Thanks to journalism.co.uk for sending me to this story from last week about how the online news site metric is set to change to the one I chose to use to compare print to online last week. As you can see, Insksniffer plainly has the online community on the run, armed only with an abacus and a copy of "Statistics for Dummies".  Join in if you like: bring your own typewriter.

I still think there are problems with the system. Firstly there still isn't an explanation for why metrics that gather data from devices (ABCe) are so wildly different from that gathered by reputable large-scale panels (Nielsen). One of them is wrong and I still can't be sure which one it is. Until that one is answered I'm keeping my logarithm tables handy.

Secondly, I'd like to see an official breakdown of the UK and foreign audiences released by the ABCe. And if they can manage it, I'd like to see them have a stab at incorporating a realistic "margin of error" to their numbers based on research into cookie deletion and dynamic IP addressing issues. The science behind ABCe is subject to errors that don't occur when you are measuring copies sold. It's incumbent on ABCe to reflect that in the figures they allow newspapers to use if they intend to offer an ABCe as a number you can compare to an ABC.

One step forward. Still a long way to go