-put-boston-globe-up-for-sale.html

By: David Weinberger

David Weinberger — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 02:05:27 +0000

Are you kidding? They’re not. They’re like them, but the aim is simply to get within an order of magnitude.

But even if they were exactly the same, someone had the same idea as someone else. Thanks for the info, but why the indignation?

By: Ewout ter Haar

Ewout ter Haar — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 22:37:12 +0000

Are you kidding? Those are Fermi Problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

By: Emil Sotirov

Emil Sotirov — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 22:17:35 +0000

~ $5,000,000 yearly – from online subs only – not shabby at all.