Thursday, May 26, 2005
On Language 5/24: Amazon’s Statistically Improbable Phrases
Amazon’s SIPs let readers search and dip into books
Chicago Tribune, May 24, 2005
By Nathan Bierma
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In March, Amazon rolled out “statistically improbable phrases,” or “SIPS.” This search feature finds word pairs that are unusually common in a book compared with other books. ... Some SIPs are revealing (“old sport” in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”), while others are numbing (“fossiliferous formations” in Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species”; “linearized fluctuations” in the book “Artificial Black Holes”). But others aren’t phrases at all.
FYI, the SIP’s for colleague and co-contributor Bill Vande Kopple’s The Catch: Families, Fishing, and Faith are bait house and trolling motor—which he shares with Adventure Guide to Tampa Bay & Florida’s West Coast and Bass Pro Strategies: Locating and Catching Techniques of the Professionals. Oh, and Amazon says Bill’s book gives you 6,505 words-per-dollar. I wonder how many words-per-dollar you get if you pay tuition to hear him lecture?