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| Author |
Message |
remmers
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Average Item
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Aug 10 02:40 UTC 1997 |
This is an average item, populated by average sentences.
It is not an outstandingly good item, but neither is it
an egregiously bad one. I suppose that it is open to
the criticism that it is not really about anything ex-
cept itself, but there are certainly worse things for
an item to be about.
What do *you* like items to be about?
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| 12 responses total. |
rcurl
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response 1 of 12:
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Aug 10 15:40 UTC 1997 |
To make an average item populated by average sentence one
must use average words populated by average letters and
spaces. Some words, like "egregious", are far from average,
and needs to be replaced with a more average word, such
as "very" or, even averager, "somewhat". The problem of
populating these average words with average letters is
somewhat difficult. "q" is much less average than, say,
"m", so it does not seem possible to use all average letters
in the average words to write average sentences to build an
average item. At least, on the average.
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orinoco
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response 2 of 12:
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Aug 10 22:47 UTC 1997 |
And even if you did, what of it? The average item occasionaly uses unusual
words such as 'egregious', or letters like 'q'. The average item is usually
very short or very long. There is no such thing as an average number of
responses - most items either die quickly or live forever.
Suppose there was such a thing as an average item. It would then be possible
to have the most average item, one that was more average than all others.
That item would then be unusually average.
The solution is to arbitrarily nominate an item as average, and consider
everything else in comparison to it. If our chosen item contains more q's
and x's than most, it is because all other items are imperfect and have
deviated from the norm.
I hereby nominate item 12 in the books conference. This item was chosen at
random, and according to the laws of statistics should be completely normal.
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snowth
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response 3 of 12:
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Aug 11 01:25 UTC 1997 |
Unless, of course, it's not perfectly normal... and then it should be treated
with utmost caution. I nominate item 310 in the enigma conference. It was
chosen because I have yet to have formed an opinion of it, so it is as far
as I'm concerned still perfectly normal.
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orinoco
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response 4 of 12:
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Aug 11 17:02 UTC 1997 |
No, no, see the point is that normality is subjective, so we have to choose
an item at random to serve as our standard of what is normal, and then compare
everything else to that.
Not that anyone cares, but books 12 appears to be a discussion of acid-free
paper.
That would make this item highly irregular by comparison.
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remmers
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response 5 of 12:
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Aug 11 17:12 UTC 1997 |
Well, I just chose an item at random, and it turned out to be
the book _TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume I: The Protocols_ by W.
Richard Stevens. So I guess that will be the norm to which I
shall compare everything else from here on out.
Now, how do I do this for, say, Homer's _Odyssey_?
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orinoco
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response 6 of 12:
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Aug 12 15:39 UTC 1997 |
Well, as long as it's an english translation you could compare the frequency
of reoccurring words, phrases, and letters.
If it's in the original language, you still could compare words, phrases, and
letters, but I'm willing to bet you wouldn't find many matches.
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remmers
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response 7 of 12:
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Aug 13 02:45 UTC 1997 |
Not so, not so. There are plenty of people who would find the
Stevens book to be all Greek to them.
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lee
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response 8 of 12:
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Sep 12 03:15 UTC 1997 |
Items should be about whatever the person who entered them wants them to be
about.
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orinoco
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response 9 of 12:
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Sep 12 22:16 UTC 1997 |
Items should be about me.
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janc
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response 10 of 12:
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Sep 26 19:07 UTC 1997 |
I happen to have read and enjoyed the book _TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume I:
The Protocols_ by W. Richard Stevens, so I'm in the happy position of having
some acquaintance with this new norm. I have also read Homer's _Odyssey_.
The Odyssey is poorly organized. Normally, one describes things by starting
with the lowest layers and working up. Homer, apparantly unaware of this
basic organizing principle, structures his narrative sequentially instead,
a method normally used only for specific examples. To conform with the norm,
Homer should have begun his book with discussions of elementry physics and
cellular biology and have worked his way up through bouyancy and physiology
to reach the level of sailing ships and cyclopsi. Only after the underlying
basis has been established should such illustrating instances of cycloptic
interaction with sailing ships such as the hurling of rocks have been
introduced.
The Odyssey is oddly lacking in pictures. There are no maps showing the
routes between islands. There are no flowcharts, timing diagrams, or tables.
The Odyssey omits to discuss important exceptional cases. What happens if
Odysseus does not escape the Cyclops cave among the sheep? Is there a error
recovery strategy? How is it implemented? In general, only one of many
possible outcome of each transaction is described. This is probably related
to Homer's failure to use flowcharts.
The Odyssey is sorely lacking in instructions on how to reproduce the events
described in the book on your own vacation. The educational value of the
events described is limited if the reader is not able to reproduce them and
thus obtain first hand experience. Furthermore, there are no Exercises at
the ends of the chapters in the Odyssey. Most abnormal.
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remmers
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response 11 of 12:
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Sep 27 13:08 UTC 1997 |
I couldn't agree more.
Some enterprising web designer should put together a web version
of The Odyssey that remedies these defects.
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orinoco
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response 12 of 12:
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Sep 27 17:47 UTC 1997 |
I nominate janc.
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