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Are the new graphical statistics on the GMN any good? |
Yeah, they rule! |
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63% |
[ 70 ] |
Doesn't really improve the newsletter, but doesn't hurt either |
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31% |
[ 35 ] |
They're really bad! |
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4% |
[ 5 ] |
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Total Votes : 110 |
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nixnut Bodhisattva
Joined: 09 Apr 2004 Posts: 10974 Location: the dutch mountains
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Eckos Apprentice
Joined: 25 Jan 2008 Posts: 197 Location: Houston, Texas, USA
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Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 4:57 pm Post subject: |
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V-Li wrote: | Eckos (only irrelavant parts stripped wrote: | I'll do something |
How about contributing to the GMN. |
I wouldn't know where to begin on it or what to contribute _________________ AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 2GB DDR2 533MHz RAM | GCC-4.3.2 | Gentoo x86_64 | KDE 4.1.2 |
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V-Li Retired Dev
Joined: 03 Jan 2006 Posts: 613
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Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 7:21 pm Post subject: |
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Eckos wrote: | V-Li wrote: | Eckos (only irrelavant parts stripped wrote: | I'll do something |
How about contributing to the GMN. |
I wouldn't know where to begin on it or what to contribute |
Proof reading (if you know English well) is a start. Sitting there and writing articles out of suggestions that come up sometimes is another thing. Do a summary similar to the Planet Gentoo round-up for the forums. |
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NathanZachary Moderator
Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605
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Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 7:24 pm Post subject: |
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I do think that those graphs are much more helpful than the pie charts currently in the GMN. _________________ “Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
---avatar cropped from =AimanStudio--- |
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Eckos Apprentice
Joined: 25 Jan 2008 Posts: 197 Location: Houston, Texas, USA
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Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 10:02 am Post subject: |
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I like them both. Can't you include both? Like How on one of his bar graphics where it had thestable ones of the total? That can't be represented in pie graphs. So use bars where possible otherwise use pie graphs. _________________ AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 2GB DDR2 533MHz RAM | GCC-4.3.2 | Gentoo x86_64 | KDE 4.1.2 |
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yngwin Retired Dev
Joined: 19 Dec 2002 Posts: 4572 Location: Suzhou, China
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Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 11:08 am Post subject: |
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Best newsletter evah! 'Coz I'm in it. _________________ "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln
Free Culture | Defective by Design | EFF |
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gentoo-dev Apprentice
Joined: 24 Jan 2006 Posts: 172
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Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 11:37 am Post subject: |
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10x much more readable than pie charts IMO. Add the links to bugs.gentoo.org so that we can see the list of bugs, and it'd be perfect. |
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Thargor Apprentice
Joined: 23 Dec 2005 Posts: 239 Location: Bamberg/Germany
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Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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These are really nice, at least the first and the last one, the second one mainly confused me _________________ Ideas are bulletproof |
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KillerX Retired Dev
Joined: 28 Jun 2006 Posts: 12 Location: India
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Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 3:42 pm Post subject: Thanks for the suggestions! |
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I'm really glad that our readers like the GMN, thank you all for your suggestions
The general message about the new charts seems to be that 3D pie-charts, while being nice to look at, don't really convey information effectively. I'll definitely be looking into switching to bar-graphs (similar to what nixnut posted, great job!) in the next issue. _________________ Anant
http://www.kix.in/ |
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equaeghe l33t
Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 637
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Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 7:18 pm Post subject: |
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Nice suggestions.
I'd take the data (numbers) from the second png (but no after the comma %-precision), and put the plot of the first png next to it (and let the rightmost number on the axis being the total number of different packages in portage).
Alternating line backgrounds (lightgray/white) would further improve readability of the result.
Sorry to say, but for the third png, I'd leave out the graphs to improve readability: the numbers are easier to compare than the lengths... It's not because it's easy to make a graph that one should. To allow the readers to more easily compare the relative differences, I'd add another column, where the absolute numbers are divided by the maximum.
