The Wisdom of Crowds?

by rrusczyk, Sep 7, 2009, 9:58 PM

For a good laugh, check out the "Reader's Lists" of best novels and best nonfiction. An object lesson in selection bias, or "which group of extremists is best at using the internet?"
That said, the expert's list of nonfiction is nothing to be excited about, either, and the top of the list tells me almost as much about the people doing the choosing as the "Reader's Lists" do. (To be fair, I'd have an awful time making such a list...)

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I was assigned a book review for my Politics class, so I've been looking through the Amazon bestseller lists... it's surprising how extreme most of the books are.

by worthawholebean, Sep 8, 2009, 1:24 AM

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Yeah, particularly the "current events" or political books. If you're looking for a good political book, a safe first step is to look at the Amazon bestseller list and cross them all off. A good second step is to find a better subject to read about.

by rrusczyk, Sep 8, 2009, 2:46 PM

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A list like this really doesn't make much sense without a genre filter. The bulk of the lists tell us that the critics like "literary fiction" and the general Internet population likes SF/fantasy, but that's the bias of the groups rather than any intrinsic quality speaking. I'm not sure I could make that comparison across genres; it's like asking whether Babe Ruth or Wayne Gretzky was the better athlete.
The lists do say something about quality within a genre; they agree reasonably well about relative placement of similar books.

by jmerry, Sep 8, 2009, 9:02 PM

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