Unfortunately, my only accurate metric for popularity is comments, because my blog is not yet so popular that everybody feels the need to Digg or tag my posts to delicious. Comments aren't a good a metric, because readers usually comment when they disagree or have something to say, which isn't directly linked to the quality of the post. But again, it's my only available metric, so bare with me.
So, what makes the posts more popular? I have two ideas: one is the number of words, and the other is the number of links. All of the data was collected from... this blog. And here's the money:
The blue dots show the relationship between words and comments, and the red dots show the relationship between links and comments. Both of the r squares (0.081 and 0.013) fall too short to make me think that there is a relationship between either of the factors.
By the time I finish writing this paragraph this post will be 243 words long, and I have one outgoing link. Based on my model, I predict 1.5 comments.
Any thoughts?