Erik |
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Bluespear Apprentice
Joined: 20 Jul 2005 Posts: 164 Location: Switzerland
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Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 8:38 pm Post subject: |
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Very nice newsletter, I'm happy such things are back again
Good job to the whole team |
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incripshin n00b
Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 53 Location: Seattle, WA, US
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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 7:19 am Post subject: In defense of OpenBSD |
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As per the BIND test results, in all fairness it should be noted that pf (OpenBSD firewall) has sped up a lot between OpenBSD 4.1 (used in the test) and 4.2. Some information on this is here: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2007/11/01/whats-new-in-bsd-42.html. Some tests showed a 100% improvement in speed. NetBSD and FreeBSD also use pf, so I would imagine they will also speed up when they get the new pf integrated.
Also, I would like to see the same test conducted with djbdns, but it won't happen. :)
The graphs are pretty. |
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slackline Veteran
Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 1471 Location: /uk/sheffield
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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:29 am Post subject: |
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As a statistician I don't like seeing pie-charts, there are any number of reasons not to use them (see for example those cited by Cleveland 1994), but even those who do advocate their usage do not believe that 3D pie-charts should be used (Hunt and Mashhoudy 2008).
The main problem is that visually its harder to distinguish subtle differences in the relative size of slices on a pie-chart. It is far easier to make this distinction in a bar graph.
Adding a third dimension just makes it even harder to distinguish the relative sizes as it obscures a lot of the information behind the third dimension.
Its useful that the raw numbers have been included in the pie-charts in the GMN, as this negates the general problem of relative comparisions, but I generally don't like pie-charts, and hate 3D ones (the main reason for their proliferation is the ubiquity of Excel in many places).
There are of course lots of opinions and various statisticians have discoursed at length, a decent search will turn up lots of hits.
References
Cleveland, W.S. (1994). The Elements of Graphing Data. Hobart Press.
Hunt N., Mashhoudy H. (2008) The Humble Pie – Half-Baked or Well Done? Teaching Statistics 30 (1):6-12 |
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jel Apprentice
Joined: 10 Aug 2005 Posts: 259 Location: Gothenburg
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Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 8:47 am Post subject: |
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Quote: | Are the new graphical statistics on the GMN any good? |
URL? All I can find in the GMN mail is a link to this thread. |
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slackline Veteran
Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 1471 Location: /uk/sheffield
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Diezel l33t
Joined: 04 Feb 2003 Posts: 600 Location: Karjaa, Finland
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Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 10:07 am Post subject: |
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One of the things I enjoy reading in GWN/GMN is the developer of the week/month. Don't know why, I just like to see how people got involved with Gentoo and what their favorite softwares are and so on. Also I enjoy seeing the workspace people use, if there is a picture of it. Also the tips and tricks has been a great thing. _________________ A bus station is where a bus stops, a train station is where a train stops. On
my desk I have a work station..
Nixadmins.net
FLUG member 473 |
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Kensai Guru
Joined: 09 Mar 2004 Posts: 569 Location: Puerto Rico
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Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 6:02 pm Post subject: |
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Good jobs guys, the Gentoo community deserved a quality newsletter again. Still some things have to be fixed, but I think you will realize in the long run. Keep up the good work. _________________ Gentoo: Gigabyte: nFORCE 2: nVIDIA GeForce 6600: AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Leaving the above specs to immortalize the first system I Installed Gentoo on! |
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slackline Veteran
Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 1471 Location: /uk/sheffield
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Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:04 pm Post subject: |
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After re-reading my post above, I realised that it reads a bit negatively (although I do stand by my comments), but I completely forgot to mention....
...its great to see the news letter back! It looks good and reads well. Good work to all involved, its much appreciated and I look forward to reading future issues.
Cheers
slack |
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V-Li Retired Dev
Joined: 03 Jan 2006 Posts: 613
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Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 12:37 pm Post subject: |
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Diezel wrote: | One of the things I enjoy reading in GWN/GMN is the developer of the week/month. Don't know why, I just like to see how people got involved with Gentoo and what their favorite softwares are and so on. Also I enjoy seeing the workspace people use, if there is a picture of it. Also the tips and tricks has been a great thing. |
And here is your task. Interview the developers you are interested in and create an article for the GMN. |
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