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March 18, 2005

Amazon's odd words

RageBoy has discovered that Amazon seems to be rolling out a feature that shows you for any particular book which phrases in it are "statistically improbable." For example, Chris' own Gonzo Marketing uses the phrase "public journalism" and "market advocacy." Obviously those are not phrases unique to Chris' book, so Amazon is doing some sort of statistical analysis to find phrases that have some prominence within a book and across books. Fascinating.

Unfortunately, apparently you need to be using the Safari browser to see this on Amazon. Or perhaps you need to be taking the same drugs as RB. Either way, get a Mac...before it gets you.

Posted by D. Weinberger at March 18, 2005 10:13 AM


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» Frases estadísticamente improbables from Microsiervos
Amazon no deja de sorprender: ahora está analizando los textos de su enorme catálogo de libros y junto al título muestra las denominadas SIPs: Statistically Improbable Phrases (Frases Estadísticamente Improbables). Por ejemp... [Read More]

Tracked on March 18, 2005 03:08 PM

» Frases estadísticamente improbables from Microsiervos
Amazon no deja de sorprender: ahora está analizando los textos de su enorme catálogo de libros y junto al título muestra las denominadas SIPs: Statistically Improbable Phrases (Frases Estadísticamente Improbables). Por ejemp... [Read More]

Tracked on March 18, 2005 03:10 PM

Comments

I can see the material just fine in IE 6.0, and I have all sorts of firewall and browser-security settings activated.

Information appears in a section called "Inside This Book" and its presence seems to depend on (1) whether they've managed to scan material from the book, (2) how you navigated to the book's entry, and (3) whether you've opened up the more-details for the entry, if it is offered. But I don't think it has to do with browser, it appears to be mostly server-side.

Posted by: orcmid | March 18, 2005 11:42 AM


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