Right. I think what needs to be reiterated here is that any extrapolation is just that, an extrapolation, and that even a very complex growth curve fitted to PG's output will vary greatly from reality based on various environmental factors (how many volunteers are available, free time available, major reorgs at DP, etc) and the biases built into the model. Taking a standard exponential growth curve and extrapolating it is not feasible for the long term. (Extend it a few hundred years out.. baring a major population explosion, major AI improvements, or other unforeseen circumstance, it's plainly not tenable. You run out of PD works and human beings very quickly.) It may be accurate enough for the short term, however. I know a statician on another forum.. perhaps he can explain it more clearly. R C On 5/24/06, Michael Hart <hart@pglaf.org> wrote:
On Wed, 24 May 2006, Michael Dyck wrote:
However, if it makes things easier, I'll gladly refuse to acknowlege that statement *now*. A linear growth curve *is* a growth curve, and a pretty ordinary one at that. It certainly doesn't make it impossible to create an ordinary growth curve. But that's just disagreeing with what you said, rather than what you meant.
No, a line is not a curve.
Linear growth would have just been
100 eBooks in 100 years. 1,000 eBooks in 1,000 years. 10,000 eBooks in 10,000 years. 20,000 eBooks in 20,000 years.
This is not a growth curve, it is a growth line.
However, the case is even more drastic than that, as there was a period of over a decade when 0 eBooks were added, due to the hassles of the US Copyright Act of 1976, which took us forever to find out about, and the truth is that we would probably NEVER have figured them out without the help of one of the top dozen copyright lawyers in the US.
Thus, if you INSIST on talking about curves, the curve was downward.
Just one more obvious reason why you can't talk about growth curves for this period of Project Gutenberg's history.
*
When There ARE Growth Curves:
You also mentioned that you can't fit real world items into such growth curves, but you never mentioned that the graph I included is a remarkably good overall fit, with deviations so small it is hard to see them at all on such a graph representing eBooks at a range of 500 eBook increments.
It's a much more impressive growth curve than anyone predicted-- except for some of us crazy people.
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