Posts by 88JM

97

First mention of "new light" may appear in July 15, 2013 Watchtower

by cedars in

a trusted source informs me that the "new light" about the faithful slave is to make its first printed appearance in the july 15th watchtower, which should be available for download online three weeks from now, on around april 15th.. i'm led to believe that the references to the new understanding are made in such a manner as to suggest the "new light" isn't that new at all, which suggests to me that little or no effort is being made to explain the doctrinal connotations.

my source and i are hoping to get a key paragraph posted at the earliest opportunity.

watch this space!.

88JM

I will be interested to see how they explain who was the FDS between 1917 and 1942. I suspect they won't try.

25

11 years of compiled yearbook statistics: spreadsheet downloads

by 88JM in

jw
friends

(edit: sorry about that - i clicked submit before i finished writing the post.

and its now 11 years, not 10. anyway...).

hi folks.

88JM

The data does seem to fit your theory!

25

11 years of compiled yearbook statistics: spreadsheet downloads

by 88JM in

jw
friends

(edit: sorry about that - i clicked submit before i finished writing the post.

and its now 11 years, not 10. anyway...).

hi folks.

88JM

Paul - if it was me, I would convert spreadsheets to XML (easy with Excel) and code webpages with something like: http://www.flotcharts.org/

With all respect, this might be a bit technical for most though. Just a suggestion - I'm sure there may be better ones.

25

11 years of compiled yearbook statistics: spreadsheet downloads

by 88JM in

jw
friends

(edit: sorry about that - i clicked submit before i finished writing the post.

and its now 11 years, not 10. anyway...).

hi folks.

88JM

By all means Paul - your site was certainly in mind while I was putting this together.

I will also try and keep the raw scans as I go, which might be added to your historical data page:

http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics-historical-data.php

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more - I'm working my way back through the yearbooks.

25

11 years of compiled yearbook statistics: spreadsheet downloads

by 88JM in

jw
friends

(edit: sorry about that - i clicked submit before i finished writing the post.

and its now 11 years, not 10. anyway...).

hi folks.

88JM

Thanks TheOldHippie - I forgot the number of "other lands" changes - that might be the answer to many of these.

besty - thanks for the advice - will perhaps look at that when I've added more years and it's been through a few "error checking" cycles.

Cheers also wezz - files in the first post have been corrected and updated:

Yearbook Stats 2002 - 2012:

http://depositfiles.com/files/t4xhx9n5l

MIRROR: http://www.fileflyer.com/view/J2XhWAb

Yearbook Stats by Field 2002 - 2012:

http://depositfiles.com/files/aj02x7lej

MIRROR: http://www.fileflyer.com/view/J2XhWAb

Also, just to clarify, does everyone understand the reasons for this? The main reason as I see it, is that it allows you to very quickly create graphs to compare complex data and multiple fields. For instance, with a few clicks in Excel, you can now create graphs like the one below. (also you start to notice weird things like the peak for Chile in 2012 was lower than the average?!?!)

16

I Got Deprogramed While Attending Kindom Hall Meetings Doing Research On My iPad 4

by frankiespeakin in

with the internet becoming availible almost anywhere and ipads become more and more common, do you think this scenerio will be a relatively common experience as well?.

i'm thinking it will..

88JM

I read and post on JWN on my smartphone during the meetings.

I'm usually sat at the back so no-one can see what I'm doing!

25

11 years of compiled yearbook statistics: spreadsheet downloads

by 88JM in

jw
friends

(edit: sorry about that - i clicked submit before i finished writing the post.

and its now 11 years, not 10. anyway...).

hi folks.

88JM

Okay folks - false alarm. First post has now been updated. See you at the top ^

(Edit: Oh dear - this thread was getting more views with a blank first post!)

25

11 years of compiled yearbook statistics: spreadsheet downloads

by 88JM in

jw
friends

(edit: sorry about that - i clicked submit before i finished writing the post.

and its now 11 years, not 10. anyway...).

hi folks.

88JM

Whoa whoa hang on guys - I haven't posted anything yet lol!

Oh dear - this thread is going wrong in so many ways...

25

11 years of compiled yearbook statistics: spreadsheet downloads

by 88JM in

jw
friends

(edit: sorry about that - i clicked submit before i finished writing the post.

and its now 11 years, not 10. anyway...).

hi folks.

88JM

(Edit: Sorry about that - I clicked submit before I finished writing the post. And its now 11 years, not 10. Anyway...)

