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Boiling Down Books, Algorithmically

Posted by timothy on from the infallible-is-a-very-strong-word dept.

destinyland writes "A year ago, Aaron Stanton harangued Google over his new project, a web site analyzing patterns in books to generate infallible recommendations. In March he finally finished a prototype which he showed to Google, Yahoo, and Amazon, and he's just announced that he's finally received a big contract which 'gives us a great deal of potential data to work with.' The 25-year-old's original prototype examined over 200 books, plotting 729,000 data points across 30,293 scenes — but its universe of analyzed novels is about to become much, much bigger."

8 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Newspeak by RDW · · Score: 4, Funny

    I love how the prototype version in the link gives a 98% match between George Orwell's '1984' and the text of the USA Patriot Act!

    1. Re:Newspeak by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Funny

      They're still working out that last 2% margin of error.

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  2. Re:If you already read, you don't need this... by thereofone · · Score: 3, Funny

    Also, now that I've played with the "beta" a little I want to see the graphs for Finnegans Wake.

  3. Re:It already exists. by smittyoneeach · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well ex-scrolls me, you codex-fancying fascist! ;)

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  4. Re:Smart computer by techno-vampire · · Score: 2, Funny

    Of course you need to leave in Danielle Steele. Harald Robbins too. After all, you can't neglect the classics, can you?

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  5. Re:Just one more errosion.... by Z34107 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I dunno, man. Pretty much every point you covered is Wiki-able. [Citation needed]

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  6. Re:If you already read, you don't need this... by kalidasa · · Score: 2, Funny

    Also, now that I've played with the "beta" a little I want to see the graphs for Finnegans Wake.

    My GOD ... it's a Mandelbrot set!!!

  7. Re:Just one more errosion.... by h4rm0ny · · Score: 4, Funny

    What about insight?

    What about synonyms?

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