When Editor-in-chief Zhao Yen first gave me permission to write my blog on ScienceNet in English, I wondered how many readers will read English language blogs. True, almost every educated person in the world nowadays reads some English. When I was growing up in China , English education started in the fourth grade for me and is universal in seventh grade (初一). I hear now in some places in China, English is taught beginning with first grade. But it is really after many years in full time residence in the US that I started to be able to appreciate subtle jokes and think in English. Thus, the title of this article poses an interesting question. 

Here is an educated guess bases on some rough data. In earlier times I have written all together 16 articles which were later on translated into Chinese and posted separately. The visit counts on these articles can be thought of as indications of the relative number of English and non-English readers (Note I am well aware of the fact that readers of the English article may nevertheless visit the Chinese translated article also. But (a+x)/(b+x) is approximately equal to a/b when “a” and “b” are much larger in magnitude than “x”). Thus by adding up the visit count of all 16 English articles and divide it by the same for the 16 translated articles, we can make a rough guess of the ratio of English vs Chinese readers. I have done this using the data as of 9/21/08). The ratio turns out to be 3.35:1, or 77% of the ScienceNet reader can read English at the level of my articles.

I wonder if anyone including the editorial office has collaborating or different data to support or refute this conclusion.