Hi folks. I thought you might be interested in a little "back-burner" project I've been working on.

You might have seen a few of my previous threads on yearbook statistics: here and here. I thought these tables were sort of useful, but sadly time-consuming to produce as I was typing them in manually by hand.

I decided to investigate whether I could scan tables from yearbooks and then covert them to Excel worksheets with an OCR program. I discovered that this was possible, and worked pretty well (though is still somewhat a manual process).

Therefore, I can now present to you at the bottom of this post, downloads for yearbook statistics from 2002 to 2012 in Excel table format.

I plan to work back through more years in the coming weeks/months as time allows.

To explain, what you have here below is all the data for all countries given in yearbooks for the last 11 years. However, these are not just "crude scans". As you might be aware, there are some countries that are "dropped" (merged?), while others are "added" (gain independance?). For example, Tajikistan statistics stopped in 2007 etc.

This is where I could do with your help. For some countries, it is possible to recalculate the figures where the parts that change which make up the statistic are known. This can usually allow "like-for-like", year on year comparisons. (sorry - this is maybe more complicated than it sounds)

For example, the "USA" statistics up until 2006 included Alaska and Hawaii. In 2007, Alaska was included in the USA statistic. In 2011, Hawaii was added to the USA statistic. Because we know this, we can add Alaska to the USA statistic for years before 2007, and likewise we can add Hawaii for years before 2011. This allows us to have new row with a "like-for-like" comparison year-on-year, and produce a fair graph, for example. I was able to do the same with Israel/Palistine figures for 2011/2012.

The above scenarios are examples of where countries change - and are possibly relatively simple scenarios compared to the ones below. Now my own geo-historical knowledge isn't great, so I wondered if any of you can help see if I could do to other countries as I have been able to do for the USA and Israel/Palestine. Perhaps it might not be possible for all - Yugoslavia might get tricky, for instance. This is the list of countries I need information for, specifically, what country they merged with or gained independance from:

Belau - removed in 2005
Comoros - removed in 2004
Montenegro - introduced in 2007
Saint Barthelemy - introduced in 2012
Saint Martin (watch spelling with "Saint Maarten"!) - introduced in 2012
South Sudan - introduced in 2012
Tajikistan - removed in 2007
Timor-Leste - introduced in 2012
Yugoslavia, F. R. - removed in 2002

Oh, and lastly the downloads.

The first file has tables presented pretty much as the yearbook presents them. Each year is in a separate tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet. Now while these are possibly "interesting", they don't make it very easy to compare "year-by-year" statistics or create graphs, unless you use complicated cross-sheet formulas (ain't nobody got time for that!). Hopefully you will find the second file more useful.

Yearbook Stats 2002 - 2012:

http://depositfiles.com/files/t4xhx9n5l

MIRROR: http://www.fileflyer.com/view/J2XhWAb

This second .xls file has each statistic field in a separate tab with each year in a column, and is far more useful for year-by-year graphs etc.

Yearbook Stats by Field 2002 - 2012:

http://depositfiles.com/files/aj02x7lej

MIRROR: http://www.fileflyer.com/view/J2XhWAb

Here are the scans of the actual pages if anyone cares to inspect/compare:

http://www.fileflyer.com/view/pSkAqAj ( 5.98 MB PDF )

MIRROR: http://depositfiles.com/files/vjos5a7ws ( 5.98 MB PDF )

As a disclaimer, I should mention that I don't expect these tables to be perfect - there will almost certainly still be errors that I haven't spotted. They were scanned by hand in a flatbed scanner and put through an OCR program, which does recognize characters wrongly sometimes. If you do find any numbers that are wrong, please PM me and I will fix them and re-upload with a "changeset log" for everyone to see. Oh, and lastly, do ignore the grid references in brackets next to the country names - I couldn't be bothered to remove them! I do hope you find the tables useful - I'm excited to see what you can do with them.

34

Elders! Elders everywhere!

by Julia Orwell in

jw
friends

an elder came around this morning at 9am to ask if my husband wanted to come with him on a bible study.

my husband nipped from the bathroom to the bedroom in his undies to get dressed, while i talked to the elder!

the elder talked about how he just happened to think my husband might be free this morning, and just happened to get a call from someone wanting a bible study, and then he said to me, "why don't you come visit my house some time?

88JM

I think a lot of elders are "on alert" after that last training school. Give it time, and they will give up.

There has been a wave of sheparding visits in our congregation recently with the most bizzare counsel being given from trigger-happy elders.