Dear Mr. Aziz Ahmad,

You have certainly presented an interesting statistics of the FOTH proceedings for the current discussion. There is a 20/80 rule often experienced in the areas of human behaviour and management science. I do not remember the name of the person who originally discovered this fact which states that in general, about 20% people are responsible for 80% of things/actions/solutions/problems/ideas etc. According to your figures, 17% generated 67% messages, so we are not far off the 20/80 rule. 

You are very correct in saying that the computation of averages does not tell us much, also one can misrepresent statistical figures to show almost any desired result.  

You may have heard the well known statistics of ice cream and drowning accidents. According to this statistical report, the drowning incidents are proportional to the ice creams sale. Higher the ice cream sale, higher the incidents of death by drowning. You can figure out the rest, how and why.  

The statistics of human behaviour and their dynamics of interactions is a subject that has always fascinated me. Only in today’s Toronto Star I just read an article by Haroon Siddiqui about the current French problem. A few lines of this article are copied below, you can see how one can use or misuse incidents (just like statistical figures) to support a political point of view: 

When the Parti Québécois lost the referendum on separation, Jacques Parizeau blamed "the ethnics." When France burns, right wingers blame immigration/multiculturalism and the Islamophobes pick on Islam.

The latter two are as absurd as Parizeau was. But — and this is the tragedy — their point of view is considered respectable.  

After sending this letter, I am off to Ottawa for several days to tackle some of the statistics of my own life hence will not be adding any thing to the statistics of FOTH correspondence for a few days.