Gabe/Nemo: There is at least one piece of research that indicates it does, under certain circumstances:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/connect/CSCW_10/docs/p107.pdf
At one point, I started building a WikiProject-matching workflow on the Teahouse (with Nettrom, using SuggestBot). But we never finished or tested it, and life moved on. I believe there have been other plans to do this at other points, inside and outside WMF. To my knowledge, none of these plans came to fruition, but I'd love to hear otherwise.
With the advent of ORES and the recommendation API, I bet a better workflow for matching newbies and WikiProjects could be developed, if there is will enough, and time.
Pine/Jane: There's no dashboard, but it's possible to gather these data from the replica DBs (through Quarry, for instance). I may even have some datasets lying around that contain some of the data you're asking for in historical form (or at least pointers to research based on said data). I'll look around and post what I find.
Jonathan