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| Thu Dec 23 20:41:41 2010 Google's Reading Level |
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| Thu Aug 5 21:05:04 2010 More Platitudes |
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| Mon Aug 2 22:53:03 2010 Deflation and Stagflation |
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| Thu Dec 23 20:41:41 2010 Google's Reading Level Playing with Google's latest feature |
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| Recently
Google announced that they now support
filtering search results by reading level.
Of course, if they support filtering by reading level, that means they must be classifying content based on reading level. And that gets pretty interesting! To use the new filtering, you can just go to their Advanced Search page, and use the "Reading level:" drop down. The best setting to start is "annotate results with reading levels." Of course, I first tried searching for Glenn Beck and Jon Stewart. However, they were pretty much tied. Websites mentioning Glenn Beck were 37% Basic, 55% Intermediate, and 7% Advanced. Websites mentioning Jon Stewart were 36% Basic, 51% Intermediate, and 11% Advanced. There is probably a lot of cross-pollination: people that love Glenn Beck probably mention (and curse) Jon Stewart on their websites, and vice-versa. So their numbers will mostly be the same. Oddly, the first "Basic" reading level result for Jon Stewart is his own website. However, other searches show bigger differences. I love Eminem, but websites mentioning him are a staggering 94% Basic, 4% Intermediate, and less than 1% Advanced (somehow the math adds up for Google). On the other end of the spectrum, Wittgenstein websites are 13% Basic, 28% Intermediate, and 58% Advanced. But Wittgenstein has sold far fewer albums. You can use the filters to find some good stuff. For instance, a search for Harvey Wallbanger results in almost no Advanced-level hits. But if you filter for Advanced results anyway, you get some great hits, like the first hit: In Search of the Optimum Harvey Wallbanger Recipe, which as far as I can tell is a legitimate article published in 1987 in The American Statistician, a serious quarterly peer-reviewed journal focused on (duh) statistics. Sadly, you can only view the first page. The abstract says "The results of the experiment indicate that reducing the proportion of vodka produces better-flavored results." But if you want further details you'll need to subscribe to the journal. 
Comments |
Related: > economics < Unrelated: books energy environment geopolitics lists mathematics predictions science |
| Thu Aug 5 21:05:04 2010 More Platitudes A few more great rules of thumb for personal finance... |
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| Way back in December I gave my list of
Personal Finance Platitudes. Today,
Yahoo! Finance had
their own list of rules, which I thought was pretty good.
I had often noticed what I called the "Rule of Threes", whereby I would prefer to buy cars that cost at most 1/3 of my yearly income, and houses at most 3 times my income. It is a handy rule to keep in mind when shopping for cars or houses! But I wasn't sure why those particular numbers worked. The Yahoo! article gives the math behind the numbers. That article also mentions the high cost of kids (at least $220K per child up to age 18, not counting private education or college!). And it has a good rule of thumb for education loans: don't take on more college debt than you expect to earn per year when you get out. Again, a simple rule, and they break down why. And finally, they had a rule for retirement: target a total retirement savings of 25 times what you make now (!). Here is their list in short:
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Related: > economics < lists Unrelated: books energy environment geopolitics mathematics predictions science |
| Mon Aug 2 22:53:03 2010 Deflation and Stagflation I think we're turning Japanese... |
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| Today, the
Wall Street Journal had a story about
renewed deflation fears. Given that the US ecnomy has been slow to recover, there is now real fear
that prices will continue to decline. That in turn can cause a
deflationary spiral.
Any talk of deflation immediately turns to Japan, which experienced a "lost decade" as growth came to a standstill in the 1990s. As bad as that was, deflation is usually better than stagflation, which is what I predicted in 2008 (see The S-Word). However, the massive inflation I feared didn't happen. The economy cooled fast enough (people stopped spending) so that lower interest rates didn't cause inflation. People think deflation may be on the horizon in the US because prices are flat or down, and unemployment is still high. However, I think a deflationary spiral is unlikely. Prices may drop slightly for the next few months, but I think we'll be fighting inflation in a year's time, not deflation. Why? Mainly because a majority of companies expect to expand in the next 12 months. With the combination of increased hiring and equipment expenditures, I think things will heat up again. Probably in 2011 or 2012 the economy will be running hot enough that we'll run out of oil again (see High Oil and Gas Prices). But we'll run into problems with inflation first. Comments |
Related: > economics < predictions Unrelated: books energy environment geopolitics lists mathematics science |
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