Useless data – but interesting

In September, Mac Fowler asked “I wonder how many mouse clicks there are across the world per day?” – a Random thought, sure, but valid. So many questions are unanswerable, but the impact of the mouse (which was invented in many/most of our lifetimes) can not be minimized. How to approach the answer scientifically?

So I can not speak for “the world”, but I can for myself. To get some data I downloaded a copy of “MouseCount” by Michael Dean and ran it through the month of October. I now have data to report, but before you look, try to guess. I work with computers pretty much all day during the week – how many clicks per day, how many days in October … I’d make this a contest but I don’t have any decent prizes (bag of Cub Scout popcorn?).

So, I personally added 91,728 mouse clicks to the world in October 2007. More than I expected. Use your mouse to highlight the number above to see how close you were.

That’s about 500 per hour, just over 8 per minute, as an average. October was a very typical month for me, so I consider this experiment concluded. One more of life’s mysteries solved.