I truly believe Ubuntu is missing a huge opportunity regarding apt repository statistics. They should be able to track (at least on the mirrors they control) each time a user installs a particular package. Collecting these sorts of statistics and making them public via the Ubuntu website or through Synaptic would add a lot of value to the user community, IMHO. When I'm looking for a particular type of software in the repository, I for one would love to know how many downloads a package has had and how those stats compare to other alternative packages.