Time for the Interactive Literature Map again

[kennyc]

I just love this thing!


http://www.literature-map.com


Enjoy!

[Pablo]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I just love this thing!


http://www.literature-map.com


Enjoy!

That's great Kenny!!!

[kennyc]

You're welcome Pablo!

[cassidym]

Always been fond of this one. Needless to say, I learned about it here; probably from kennyc

[piperclassique]

Uh huh. It's fun, but John Donne and Lilian Jackson Braun next to Ngaio Marsh? i have to çonfess to bafflement here.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by piperclassique

It's fun, but John Donne and Lilian Jackson Braun next to Ngaio Marsh? i have to çonfess to bafflement here.

It also sometimes returns a title instead of an author.

They don't explain their methodology, at least anywhere I stumbled into. But I think they may be going by information they gain from how people use this interface:

http://www.gnooks.com/faves.php

You'll notice that, on the linked page, they tell us to enter authors only, not titles. I'll then bet that's where the titles come from.

Hypothesis: Extremely few people going to the web site enter the name of John Donne, so if one or two people mistake him for someone else, their database is messed up.

Even in theory, I don't see how the site can work, because when you enter the author's name, the computer has no idea which aspect of that author's work you liked. Was it the physical setting typical for the author(s) you named? The religion of the characters? The historical time in what the novel is set? The tone? The genre? IMHO genre tends to be weighted too high. On the other hand, recommendations sometimes cross the fiction/non-fiction boundary, so over-attention to genre isn't always the problem.

I suppose that if even a quarter of the recommendations are helpful, the site is helpful.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by piperclassique

Uh huh. It's fun, but John Donne and Lilian Jackson Braun next to Ngaio Marsh? i have to çonfess to bafflement here.

It generally depends on people who like this also like this data. As also has been said, it could also factor in people who look for this also look for this. There's a site that asks random questions like "do you start with your left or right foot when you tie your shoes" and uses similarities in answers to suggest things people would like. It uses non-domain knowledge to try to make suggestions within a domain.

It is fascinating stuff.

I like going to literature map to find random authors every now and then. I'll look at the close ones and then other outliers. I'm probably the one skewing the data.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

It generally depends on people who like this also like this data. As also has been said, it could also factor in people who look for this also look for this. There's a site that asks random questions like "do you start with your left or right foot when you tie your shoes" and uses similarities in answers to suggest things people would like. It uses non-domain knowledge to try to make suggestions within a domain.

It is fascinating stuff.

I like going to literature map to find random authors every now and then. I'll look at the close ones and then other outliers. I'm probably the one skewing the data.

I shoulda know!

[Corkobo]

WOW!!!!

I tried it (with Peter F Hamilton), not expecting much, and to my surprise I discovered that more than half of the authors shown are in fact favourites of mine.

The Internet has come of age, it can read my thoughts!

Thanks Kenny!

[kennyc]

Hee-Hee. It's really quite fun, isn't it.

[treadlightly]

A cool feature would be the ability to mark the authors you've read so that they display differently and create a wishlist of those you haven't. The new-to-you authors that appeared most frequently in "clouds" of authors you have read could then be ranked by suitability (most likely to be liked?).