Re: JSH: Measuring post impact

jstevh@xxxxxxx wrote:
Tim Peters wrote:
[jstevh@xxxxxxx, making really weird claims about measuring his impact
via some vaguely described form of ego surfing]

This thread's hilarious! Thanks to all wasting their time on it ;-)


This thread is about how I consider post impact, which goes to how I
pick and choose directions in posting.

Since my impact has grown over the years, it would seem wiser to be a
bit more objective than to come into the thread arrogantly, as you did.

After all, my impact on the newsgroup is far greater than yours as is
my influence.

Sure is. Cranks have that impact.

Mostly you are just a foil to me, and might otherwise not have been
known to many posters without your replies to my posts, which are
driven to a large extent by this methodology.

My assessment is that you can't handle the truth, so you rationalize it
into triviality.

Just popping in to note a Google quirk: when I do a Google search today on:

primes probability

I indeed find JSH's blog & some archived posts well-represented on the first
page of results.

Given that Google's page rank algorithm is probably useless for weighting
these results (who's gonna link to this stuff?!), I conjectured that perhaps
Google also incorporates a model based on in-document term frequency (TF)
and inverse term cross-document frequency (IDF -- & see any paper on search
technology for careful definitions of TF & IDF).


Well that's the naive and immediate explanation but I have years of
seeing what actually happens, which is about experiment.

I have training in physics.

Big deal. Go get a degree in math and then we'll talk.

You have years of listening to math people.

There's nothing James can do to affect IDF, but highly repetitive posts
boost TF (across "normal" text, the more frequently a document uses a search
term the more relevant that document is likely to be). And clicking on
Google's "Cached" link for one of the JSH hits gives dramatic colorized
visual confirmation of just how frequently the search terms above are
repeated.


Then try it. Consider your own postings and watch what happens.

Google HAS to correct for mindless repetition ofr creative ways of
trying to push one's rankings up, as it compromises the effectiveness
of their algorithm.

Also if you look more thoroughly, you'll find odd situations where
things I've posted on rarely surge up the rankings, for a while, and
then drop off.

But that requires actually looking at the data.


OTOH, then I dropped the plural:

prime probability

and JSH didn't show up at all until the 7th page of results.

My conclusion is that this is a 100% reliable methodology for measuring
impact to 3 significant figures, and should be made more widely known ;-)

Rationalize if you want, but paying attention to the truth might just
save you from embarrassment.

I've watched these kinds of search results for years to determine which
ideas resonate with others, and using them I've guided my postings,
while also the basic research itself has dominated much of the time.

But when I'm not actively researching, then my posts are guided by
search engine results and other data, as I work very hard to figure out
what is intriguing the world, which appears to be tuning in more and
more.

You disparage where these results are, but before, they wouldn't have
even come up that high, and not nearly this quickly.

And if you watch, the rankings may shift dynamically on a day-to-day
basis, sometimes just on the basis of a single post I might make, so
remember that when you try to figure out why I am replying or not
replying, if there is no research interest for me.

The main point of this thread is for people who think that posters
replying to me are rational--they are not.

No information moves them.

They are completely in their own little world, so you need to take that
into consideration when evaluating what is happening here.

The math people are, for some odd reason, almost immune to the truth.
They shrug it off with rationalizations and convince themselves they
have the world behind them, or maybe, they just can't see the rest of
the world, at all.


James Harris


Dave
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: JSH: Measuring post impact
    ... My assessment is that you can't handle the truth, so you rationalize it ... I indeed find JSH's blog & some archived posts well-represented on the first ... trying to push one's rankings up, ... replying, if there is no research interest for me. ...
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  • Re: JSH: Measuring post impact
    ... My assessment is that you can't handle the truth, so you rationalize it ... I indeed find JSH's blog & some archived posts well-represented on the first ... trying to push one's rankings up, ... replying, if there is no research interest for me. ...
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