As lots of folks around SB have been commenting today, Nature magazine has come up with a list of the top 50 science blogs, based on technorati ratings. According to them, GM/BM is the number 45 science blog in the world. Even if it is a screwy way of figuring out what science blogs are most widely read, it’s still just astounding that by any measure, this blog is ranked that high.
I’ve only been doing this blogging thing since March. And when I started, I really expected that I’d be lucky to get a dozen readers a day, if that. I thought I’d probably wind up giving up and folding within the first month.
Instead, it’s been four months, and there are somewhere around a thousand people reading this blog each weekday. (Or a hell of a lot more than that on a day like today, when I’ve been linked by DarkSyde on DailyKos and by the USAToday. Thanks to both of you!)
Thanks folks. I’m really amazed at how well this blog has been received; and I’m happier than I can really express to find out that people are interested in the crazy stuff I write about.
Also, while I’m chattering away: the GM/BM DonorsChoose challenge raised $1400 towards supporting math education. Those of you who donated, thank you! SB as a whole raised over $30,000 towards math and science education. That’s going to make a real difference to a lot of kids.

As you may have noticed, there’s a site banner up there now.
I only received one submission back when I requested people to submit banners. , and it just didn’t quite work for me. (Bit too dark, and I didn’t like the hint of a blurring effect on the letters.) Since no one else sent me anything, I finally broke down and threw something together myself. It’s OK, but I’m not wild about it. So I’m repeating my request:
Someone with artistic talent, *please* make me a banner. The requirements:

1. The size should be roughly 760×90.
2. Subdued colors; not glaringly bright. No hot pink. I tend to like blues and violets, but I’ll be happy with anything that doesn’t hurt my eyed.
3. Easy to read text, including the name of the blog, and the subtitle that are currently there. I’d rather not have funny fonts mixed into the title.
4. Something in the background that suggests the kind of math I do. Since my approach to math is much more focused on discrete math topics like structures and logic, I’d prefer to see something like graphs, category diagrams, topologies, or knots than equations.

The rewards for the person whose banner I use:

1. You’ll be eternally credited in the “about” link on the blog.
2. You can pick a topic for me to write a blog entry or series of entries about.
3. If I ever collect the blog entries into a book, you’ll get a free signed copy.

Here at SB, we use Google analytics for getting info about how many people are reading our blogs, and how they get here. I also have a SiteMeter monitor on GM/BM. One thing that I get a kick out of is taking a look at my hits, and seeing what kinds of interesting connections come up. Sometimes it’s funny; sometimes it’s informative, sometimes it’s just depressing.
So last night, I was unwinding after putting my kids to bed, and was taking a look. The interesting/amusing connections I found:
1. The number one search term leading people to Good Math, Bad Math? “pharyngula”. PZ, I hate you! (And yes, I’m deliberately not linking. 🙂 )
2. The number one persons name in searches that lead people to GM/BM? “Ken Ham”. Now *that* is depressing. Ken Ham, who I’ve never written about, directs more hits to my blog than my own name.
3. The strangest search term that led readers here: “butt propeller”. And not just once; three separate visits on three separate days got here via searches for “butt propeller”. I’m really not sure what to make of this one. Probably related to my post on Swinburne where I talked about monkeys flying out of my butt as a metaphor.
4. An interesting connection: I posted something yesterday about a [really bad probability argument][bad-prob] for Christianity. I got the link through email from a reader. It turns out that it’s on a fairly obscure site that [Orac][orac] had linked to in a friday post about Holocaust denial. The reader who sent me the link is definitely one of Orac’s readers as well; so the nasty probability argument was discovered through an unrelated subject on scienceblogs. I like the SB networking aspect of that; on the other hand, I wish I’d looked at the site hosting the wretched argument that I mocked; I’d rather not have given a bunch of asshole holocaust deniers the publicity.
5. Back on GM/BMs [old home][gmbm-blogger] on blogger, I did a couple of posts about a crackpot named Gary Osborne. Gary came to the blog to “defend” himself. (His idea of defending himself is call other people names, and then complain that their criticisms of him are ad hominems.) An interesting thing that I noticed was that every time he posted on the blog, I’d see referrals from a rather obscure british search engine with Gary’s name as the search keyword. After he stopped responding, the hits from that engine went away. Suddenly, I’m seeing a bunch of referrals from that engine, and I discovered that Gary has, once again, posted a [web-page][osborne-declares-victory] on a site without comments discussing his wonderful victory over me, and various GM/BM readers who joined the original discussion. Gotta love people who run away from debates and declare victory, eh?
6. Most disturbing search terms that found my blog?: “juniper lee cartoon porn”. I have no idea who Juniper Lee is. Frankly, I’m too scared to do the search and find out.
7. Unexpected linkages: 65 page views referred from [animalcules][animalcules]. Since I’ve never submitted any of my posts to that, and I didn’t know of anyone linking to me in articles in animalcules, I was surprised (in a good way) by that.
8. Another very surprising one: a search for “daily show” and “kurt vonnegut” led people to GM/BM twice.
9. A couple of frequent commenters here are frequent trollers on Panda’s Thumb. Since I frequently don’t pay a lot of attention to the names of commenters on other blogs, unless I get into a discussion with them, I hadn’t noticed the connection.
10. Three different people set up blogs specifically to respond to something I posted. Each has exactly one post.
[bad-prob]: http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/06/fundie_probability_even_worse.php
[orac]: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/06/who_perpetrated_the_holohoax.php
[gmbm-blogger]: http://goodmath.blogspot.com
[osborne-declares-victory]: http://www.gardinersworld.com/content/view/72/45/
[animalcules]: http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2006/02/announcing_new_blog_carnival_1.php

