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December 26, 2015

2015: a year in review

This is it for the year. Here's a look back at my 2015, by the numbers [1,2]:

Papers published or accepted: 8 (journals or equivalent)
Number that were "gold" open access: 2
Number coauthored with students: 4
Number that used data from sports: 2, again (this and that)
Cumulative fraction of my papers available online, for free: 0.87 (+0.21 over 2014)
Pre-prints posted on the arxiv: 7
Other publications: 1 perspective piece, and 1 popular press piece
Number of those coauthored with students: 1
Papers currently under review: 4
Manuscripts near completion: 5
Rejections: 7 (+17% over 2014)
Number of papers making up those rejections: 6
New citations to past papers: 1981 (+1.1% over 2014)
Projects in-the-works: too many to count
Half-baked projects unlikely to be completed: already forgotten
Papers read: >114 (about 2 per week)
Number of open browser tabs containing papers to read, right now: 9
Number of Dropbox folders created for research projects: 4

Research talks given: 6
Invited talks: 6
Visitors hosted: 5
Conferences, workshops organized: 3
Conferences, workshops, summer schools attended: 9
Number of those at which I delivered a research talk: 4
Number of times other people have written about my research: >42 (mostly about faculty hiring networks)
Number of interviews given about my research: 18
Coolest interview: for Double Helix, an Australian children's science magazine

Postdocs advised: 3
Students advised: 11 (5 PhD, 1 MS, 3 BS; 2 rotation students)
Students graduated: 1
Thesis/dissertation committees: 4
Number of recommendation letters written: 10
Summer school faculty positions: 1, in India (technically a "winter school")
"Short" courses taught: 2 (both on networks)
University courses taught: 1 (this one)
Students enrolled in said courses: 11 undergrads
Number of problems assigned: 23 (weekly essays, plus two essay exams)
Number of pages of lecture notes written: pleasantly few
Pages of student work graded: >390 (roughly 36 per undergrad, with 0.09 graders per student)
Number of class-related emails received: >400 (-86% over 2014)
Number of conversations with the university honor council: 0

Journals for which I am an associate editor: 2 (same as 2014)
Manuscripts handled as an associate editor: 27 (+450% over 2014)
Manuscripts refereed for various journals and journal-equivalent conferences: 15 (-44% over 2014)
Number of those mainly refereed by my students and postdocs: 8
Manuscripts or abstracts lightly refereed for workshops and non-CS conferences: 84
Conference program committees: 4
Fields covered: Network Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Physics, and some tabloids
Words written per referee report: 729 (-45% over 2014)
Referee requests declined: 77 (+4% over 2014)
Journal I declined the most: Scientific Reports (10 declines, 0 accepts; just edging out Physica A)
Program committee invitations declined: 4
Number of referee reports I owe anyone, right now: 0
Number of NSF panels I sat on: 2
Grant proposals reviewed: 15
Fraction that I thought deserved to be funded: 0.50
Fraction that were, I believe, actually funded: <0.20

Grant proposals submitted or reviewed (as PI or coPI): 7 (totaling $34,257,680)
Number on which I was PI: 2
Proposals rejected: 5
New grants funded: 2 (totaling $600,014)
Proposals pending: 1
New proposals in the works: 2

Emails sent: >9104 (-2% over 2014; about 25 per day)
Emails received (non-spam): >18,403 (-8% over 2014; about 50 per day)
Fraction about work-related topics: 0.91 (+0.01 over 2014)
Fraction that was spam from my university: 0.04 (+7% over 2014)
Fraction about research funding: 0.07
Emails received about power-law distributions: >94 (about 2 per week)
Number of emails in my inbox, right now: 21
Oldest-dated email in my inbox, right now: November 2010 (I am ashamed)

Unique visitors to my professional homepage: 30,000 (+3% over 2014)
Hits overall: 78,000 (-17% over 2014)
Fraction of visitors looking for power-law distributions: 0.38 (-0.01 over 2014)
Fraction of visitors looking for my course materials: 0.28 (+0.04 over 2014)
Unique visitors to my blog: 5,700 (-21% over 2014)
Hits overall: 9,000 (-29% over 2014)
Most popular blog post among those visitors: A "reverse" color test (from 2006)
Blog posts written: 2 (-70% over 2014)
Blog posts conceived but never written down: 3 (I think?)
Number of twitter accounts: 1
New followers on Twitter: >653 (-12% over 2014)
Tweets: 202 (-10% over 2014; including retweets of others)
Retweets of my tweets: 1108 (+10% over 2014)
Average number of retweets per original tweet: 8.9 (+31% over 2014)
Fraction of my tweets that are original: 0.62 (-0.04 over 2014)
Most popular tweet: one about NSF requiring articles to be made publicly available within one year of publication

Number of computers purchased: 1
Number of cars purchased: 0
Netflix: too many to count
Books purchased: 4 (-43% over 2014)
Books read: 3 (+0% over 2014)
Songs added to music library: 544 (+435% over 2014)
Photos added to photo library: 1654 (+70% over 2014)
Photos taken of my daughters: >1650 (about 5 per day)
Jigsaw puzzle pieces assembled: 1160
Major life / career changes / decisions: 1
Number of offspring: 2 (+100% over 2014)

Fun trips with friends / family: 7
Half-marathons completed: 0
Steps this year: 2,169,560 (about 6000 per day)
Walking distance this year: 1201 miles (about 3.3 per day, but it's very bursty)
Trips to Las Vegas, NV: 0
Trips to New York, NY: 0
Trips to Santa Fe, NM: 6
States in the US visited: 5 (TX, NM, CA, TN, AZ)
States in the US visited, ever: 49
Foreign countries visited: 2 (Spain, India)
Foreign countries visited, ever: 31 (+3% over 2014)
Other continents visited: 2
Other continents visited, ever: 5
Airplane flights: 23 (-48% over 2014)

Here's to a great year, and hoping that 2016 is even better.

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[1] I am shocked to learn that some people actually look forward to my year-by-the-numbers post.

[2] It is hard to ignore the fact that I don't post much here anymore. This is partly because of being busy with other things, some fun and some tedious, that come with being a university professor, and with having a family. I also now post many of the things that I read and find interesting on Twitter, which people seem to like. That said, I still like the idea of having a blog, where I can write things that are too long for Twitter, but too informal for an academic paper. So, as long as the CS Department at the University of New Mexico keeps the servers running the blog up, I'll keep posting, occasionally. If those servers go down, or if UNM asks me to relocate, I'll have to make a decision about whether it's worth the effort to move it. (I've already looked into it, and it seems... highly non-trivial to move 10 years worth of material to another platform.)

posted December 26, 2015 11:51 AM in Self Referential | permalink | Comments (3)