Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Data, Tracking, and Imagined Paranoia

The other day Jimbo posted some musings about the ubiquitous Site Meter. He noted that a visitor from the domain house.gov followed a link from Professor B. to his blog, and he speculated some backstory about the visitor.

What interested me the most was that I had also received one visit from Prof. B's mysterious house.gov reader. But only one. And it was a few weeks back. Alas, but our visitor from the House finds others more interesting.

But then today after including part of a scan of Form DD 398, look what shows up on my Site Meter statistics:

visitor from navy.mil

If my students knew about the blog, I would use this as an example when we do the coincidence section of the probability chapter.

(And in case you're wondering — you can't read it in the scan but you can on the original — the redacted question 23a asks, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party or any Communist organization?")