Comments on: Relative importance

By: Sean

Sean — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 06:09:09 +0000

"The" is clearly the most important concept. Most telling of all is what actually comes up first on the google search.

By: Michael Good

Michael Good — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 23:38:25 +0000

Well, i guess “the” is the most important concept.

“the” 3,450,000,000

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 16:33:00 +0000

Well, Yahoo claims to have indexed more pages now, so let’s give them a try

Blog 678M
Weblog 165M

Italy 344M
Italia 212M

Not looking good for the European country, here.

By: Stories about Nature | Cosmic Variance

Stories about Nature | Cosmic Variance — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 16:21:53 +0000

[...] As predicted, we had a great time (as it were) talking about the nature of time last night at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Antonia and David gave great presentations, Gretchen moderated with aplomb, and Angel Yssaguire and the rest of the Illinois Humanities Council crew organized the whole thing with practiced professionalism. [...]

By: Clifford

Clifford — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 16:21:12 +0000

Nice one, Jacques. -cvj

By: Jacques Distler

Jacques Distler — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 16:18:48 +0000

Must be time-dependent. I get

weblog 48,800,000
blog 141,000,000

Sum 189,800,000

Italy 153,000,000
Italia 28,800,000

Sum 181,800,000

The blogs have it, by 8 million votes.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 16:08:55 +0000

And presumably you told her to drop everything and come to CosmicVariance, right?! -cvj

By: Sam Gralla

Sam Gralla — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 16:07:04 +0000

Just a few minutes ago I discovered that an italian graduate student next to me did not know what a blog was. So, I decided to do a comparison for her:

blog 139,000,000
italy 152,000,000

Drat! I was really hoping blog would win.

(Incidentally: italia was 70 million. So I guess if we count funny-talkers too it is no contest. That’s a shame.)

By: jimvj

jimvj — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 15:04:52 +0000

Doesn’t mass matter?

Some day when the arrow of time is not so pointedly
urgent, perhaps you could comment on this “explanation”
of mass:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/ns-ijv081005.php

Thanks

By: Alejandro Rivero

Alejandro Rivero — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 14:48:44 +0000

Also “Audi”… I mean, I hate these ads where they speak of engineering for the masses and then in truth it is not possible to open the engine of the car nor to learn anything of its workings. Worse, people is getting used to; some months ago a friend come to show me his new card, I went down and I stood up behind the engine trunk, waiting for him to open it. He looked puzzled… is seems more people was only looking the interiors and the radio.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 13:58:07 +0000

I thought the opposite of “intelligent design” was “Chrysler”

By: Alejandro Rivero

Alejandro Rivero — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 11:10:02 +0000

The traditional opposite of “intelligent design” is “blind watchmaker”, isn’t it? Or is it a term registered by Dawkins?

By: slanted tom

slanted tom — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 19:51:39 +0000

Perhaps you have discovered a really useful way of judging the relative importance of concepts in our computer age.

At the other end of the scale are combined concepts that generate one, two or no hits. Someone has written a book about such googling with one or two hits results and their creative usefulness.

Someone else used “dumb engine” in a post, which I googled and found zero hits. I presumed it to mean the opposite of “intelligent design”. No surprise, this guy couldn’t explain to me what he meant.

By: Alejandro Rivero

Alejandro Rivero — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 18:04:25 +0000

A search restricted to .gov sites ( http://www.google.com/unclesam ) gives more or less the same order

87,300,000 for time.
35,300,000 for space.
12,500,000 for money.
10,800,000 for war.
3,750,000 for sex.
2,560,000 for peace.
972,000 for love.
964,000 for fun
28,100 for harry potter

By: Unrest

Unrest — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 14:49:10 +0000

By your count, I see you turned SafeSearch off for google. Cheeky bastard.

By: Athena

Athena — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 12:04:12 +0000

Darn! Too bad the event is sold out, it sounds terrific and I would have enjoyed attending. Well, good luck and have fun!

By: Ben Lillie

Ben Lillie — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 05:21:10 +0000

OK Sean, if you’re going to use this argument, you do have to mention that the top entry for “time” is Tajikistan current local time. Perhaps this gives you some information on the direction of the arrow of time?

Also, sex has been around for, I believe, over a billion years (someone who actually knows correct me on that), give Harry Potter time to catch up.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 04:17:39 +0000

Woohoo! “Space” beats “money” two to one! I hope they take this into consideration before the next round of NASA budget cuts. I’m extremely surprised, however, that “sex” bested “Harry Potter”! In any case, I look forward to watching your talk!