{"id":479,"date":"2009-02-09T20:53:25","date_gmt":"2009-02-10T01:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/?p=479"},"modified":"2009-10-22T22:07:59","modified_gmt":"2009-10-23T03:07:59","slug":"lies-damn-lies-and-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itp.indiamos.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/09\/lies-damn-lies-and-statistics\/","title":{"rendered":"Lies, damn lies, and statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mainstreaming<\/a><\/p>\n

Today we presented ideas for our semester-long projects in Mainstreaming Information<\/a>. The assignment, which apparently I was not the only person to be confused by, is over at Christian’s site (PDF, 36 KB)<\/a>.
\n
\nLast week we had to bring in some “jaw-dropping statistics” to start considering working with, and because I’ve decided that I’ll get more out of the rest of my time at ITP if I keep my schoolwork linked to—duh—stuff I’m actually interested in, I selected a couple of tidbits from Dan Poynter’s mass of book industry statistics<\/a>\u2014<\/p>\n

1993\u20132003: The number of titles published increased 58% while fiction readers declines 14%,
\n\u2014Malcolm Jones in Newsweek<\/cite>. Sources: NEA and RR Bowker.<\/p>\n

2004. 56.6% of adult Americans said they read at least one book, fiction or non-fiction, between August 2001 and August 2002 compared to 60.9% ten years prior.<\/p>\n

2002. 57% of the US population read a book. See report.
\nhttp:\/\/www.nea.gov\/pub\/readingatrisk.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014and John Kremer’s Recent Statistics Related to
\nBook Publishing and Marketing<\/a>\u2014<\/p>\n

In a survey of 4,000 adults in the United Kingdom, 55% said \u201cthey buy books for decoration, and have no intention of actually reading them.\u201d (Teletext) This is another important reason why your books should be well-designed. They should look good on a buyer’s coffee table, bookshelf, bedside stand, etc.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These served the purpose at hand, but they’re all just isolated data points. So over the weekend I spent several hours digging around for more information, but for none of these could I find enough reliable numbers to support a semester-long project. I was also looking for any compelling information about e-book sales versus print or audio books, and this morning I spent a while rummaging around on TeleRead<\/a>. They had all sorts of statistics, none of which quite fit my needs, though but did give me a few more ideas about stuff I’d like<\/em> to have statistics about. So around 11 a.m., with 3.5 hours left until class, I lazytweeted it<\/a>, as a last resort. And I immediately got a bunch of responses from my nice, nice friends! Erin pointed me to the completely bitchen Book Scraper<\/a>, from the London Times<\/cite>‘s R&D labs, and reminded me that the New York Times<\/cite> has an API<\/acronym> for its best-seller lists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the end, I decided I’d better scale down from the macro to the micro view, so that I could use data I might actually get<\/em>: vocabulary statistics scraped (using my mad new Programming from A to Z<\/a> skillz) from Project Gutenberg<\/a> e-books, compared with those from recent Times<\/em> best sellers. And then I went and found a Jaw-Dropping Statistic (which, not coincidentally, is bullshit<\/a>; favorite line in the Straight Dope article: “At times it’s been attributed to Gallup polls or even entomologists.”) that went with the data I was planning to gather. Kind of bass-ackwards, but the result is the poster-style project proposal above, which was deemed Not Entirely Stupid during the classroom critique, despite its having been printed way too large, in fifteen 8.5 × 11-inch tiles, and glue-sticked-together in class using the second-worst glue stick in the universe (the worst being the one I had brought from home, which, it turned out, had dried up).<\/p>\n

Now, of course, I’m not even sure I can get files of contemporary best sellers to scrape, because of stupid !@%# DRM<\/acronym>, so I’m kind of hoping that the Data Fairy will come to my aid. But my project is at least theoretically<\/em> possible. Developing . . .<\/p>\n

Bonus: Find the typo in the poster!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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