Final 1996 Rankings

The mail for 1996 has been fully counted and sorted, and it is time for me to release the Top 10 of 1996.

Just to let you all know how what the competition was really like this year, let me give a few stats. In 1996 I recieved 10176 personal email messages. That averages out to 848 per month or just under 28 per day. (Of course they didn't really arrive evenly spaced, it was very clumped.) That mail came from 140 different email addresses and 105 different people. Of those email addresses 40 made at least one of the monthly top ten lists. And of course only 10 made this final list for all of 1996. The top ten were responsible for 8434 messages or just under 83% of the messages. The other 17% (1742 messages) were split among the other 130 email addresses.

As well as the Top 10, I have compiled a full ranking of all the email addresses that sent me mail in 1996. (Including a breakdown of how much mail was sent each month.) So if you did not make the Top 10, check out the full listing and find out where you did rank. Of the people who made the monthly top ten at least once the ranks ranged from #1 (of course) to tied for #55. Of the people that never made the monthly top ten lists, the highest ranking one made it up to #28 on the list for the full year.

There is also a graph of how the race progressed through the year for the six addresses that averaged more than one message a year for the full year. Back in August it was almost a dead heat between the top five contenders, but after that... one emerged, took the lead, and kept it handily. But I do note that we were within 5 email messages of having a tie for #3. Given a whole year of LOTS of email... that is VERY close. Just a handful more messages sent by #4 in the last few hours of 1996 would have made the difference...

I would just like to briefly thank all of you for the mail you've sent over the last year. It has been a lot of fun. Although I must admit that at times it has been difficult to keep up! But that's quite all right. I'm used to it by now. :-) 1996 was a fun year for me. A good job, lots of good visits with friends and family, and lots of quality email from all of you. Thanks for the good times. 1997 promises to be a year with a lot of changes, including moving to a new job in a new city in late January. There is a lot of potential in 1997 for me. I hope to continue to hear from all of you as time goes on.

Congratulations to the winners! It is amazing how you've put up with me ANSWERING every single one of those messages. :-)

Graph	Full Rankings