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by jmillikin 5660 days ago
The current statistics are:

  total revenue: $301,252.18
  number of purchases: 43,819
  average purchase: $6.87
  average windows: $5.72
  average mac: $7.72
  average linux: $13.72
Based on their "total revenue by platform" chart, I estimate the per-platform revenues to be:

  windows: ~54% , or ~$162,676.18
  mac: ~23% , or ~$69,288
  linux: ~23% , or ~$69,288
An approximate Linux revenue of ~$69,288 and average purchase of $13.72 gives us ~5050 total Linux purchases.

Now, it's true that a very large contribution could influence the mean. However, they also include a list of the top 10 contributions:

  top 10 contributions:

  $1,000
  $700
  $666
  $650
  $600
  $500
  $500
  $337.42
  $313.37
  $300
We can assume that every one of these was designated a Linux purchase, treat them as outliers, and remove them from the statistics. The adjusted statistics are:

  outlier revenue: $5,566.79
  
  adjusted total revenue: $295,685.39
  adjusted linux revenue: ~$63,721.21
  adjusted linux average: $12.61
So even removing the top 10, Linux users are still significantly more generous (on average) than users of the other two major platforms.

You could argue that a sufficient number of Linux users donating in the $100-$300 range could skew the results, but I believe such a high number of extremely generous users would prove my point anyway.

1 comments

Good argument. I buy it, largely because it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Linux users are actually more generous. I just often dislike data summaries. If you want to show me the data, show it directly.