Friday, July 31, 2009

ihhhehks fingers with tiny condoms

Just when I wanted to do some vintage maths, I found this:



;-)


UPDATE:
They acually rescanned those pages, now the font is darker. Condomfingers are gone ;)

Monday, July 13, 2009

Sage Downloads - Spring 2009 Edition

This post is about Sage download statistics. It is not really exact science, but good enough to measure tendencies. It uses JavaScript on all download pages of the mirror sites and tracks clicked download links by assigning them certain values. Therefore, it misses those situations where somebody downloads "directly", uses wget, has JavaScript disabled or scripts blocked. So, the actual numbers are higher. Said that, here are the numbers for April, March and June 2009:

Total Downlods:

Apr 5, 2009 - Apr 11, 2009 1110
Apr 12, 2009 - Apr 18, 2009 964
Apr 19, 2009 - Apr 25, 2009 1082
Apr 26, 2009 - May 2, 2009 1197
May 3, 2009 - May 9, 2009 1005
May 10, 2009 - May 16, 2009 1001
May 17, 2009 - May 23, 2009 1160
May 24, 2009 - May 30, 2009 1169
May 31, 2009 - Jun 6, 2009 1298
Jun 7, 2009 - Jun 13, 2009 1212
Jun 14, 2009 - Jun 20, 2009 970
Jun 21, 2009 - Jun 27, 2009 1079

There is no clear tendency, maybe a bit more at the end of the semester but falling since the end of it. Day-to-day stats are rather linear, too.

Distribution of Operating Systems:

microsoft_windows 5668 39%
linux/32bit 3109 22%
src 2101 15%
apple_osx/intel 1515 11%
linux/64bit 1290 9%
apple_osx/powerpc 364 3%
linux/atom 157 1%
apple_osx 85 1%
solaris 54 0%
src-old 10 0%
linux/itanium 4 0%

Linux/32bit:

sage-3.4-linux-Ubuntu_8.10-i686-Linux.tar.gz 559 17.98%
sage-3.4.1-linux-Ubuntu_8.10-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 430 13.83%
sage-3.4.2-linux-Ubuntu_8.10-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 415 13.35%
sage-4.0-linux-Ubuntu_9.04-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 248 7.98%
sage-4.0.1-linux-Ubuntu_9.04-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 215 6.92%
sage-3.4-Fedora_release_9-i686-Linux.tar.gz 171 5.50%
sage-4.0.2-linux-Ubuntu_9.04-i686-Linux.tar.gz 142 4.57%
sage-3.4-linux-PentiumM-ubuntu-8.04.1-i686-Linux.tar.gz 123 3.96%
sage-3.4-linux-Debian_GNU_Linux_5.0_lenny-i686-Linux.tar.gz 69 2.22%
sage-3.4.1-linux-Debian_GNU_Linux_5.0_lenny-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 62 1.99%
sage-3.4.2-linux-Debian_GNU_Linux_5.0_lenny-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 62 1.99%
sage-4.0.1-linux-Debian_GNU_Linux_5.0_lenny-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 49 1.58%
sage-4.0-linux-Debian_GNU_Linux_5.0_lenny-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 47 1.51%
sage-4.0.2-linux-Debian_GNU_Linux_5.0_lenny-i686-Linux.tar.gz 47 1.51%
sage-3.4.1-linux-openSUSE_11.1_i586-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 44 1.42%
sage-3.4-linux-Mandriva_Linux_2009.0-i686-Linux.tar.gz 43 1.38%
sage-3.4-linux-openSUSE_11.1_i586-i686-Linux.tar.gz 42 1.35%
sage-3.4-linux-CentOS_release_5.2_Final-i686-Linux.tar.gz 34 1.09%
sage-4.0-linux-CentOS_release_5.2_Final-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 31 1.00%
sage-3.4.2-linux-openSUSE_11.1_i586-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 27 0.87%
sage-4.0-linux-openSUSE_11.1_i586-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 24 0.77%
sage-4.0.1-linux-openSUSE_11.1_i586-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 24 0.77%
sage-3.4-linux-Debian_GNU_Linux_4.0_etch-i686-Linux.tar.gz 22 0.71%
sage-4.0.1-linux-mandriva32bit_linux_2009-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 22 0.71%
sage-3.4.1-linux-CentOS_release_5.2_Final-sse2-i686-Linux.tar.gz 21 0.68%

No surprises here, Ubuntu leads them all, then Fedora and Debian. Linux 64bit looks the same.

