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Best Albums of 2003, Scientifically
thdexter writes "Two guys statistically analyzed the best albums of 2003, from some thirty top-10 lists, giving value to how often an album was mentioned by editors and recording its mean place. White Stripes came out on top, with Outkast below. Full results are available on the site."
that the use of the word arbitrary twice in the article and the description of the "method" - "Not-Very-Scientific" which was also used as the article title (basically picking stuff at random) sheds a "few" question on this "survey" (don't think I could have used any more quotes). I would rather have another article on SCO or the RIAA.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
By looking at the list of results, I can tell you right away that by "best album" they don't necessarily mean "best music".
If the data that they start with is subjective than no amount of averaging will give objective results, just an average of subjective opinions.
that was used as a part of my technical writing class (under the heading "How to lie with statistics"). "Some people use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp post. For support rather the illumination."
The dogcow says "Moof!"
So when they say "best albums of the year" they actually mean "most admired by critics." Gotcha.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Watched a movie with no sound-track?
Went to a strip club with no music?
All would be pretty lame without tunes....
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
"giving value to how often an album was mentioned by editors and recording its mean place."
So, it's not the best albums of 2003, but the most popular. Isn't the article title pretty misleading in that case? The linked page doesn't even say it's the "best" albums, it just says "top". So, really, this is just a statistically accurate Top 20 chart.
Slashdot: when news breaks, we give you the pieces.
Early on in their FAQ they claim:
...
Historically, what is pleasing to the human ear has not changed since man began writing music. What has changed are styles, performances, the instruments used and the way music is produced and recorded, but a compelling melody is still compelling
Okay, so far, so good; it sounds like they're saying "good music is good music, and here's a tool for telling whether something is good or not." I'm still skeptical at this point, but it's certainly an interesting idea, and one worthy of study.
But then they completely lose me with this one:
A high score means that a song is mathematically similar to recent hit songs and a low score means it is dissimilar. These scores have meaning when it comes to success potential in today's market but is not meant to mean a song is good or bad. For example, when tested for today's market some really great classic hits from the 60's 70's and 80's score very low and would most likely not become hits today with their original production or chord progression. That does not mean that they are not good songs and it is quite possible that if produced more in line with today's sounds they could score much higher.
IOW, our algorithm says music is good if it sounds like everything else people think is good right now, and if it's different from current Top 40, it's crap.
They make a high-flown reference to the 36 Plots and other serious attempts at artistic analysis, but that's not what they're actually doing. I do believe that good music is good music, good stories are good stories, etc. I can at least consider seriously the hypothesis that all good art has certain qualities in common, and that by analyzing those qualities we can evaluate a new work's chance of lasting success. But the idea that musicians (or writers, or whatever) can keep pumping out stuff exactly like What's Hot Now and be guaranteed a blockbuster is just stupid.
It least from my perspective, it shows that there is an inverse relationship between quality of an album and the quantity that sells (or is downloaded). F'rinstance, the only album on the list I remotely liked was Damien Rice's O, which was near to the bottom. The rest was largely crap.
waming: wandering off topic
Back in the old days when a disk drive could tip over and kill somebody, music was actually good. This was because record companies took a fundamentally different strategy to marketing. It used to be that they would hire a talented artist, and give them total creative control. This was particularly true w/ the Warner-Reprise label. Often, an artist would just develop a cult following, or they wouldn't become huge until their second or third album, after they've matured and produced something of real quality. This way, good artists managed to have long distiguished careers and produced truly good music. This is why many popular bands from the 60s, 70s had such long careers and produced hits over spans of 10+ years (e.g. Rolling Stones, Springsteen, etc.).
Today, however, the business model for the record industry is to find some no-talent but good looking putzes and hype them to death on their first album so that they make money before they get older and unattractive and people stop buying their album. There is no long term revenue in this plan, but it doesn't matter, because they can always hire younger artists and repeat as necessary to keep up their cash flow. When that doesn't work, they can start suing people for downloading songs.
That's just my 4/25 of a bit.
"You put 'em on stage and you have 'em undress
Some angel whore who can learn a guitar lick
Hey hey, that's what I call music."
-- Thomas Petty
Unknown host pong.
No mention of the musical genra that was in the competition. To me, its obvious anything that won an award on a tv program covering anyplace in popular music field was excluded.
In other words, the basic premise of the list is flawed and therefore useless.
--
Cheers, Gene
Yeah, if you applied the same algorithm to, say, technology companies mentioned on Slashdot, I'd think you'd find that SCO is #1...
True story.
Statistics are only truly useful in quantum physics and propaganda.
fire
No, as your link explains the average of indpendant measurements produces a more precise empirical result.
.
The old fashioned carpenter understands this inately. "Measure twice, cut once."
All engineering factors, such as Young's Modulus, are such averages, a fact the new fangled engineer seems to have no feel for.
Yes, the method can be used in some instances where people who have a good deal of experience in making certain kinds of measurements "guess" at something. Ask ten carpenters to mark off eight feet of a ten foot 2x4 and the average of their guesses is for more likely to be eight feet than any one of their guesses was.
This presupposes that an empirical measurment could actually be made and the people "guessing" are actually making a measurment of low precision, not actually guessing, and the precision of the average is dependant of the margin of error of that measurment. The smaller the margin, the greater the precision of the average.
In this particular case the margin of error is infinite. When you start using arbitrary factors to manipulate subjective data the results aren't simply inaccurate. .
They're meaningless.
And thus of no interest to nerds other than to point and giggle at them.
KFG
Using the same techniques, I could claim that Windows ME is the best operating system, based on the number of mentions it recieved around the web. Then again all of the mentions would be from tech support forums...
The Stone Age did not end for lack of stones, and when the oil age ends it will not be for lack of oil. --Bjorn Lomberg
Bullshit. They're underrated if anything.
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
The Darkness are taking the piss.
They're treading a fine line between taking the piss, paying tribute, and just playing a style of music they genuinely love.
Fair play to them. I find it hard to begrudge them their success, even if Spinal Tap did the same thing, better, years ago.
Their cover of Radiohead's "Street Spirit" is absolute genius however. I've only heard it live and in radio sessions. If anyone knows how I can buy it, mail me please!