(Stolen Borrowed from somewhere onthe ARRSE wiki)

IRAQ: It’s Sunni and it’s Shi’ite.

There aren’t many new postings from the atheist blogroll on a Wednesday.

This is because, when Dawkins made the world, he laboured mightily for x billion years and three days. Then, on the Wednesday, he said,

“I’ll put my feet up and have a nice cup of tea and read some old blog posts”

“And lo, from this day forth, any atheist who blogs on a Wednesday wilt be turned into a pillar of salt”

I am far from an expert on these subjects, but it covers something which has been intriguing me over the last few days. The Einstein@HOME program is described as follows:

Einstein@Home is a program that uses your computer’s idle time to search for spinning neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO and GEO gravitational wave detectors. Einstein@Home is a World Year of Physics 2005 project supported by the American Physical Society (APS)and by a number of international organizations.

(A bit like Seti@Home but that seems to have lost some popularity of late)

Now this is a nice bit of software which runs from something called the BOINC manager, where you can get to view your current work unit, see stats, visit the forums etc.

The question I have, is about the “user statistics” it shows. As you can see in the screen shots, there is choice of “user total” or “user average” and to me, the two don’t seem to match up. I am led to believe the average is “recent average” rather than a simple (total / days) type. But even so, it seems odd – especially as I have had the software running almost constantly for little or no return in the way of work units.

Any feedback or commentary welcome. Given the steady climb shown by the total figures, the mountain-like averages seem somewhat… odd.