hello again folks - as promised in my last thread here, i've been working on turning yearbook statistics into excel spreadsheets.. coincidentally, today is my 25th birthday (spare a thought for a fader).. i've now updated the spreadsheet with yearbook data all the way back to 1988 (the year i was born), therefore it now contains 25 years of statistics.. there were a lot of countries changing around and for some it was possible to create a continuation of data.
some are a simple change of name like south-west africa to namibia.
others, for example - in 1993 with czechoslovakia splitting into two countries (czech republic and slovakia) i have added an extra row that provides a continuation of the data, combining czech republic and slovakia back together as if they were still one country.
Something's fishy with the numbers for the Faroe Islands again (108 to 11 publishers, -8 % ...). Looks like they're mixed up with the Falklands.
Didn't do a thorough check, it's just one thing that stood out.
There are also some suspicious blanks on the baptisms sheet. Sweden in 2006 for instance. I can't find the other now.
i want to talk about my story because i need help and advice and most impirtant a lot of comfort.. one year and a half ago i met a wonderful guy.
he was really nice and supporyed me during hard moments.
i slowly fell in love with him.
You've been given great advice here, particularly the part about seeking help with a counselor or a therapist in person. It makes a huge difference compared to writing back and forth on the Internet.
And of course the part about RUNNING away. Seriously. People here have a lot of experience not just with "normal" life issues such as a broken heart over a lost love (or infatuation...), but also with exactly this situation with the JWs. You're asking for a lot of pain if you keep clinging to this person because you'll never be his top priority in life.
You really need to look after yourself. Love yourself. Take care of yourself. You don't need another person to "fix" you (that doesn't work anyway).
i just took the first page of the 2013 report and added two new columns to look at alternative ways of calculating the 'increase'.
first column: 2013 av.
pubs minus 2012 av.
88JM, perhaps you could post your spreadsheets as public documents on Google Docs? This should work well to keep them in the same location but update as necessary.
20 years ago the da's were in dodger stadium, 10-15 minute drive from home (east part of san fernando valley, los angeles area).
then moved to long beach, 45 minute drive.
now in 2014 they are moving to san diego, 2 1/2 hr drive.
I've noticed that they're "centralising" many of the events in Europe as well. From a business perspective it all makes sense.
Actually, I think what they've been pulling off in the past couple of years has been a quite spectacular transformation for an organisation of this size: branch closures and sales, the HQ real estate flip, streamlining the whole convention circus, moving toward online publication, and so on. Cut costs, unfreeze assets, get cash flows up. If this were a regular business, we'd read about it in some glossy magazine with nice pictures of the manager(s) responsible for it.
I'm beginning to wonder if they took on some McKinsey or BCG consultants to plan and drive all this stuff - it's just their kind of pattern. Under a very strict NDA of course, as things are of course driven by the Spirit and JC himself and not worldly businessmen.
the 2014 yearbook is out, and i have scanned the publisher figures into a more readable format at 2013 service year report.
i have updated some of the graphs at http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php and will do the rest tonight.
there are no real surprises, with very similar results as during the last couple of years.
Most of the baptisms in Germany/Austria/Switzerland are JW kids.
Not long ago, there was a fairly good percentage of (mostly ex-Yugoslav) immigrants in the tubs, but I suppose that source is drying up as well.
i just took the first page of the 2013 report and added two new columns to look at alternative ways of calculating the 'increase'.
first column: 2013 av.
pubs minus 2012 av.
You cannot use number of baptisms to calculate increase, because publishers are exactly that - publishers - before they are baptised. Baptism candidates come from the ranks of publishers, and added to that, some start as publishers and are baptised within the same service year, whereas others "cross the year border".
Right. One way to reduce this uncertainty is to lump a couple of years together, e.g. look at ten-year periods instead. The other is to ignore it as an absolute number, but consider it a trend figure. It's still a useful indicator with the caveat that the average "unbaptised-to-baptised-publisher" timespan is unknown and may be changing too.
Additionally, nobody when doing these calculations seem to bother about the fact that around 1 % of a population die during a year.
Actually, most everywhere I see these kinds of calculations, mortality is factored in at the usual 1% guesstimate.
Has the GB ever explained WHY they are moving out of Brooklyn?
I don't think so, but I'm glad they keep everyone the world over informed about things like this:
Brother Morris explained that the Laundry and Dry Cleaning Department, located on the sixth and seventh floors of Building 3, would continue to function there until mid-2014.
Bless Jehovah!
the 2014 yearbook is out, and i have scanned the publisher figures into a more readable format at 2013 service year report.
i have updated some of the graphs at http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php and will do the rest tonight.
there are no real surprises, with very similar results as during the last couple of years.
Thanks for the background on Norway, TOH.
Again, even considering migration, the overall picture in Europe is stagnation. And the baptism counts still keep falling from their highs in the mid-1990s. Frankly I'm surprised that publisher counts can still keep their levels when in some places baptisms have dropped to a third or so from 20 years ago - and that's not just a short spike, but an ongoing trend.
Here's an interesting graph of the baptisms in Germany, Austria and Switzerland - affluent European countries that have been popular immigration destinations for many decades:
the 2014 yearbook is out, and i have scanned the publisher figures into a more readable format at 2013 service year report.
i have updated some of the graphs at http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php and will do the rest tonight.
there are no real surprises, with very similar results as during the last couple of years.
Germany currently isn't a very welcoming country for new imigrants, despite their relative prosperity.
Well I'm not so sure. Thanks to the EU/EEA, anyone can legally migrate anywhere within the participating countries (only exception being Croatia these days), and I don't see Switzerland or Norway being that much more welcoming than Germany to immigrants these days. Sweden has been taking on many immigrants from outside of Europe (and continues to do so, e.g. from Syria), but publisher counts are still stagnating.
Even factoring in immigration, it's still interesting to see that people in the crisis-torn European lands, what with crazy unemployment rates and resultant poverty, aren't fleeing into the arms of The Truth en masse...
the 2014 yearbook is out, and i have scanned the publisher figures into a more readable format at 2013 service year report.
i have updated some of the graphs at http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php and will do the rest tonight.
there are no real surprises, with very similar results as during the last couple of years.
Thanks for the graphs. Indeed, in Europe the situation is pretty much the same as the year before. It's still most interesting to me that those countries that were hit worst by the crisis (e.g. Spain, Greece) are seeing stagnation or even decrease, while some of the most affluent (Switzerland, Norway) are seeing at least a little bit of growth. My guess is that part of the reason is migration, but I'm not really sure. After all, Germany is slightly decreasing.
And of course the ongoing stagnation in almost all of Eastern Europe, even some decrease in Poland and Bosnia (again, another country where you'd expect people to seek refuge in religion...). Given the high ratio of population to publishers, they would need considerable growth to catch up to the rest of Europe - but it's just not happening.