Country, Top 50

United States 5017 34.94%
Germany 1402 9.77%
France 693 4.83%
United Kingdom 668 4.65%
Italy 643 4.48%
Spain 487 3.39%
Canada 460 3.20%
China 413 2.88%
Japan 286 1.99%
Australia 255 1.78%
Brazil 254 1.77%
India 240 1.67%
Mexico 215 1.50%
Switzerland 192 1.34%
Netherlands 182 1.27%
Austria 168 1.17%
Portugal 135 0.94%
Belgium 134 0.93%
Greece 133 0.93%
Sweden 127 0.88%
Poland 119 0.83%
Russia 118 0.82%
Czech Republic 106 0.74%
Argentina 95 0.66%
South Korea 92 0.64%
Finland 89 0.62%
Israel 89 0.62%
New Zealand 83 0.58%
Norway 83 0.58%
Taiwan 81 0.56%
Denmark 73 0.51%
Colombia 72 0.50%
Hungary 58 0.40%
Singapore 56 0.39%
Romania 51 0.36%
Ireland 47 0.33%
Turkey 46 0.32%
Lithuania 45 0.31%
Peru 41 0.29%
Slovenia 41 0.29%
Thailand 41 0.29%
Indonesia 36 0.25%
Philippines 33 0.23%
Slovakia 32 0.22%
Croatia 31 0.22%
Panama 31 0.22%
Uruguay 31 0.22%
Chile 30 0.21%
Iceland 30 0.21%
Hong Kong 24 0.17%

It would be interesting to score them against some index, like, population, GDP and similar. And then fit the factors to understand, why Brazil is next to China for example ...

By the way, overall visits to the website during that timespan were rather constant. There were over 100,000 unique visitors, no changes since my last updates on the website concerning other parameters and Google is our main friend among all search engines. All major traffic sources:

google 55,654 31.47%
(direct) 39,037 22.07%
sagemath.org (another page there) 29,638 16.76%
en.wikipedia.org (referral) 3,643 2.06%
groups.google.com (referral) 2,928 1.66%

h

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Download Website Redesign

What is a great software like Sage worth without the ability to get your hands on? Nothing!

That's why it is important to provide a good download! Fast downloads a dependent on your location and that of the server. For example this means that a European Server works better in Europe (alghough that's not really true, some European servers also work very well in the US).

Until last week there was one heavily used dedicated download link and the possibility to alternatively choose a mirror. That has changed in a way where the dedicated primary download link is replaced by an overview of all mirrors. Now, everyone is "forced" to choose the download option that suits best! The second reason is, that the main server got slow since most oft the downloads happened from there and i.e. only few of the European users downloaded from the French mirror.

Additionally to the redesign, I contacted several server admins and extended the list of mirrors. Now, Europe is covered by serveral mirrors, also Russia, and what's still missing is South America and Central-South Asia. I'm still waiting for answers from server admins over there.

Now some numbers from the last two weeks, comparing Mondays to Fridays.

Jun 29th - Jul 3rd:

1. www.sagemath.org 53.48%
2. www.sagemath.fr 8.44%
3. sage.math.washington.edu 7.70%
4. modular.math.jmu.edu 7.57%
5. sagemath.org 4.84%
6. modular.fas.harvard.edu 3.88%
7. www.cecm.sfu.ca 2.33%
8. ftp.kaist.ac.kr 2.11%
9. echidna.maths.usyd.edu.au 2.02%
10. ftp.sh.cvut.cz 1.99%
As you can see, since *sagemath.org and sage.math are behind the same network, far more than half of the activity happend on the primary server. The week before it was even above 70%!

Now the numbers after the redesign:

Jul 6th - Jul 10th:

1. modular.fas.harvard.edu 17.69%
2. mirror.switch.ch 14.98%
3. www.sagemath.fr 14.22%
4. sage.math.washington.edu 11.74%
5. www.sagemath.org 9.32%
6. modular.math.jmu.edu 8.95%
7. ftp.riken.jp 4.65%
8. www.cecm.sfu.ca 4.07%
9. freethemes.mirror.aarnet.edu.au 3.50%
10. ftp.sh.cvut.cz 3.13%

Numbers massively differ after the redesign. Nearly only 20% of the activity on the main server is left, everything has moved to the other servers. Top server is located in Boston, but immediately followed by two servers in Europe: Switzerland and France. Also, the countries of the clients fit to the mirror locations. So, they actually choose and understand what to do ;) I'll probably post about the 4.1 release and the distribution around the world of Sage downloads in my next posting.

My next project is to find an easy way to detect if a server is updated or lags behind. Then, I want that this script updates the website automatically and thus the chances of hitting an outdated or broken server are very low. I hope that's not too difficult.

Happy downloading, Harald

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Sage Mirrors Revamp

Until now, on all download pages was a dedicated main download link for Sage. It pointed to the master server in Seattle. The problem is, that traffic increased and the server got slower. There was always the possibility to use a mirror, but it was only used rarely. More than 50% of all downloads still happened to be from the master server (sagemath.org + sage.math).

Now, the list of mirrors has moved into the download box area on all download pages. That should be a strong push for the use of mirrors. Also, non-US mirrors in bold should even work well outside Europe.

Numbers for last month, June 2009:

# | server | number of accesses | percentage
1. www.sagemath.org 13,467 47.89%
2. www.sagemath.fr 4,160 14.79%
3. sage.math.washington.edu 3,911 13.91%
4. sagemath.org 1,440 5.12%
5. modular.math.jmu.edu 1,396 4.96%
6. modular.fas.harvard.edu 1,047 3.72%
7. ftp.kaist.ac.kr 633 2.25%
8. www.cecm.sfu.ca 486 1.73%
9. modular.math.washington.edu 435 1.55%
10. echidna.maths.usyd.edu.au 339 1.21%

Also, notice the 15% for France. This will change, since Euopre is no longer covered by only one mirror.

Harald & Minh