28 votes
Accepted

Do we use the downvote button more than other sites?

We can use the Data Explorer to see how often we up- and downvote. This query compares the number of posts (including deleted ones) and the number of up- and downvotes for all sites in the network. On ...
Glorfindel's user avatar
  • 2,713
25 votes

What areas/aspects of mathematics are underrepresented on MO?

IMO applied mathematics is underrepresented across disciplines.
Steve Huntsman's user avatar
19 votes

What areas/aspects of mathematics are underrepresented on MO?

Ergodic theory usually has several papers in Annals and Inventiones each year, and is regularly mentioned when the work of recent Fields medalists is described (e.g. Avila, Lindenstrauss, Mirzakhani) ...
Ian Morris's user avatar
  • 6,137
15 votes

the number of on line users at a given moment

Here is a snapshot of the site analytics to which Martin refers: So, roughly $40,000$ page views per day (in the summer). Might be interesting to know what happened on May 14th and on August 8th...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
13 votes
Accepted

Is there a way to measure the effectiveness of MO?

A lot of MathOverflow data is already available publicly. An anonymized version of the entire Stack Exchange Network database is archived every few weeks and permanently on archive.org. It's easy to ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
11 votes
Accepted

Top-voted questions for the year?

When searching on the site you can restrict the search to posts created in some date range using created:2021. You can also search only for question if you use <...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
11 votes
Accepted

Two traffic observations and questions

Is it possible that the question "Issue UPDATE: in graph theory, different definitions of edge crossing numbers - impact on applications?" might be partly responsible for the peak? This ...
11 votes
Accepted

The number of MO users

SEDE contains some data about users - so one should be able to find out at least some information. I have tried to create at least some queries - I hope that somebody with better knowledge of SQL ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
11 votes

What does the graph of MO questions-and-links look like?

I can answer this part of the question with the Stack Exchange Data Explorer. What is the maximum degree of a node in $G$? How are the degrees of nodes distributed? This query shows a list of ...
Glorfindel's user avatar
  • 2,713
11 votes

Slight downward trend in Q & A

I have one theory that may explain this trend. Specifically most of the questions I have wanted to ask have already been asked. I think this is a good thing in many respects. Not so good for the ...
hildred's user avatar
  • 101
10 votes
Accepted

the number of on line users at a given moment

As far as I know, there is no such thing. See also this post on Mathematics Meta. Number of people online. On main meta you can find some feature requests such as View approximate number of users ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
9 votes

Slight downward trend in Q & A

Might be offtopic, but again maybe not. In any case this is not really answering the question, just some additional information (seemingly) related. I've rerun the query about total questions and ...
9 votes

Do we use the downvote button more than other sites?

Here are some additional SEDE queries. (As my knowledge of SQL is rather limited, take all of this with a grain of salt.) Percentage of Upvotes and Percentage of Upvotes (multisite). MathOverflow ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
8 votes

How do off-topic question askers find MO?

Though I haven't technically asked a single off-topic question yet, I theoretically could have, because, due to my familiarity with Wikipedia policies forbidding original research (from whose ...
8 votes
Accepted

An error in calculations of percents in reputations?

If you click on the number "0.0x%", the links gets you to reputation league for MathOverflow. (The link given in the question is actually list of the registered users and not the reputation league.) ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
7 votes

How do off-topic question askers find MO?

When I type "ask a math question" into Google (incognito mode), MathOverflow is the second link. Of course, Google tailors results to my past search history, but I would wager that this is a ...
Najib Idrissi's user avatar
6 votes
Accepted

Does the number of answers really drop over years?

I do not really have an answer, but let me at least provide some further SEDE queries, so that we have more data. (I only know very basics of SQL, but I hope that somebody more knowledgeable might ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
6 votes
Accepted

Maximal bounties

The Data Explorer is the perfect tool for this kind of questions. The highest possible single bounty is 500 points. (For details of bounties, see this and this help page.) See the query Questions that ...
Joonas Ilmavirta's user avatar
5 votes

What areas/aspects of mathematics are underrepresented on MO?

With Keith Kearnes participating on MathOverflow (and hopefully asking questions soon), I am confident that Universal Algebra will be represented to my satisfaction. Taking that personal perspective ...
Gerhard Paseman's user avatar
5 votes

Has MO traffic decreased a bit since the invasion of Ukraine?

To complement the answers already posted, here are some SEDE queries. (SEDE queries have the advantage that they can be run by any user - and they also can be easily run on other sites. And also if we ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
5 votes
Accepted

Has MO traffic decreased a bit since the invasion of Ukraine?

Yes. Weekly analytics show a clear drop in posts and votes since the week when the war started:
Emil Jeřábek's user avatar
4 votes

Has MO traffic decreased a bit since the invasion of Ukraine?

No. From a bird's eye view on the analytics, going from 1/1 until 27/2, there were one very unusual peak on the 31st of January, and a slightly higher than average (but not significant enough) ...
Asaf Karagila's user avatar
  • 37.1k
4 votes

"A year in moderation" post on MathOverflow?

Request renewed for the 2019 stats (and happy new 2020 to everyone!). I am surprised that this post was not created automatically on MO like on the other sites. EDIT: and tagging this feature-request,...
Federico Poloni's user avatar
3 votes

What areas/aspects of mathematics are underrepresented on MO?

I would like to see more questions in free-probability, whose tag has 13 questions, or more generally in non-commutative probability. While this may be a relatively small area of mathematics it should ...
Chris Ramsey's user avatar
  • 3,894
3 votes

Does the number of answers really drop over years?

Just for ease of reference, here is @MartinSleziak's graph of answers/questions:                     Ratio of answers posted to questions posted.
2 votes

Does the number of answers really drop over years?

If this reflects all questions asked, I am then unsurprised. I think the query should be changed to reflect only answered questions plus those questions which are unanswered but not closed. There ...
Gerhard Paseman's user avatar
2 votes

Traffic follows work-week and holiday schedules

Gerhard Paseman's comment suggests that it might be interesting to know also how the number of active users changed over time. (Of course, this also depends on the definition of active.) Here is a ...
2 votes

Is there a best day of the week for offering a bounty in MathOverflow?

Probably various statistics about this can be found - and it all depends a bit on how you define best time. I have tried to make at least some queries using Data Explorer. (Notice that it is possible ...

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible