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?

12 responses total.

       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. 

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.

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.

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.

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_?

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.

Not so, not so. There are plenty of people who would find the
Stevens book to be all Greek to them.

Items should be about whatever the person who entered them wants them to be
about.

Items should be about me.

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.

I couldn't agree more.

Some enterprising web designer should put together a web version
of The Odyssey that remedies these defects.

I nominate janc.

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