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'Reading Level' Filter Added To Google Search
entotre writes "A new feature has been added to the advanced Google search: reading level. From the blog post: 'The feature lets you filter or annotate the search results by reading level. The reading levels include basic, intermediate and advanced. You can either have Google label or annotate the results with those labels, only show basic results, only show intermediate results or only show advanced results.' At the time of writing, Slashdot is 1 % advanced, 64 % intermediate and 34 % basic."
How am I supposed to choose the correct filter when I don't know what the word "intermediate" means?!
Everyone sound smart!
Derrida began speaking and writing publicly at a time when the French intellectual scene was experiencing an increasing rift between what could broadly be called "phenomenological" and "structural" approaches to understanding individual and collective life. For those with a more phenomenological bent the goal was to understand experience by comprehending and describing its genesis, the process of its emergence from an origin or event. For the structuralists, this was a problematic and misleading avenue of interrogation, and the "depth" and originality of experience could in fact only be an effect of structures which are not themselves experiential. It is in this context that in 1959 Derrida asks the question: Must not structure have a genesis, and must not the origin, the point of genesis, be already structured, in order to be the genesis of something?
(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstructionism#Theory)
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
My quest for advanced level porn brought me here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_outer_retinal_necrosis :(
Yeah, that would be sweet. Especially if it didn't filter out special characters commonly used in programming languages, like .:()[]{}
They already have that option, but it's labeled Images.
You don't use words like "beset" in basic writing.
Sure you do. "I want my TV to beset to channel 8".
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
In what sense is it a "guideline"? Perfectly clear text can get a poor readability index, incomprehensible text can get good readability.
A reading index is just like a measuring tape. It can't tell you that you built a crappy house with crooked walls and a leaky roof; it can only tell you that something is 40 feet long by 30 feet wide.
A reading index is a tool that simplifies understanding, reducing a very complex thing to a simple number that's useful for comparisons. Just like you can use the measurements of the house to figure out that it's 1,200 square feet, you can compare that to a house that is 2,400 square feet. Neither measurement tells you the quality of the construction, the color, the flooring, the lot size, or the neighborhood. But if you're looking for a home for a family of six, knowing the floor space is one thing that can help weed out the useless candidates quickly. If you're looking for a book for first graders, you don't trot out a book with a reading index of 18.
And claiming it doesn't work on incomprehensible text is like complaining that a measuring tape can't tell you the color of a house. A reading index is not an interpreter of syntax, grammar, spelling, or any other attribute of text. It just measures one simple set of dimensions of text.
A reading scoring system can only give you an indication, not a guarantee, of what kind of audience should be able to comprehend a given piece of text; and it can give you an indication of relative difficulty. For example, the widely used Flesch-Kincaid Readability Index bases its score on the average number of words per sentence and the average number of syllables per word, and outputs a "grade level". The grade levels were probably modeled on the textbooks and lesson books of the era in which it was developed. Is it still relevant? Perhaps the actual grade levels are different these days, but it's still a widely accepted model because it's useful for what it does provide.
John
Actually, alliteration almost always annoys any average American audience.
Ice Cream has no bones.
A reading index is just like a measuring tape. It can't tell you that you built a crappy house with crooked walls and a leaky roof; it can only tell you that something is 40 feet long by 30 feet wide.</p></quote>
Not true!
If the measuring tape is wet, then the roof must be leaking!
If the measuring tape is swinging, then the house must have a draft!
If the measuring tape is white, then even snow is getting in!
If you can't see the measuring tape, then your electricity is out!
And if you have a candle, and you still can't see it, then it must be foggy!
I'm sure there is more than this that a measuring tape could tell you, if you would be creative!