Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
The use of scrapers is hardly magic. The data obtained is not a guess. The use of mathematical and statistical techniques to analyse that data is not black magic. The resulting "estimate based on various assumptions and formula", as you put it, is not mere guesswork. If Data Guy is in fact anti big publishing how has it affected his work? The methodology is public and open to criticism. In fact, Data Guy has proved very responsive to valid and constructive criticism. His figures are not perfect, but they are clearly close enough to it to give meaningful results and for businesses to pay for those results. And the trends reported certainly seem to have proved accurate.
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All I can say is that authors who actually know their sales figures and are willing to talk about it publicly say he's way, way off. You can dismiss that if you like, but sometimes people will go with made up numbers simply because it gives them something concrete to go off of, not because it's particularly accurate. For some reason, people would rather latch on to WAG than accept that accurate data just isn't available. It just seems to be something in human nature, especially if the WAG is accompanied with fancy hand waving.