Not Really Science
This isn’t really science, but it is kind of neat. Virgil Griffith scraped Facebook data for which books people picked as favorites and what college they attended and created a graph of which books are most likely to be associated with higher or lower SAT scores. He calls it Books That Make You Dumb. I don’t remember my SAT score, very high on English and just slightly better than normal on Math and my reading runs from the center of the graph to the right side. Interesting use of data mining but probably not as controversial as his Wikiscanner, which exposed many interesting edits from famous places on Wikipedia. It would be interesting to see similar results with movies.
Via O’Reilly Radar
January 25th, 2008 at 10:20 am
I wonder what books those gals in “Is Europe A Country?” read.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Bill, I thought you were good at math? That was only one “gal” on the game show who asked if Europe is a country.
January 25th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
If you look at the rest of the entry, you will find a second video featuring a beauty pageant contestant suffering from an appalling lack of central nervous system.
January 26th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Or an appalling lack of central government?
Kellie Pickler (on the game show) is known for being naive. She was on American Idol, and the “stupid” comments are something that made her stand out. One has to wonder how stupid that is, really, when other contestants fade into obscurity.
Of course, the overall problem is that people will pick the clips or responses that make a particular point. What is fun about asking questions to people on the street who actually know the answer?