Michael Hart wrote:
On Mon, 22 May 2006, Michael Dyck wrote:
Michael Hart wrote:
If we double that number to 100,000, we could pretend these results indicated that Google had accomplished 1% of a goal of 10,000,000 books, in 25% of their 6 year plan.
In 1993, PG had accomplished 1% of its goal of 10,000, in about 70% of the total time.
Only if you keep refusing to acknowledge that there was not an ordinary production schedule until 1991. . . .
Hm. I made my statement based on this data: 1971: 1 ebook 1993: 100 ebooks 2003: 10,000 ebooks So it took about 22 years to do the first 100, and about 32 years to do the first 10,000. That is, 22/32 of the time to do 100/10,000 of the books, or about 70% of the time to do the first 1%. Another way to look at it is that the average production up to 1993 was 4.5 books per year, and after 1993 was 90 books per year, 20 times faster. I.e., the production schedule for the first two decades was significantly slower than that of the subsequent decade. So, far from "refusing to acknowledge that there was not an ordinary production schedule until 1991", this data (and my statement) actually *support* the claim of a radical change in the production schedule in the early 90's. But if you like, we can ignore the pre-1991 data: 1991 Jan: 10 ebooks 1994 Jan: 110 ebooks 2003 Oct: 10010 ebooks So it took 3 years to do the "first" 100, and about 13 years to do the "first" 10,000. That is, 3/13 of the time to do 100/10,000 of the books, or around 23% of the time to do the first 1%. Which is remarkably close to the "25% of the time to do the first 1%" that you gave for Google, above.
Mr. Dyck has been refusing to acknowlege for some time that an ordinarly growth curve is impossible to create when the growth is linear. . .i.e. one per year. . . .
Huh? I'm pretty sure I've never refused to acknowlege that. I think you have me confused with someone else, possibly Marcello. See, e.g. http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/2005-January/001262.html (which had to do with picking a reference point for "Moore's Law" growth). You should be more careful before casting aspersions. 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. I think what you meant is something more like "a period of linear growth makes it impossible to fit an exponential growth curve". My response depends on how you interpret "fit". If, by "fit a curve", you mean "rigidly conform to a curve", then I agree: you can't make linear data conform to a exponential curve. But then no real-world phenomenon will rigidly conform to an exponential curve; there will always be some deviation. So alternatively, if by "fit a curve", you mean "approximate with a curve" or "model with a curve", then I disagree: you can certainly approximate linear data with an exponential curve. Whether it's useful depends on what you're trying to accomplish, but it's certainly not impossible. -Michael Dyck