The new ScienceBlogs homepage just went up, and all of my fellow new SBers are now public. There’s a lot of great new stuff.

A lot of people have said that they’d be willing to try making a banner for the site, but that they’d like me to provide a bit more info on what I’d like.

1. Relatively subdued colors; no hot pink. My color preferences generally run towards blues and purples, but pretty much anything that it’s flourescent is fine.
2. Headers here run roughly 760 by 90 or so, so roughly that size.
3. Easy to read text, including the name of the blog, and the subtitle that are currently there. I’d rather not have funny fonts mixed into the title.
4. Something in the background that suggests the kind of math I do. Since my approach to math is much more focused on discrete math topics like structures and logic, I’d prefer to see something like graphs, category diagrams, topologies, or knots than equations.

I’ve already gotten one header suggestion, which I like a lot, so I’ll put it here for you to see the kind of thing I like.

As I said above, I’d prefer to see stuff in the background that’s more up my alley, but I really like the overall look of this one.
Whoever designs the banner that ends up getting picked will, of course, be credited on the “about” page of the blog; I’ll also let you pick a topic for me to write a series of posts about; and if I ever collect the stuff I write for the blog into a book, I’ll send you a free copy.

If you take a look around scienceblogs, a lot of the folks here have really beautiful banners for their blogs. Like, for example:

• Aetiology (my personal favorite banner, and one of my favorite blogs)
• Afarensis
• Living the Scientific Life

Unfortunately, while I’m a good math geek and a passable musician, I’m a really horrible artists. So I’m putting a request out to you guys, the readers. Can someone out there with some artistic ability try making a cool goodmath/badmath banner for me?

Welcome to the new home of Good Math, Bad Math. I thought I’d take the opportunity of moving to this lovely new home to introduce myself. I’m Mark Chu-Carroll, a math geek with a PhD in Computer Science. I work in a corporate research lab, which has asked me not to explicitly mention them here, so they shall remain nameless.

I started blogging just a few months ago, largely inspired by my fellow SB’er, Orac. Orac had posted an entry about a really bad study of autism rates by a “mercury causes autism” proponent. I joined in on the comments; and it struck me that while I knew about tons of really great science blogs debunking the bad science out there, I actually didn’t know of any blogs doing the same for math. On a spur of the moment impulse, I decided to jump in and give it a try.

After a few posts, I decided that I didn’t want my blog to be all negative, so I started also writing about mathematical subjects that interested me. That’s gradually grown to be the majority of what I write about. In fact, right now, back at the old blog, there’s a poll going on about what good math subject I’ll write about next. If you’re interested, pop over there, and add your votes.

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