Re: The "decline of the true believers in the IETF" graph

[Alissa Cooper <alissa@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ross,

On Mar 28, 2019, at 8:40 PM, Ross Finlayson <finlayson@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

At the plenary, Alissa showed a graph of attendance over time - including “Total attendees”, “First-time attendees”, and “Attended 80% of previous mtgs”. How was this last line calculated?  Were *all* previous meetings counted, or just a 'sliding window' of previous meetings?  If the latter, then how large is this ’sliding window’?

Thanks for these questions. The initial report was pulling data for all previous meetings starting with IETF 72, when the current registration system was deployed. This means that with each subsequent meeting, the likelihood of an individual dropping out of the data set due to a missed meeting increased. It was therefore highly unlikely that the curve would do anything other than decline. 

The Secretariat has updated the report [1] and it now shows a sliding view for the previous 10 meetings (e.g., the data for 104 shows participants who attended 80% or more of the meetings between IETF 94 and 103, inclusive). Since the existing registration system was deployed at IETF 72, the report starts at IETF 82. The revised numbers show a flatter trend line.

Thanks,

Alissa

[1] https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/1QceS5g7XvELBUObRDIApjxjZg2a08plH/page/YHqZ

Ross.