Comments on: Every So Often Ask Why

By: John

John — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 08:06:35 +0000

But that’s precisely the point, with the power of computers we can provide each person with the ordering that is most relevant to them at that moment in time.

By: michele

michele — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:51:28 +0000

John,

I understand Seth’s point. My argument was that these “orders” would not have usefulness beyond the personal level, so in a one to one basis. You cannot use likelihood -based ordering for deterministic systems (unless you enjoy unreliable outcomes).
Seth’s orders would be useful for the single user but not as a general way to order items on systems.

By: » The big bad alphabet

» The big bad alphabet — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:27:04 +0000

[...] It’s all about making sure to: Every So Often Ask Why, as John points out. [...]

By: John

John — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:29:27 +0000

I think you’ve missed his point Michele, yes the ordering of likelihood of being spam is subjective but it’d be a very useful ordering to have.

Equally the ordering of music would suit many as it’s specific to them.

By: michele

michele — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:47:34 +0000

I think Seth is wrong on his post. The reason is the following. While most of those “orders” he mentions could be useful, they are in fact, not orders. The main difference between the alpha and his suggestions is that alphabetic order is deterministic and therefore unique, while the other order are subject to relative metrics (the likelihood of an email of begin spam, the similarity of unlistened songs to be like the most recently played ones, etc.) and therefore not unique. This fact would lead to different sequences of items for different people using different metrics. Pretty useless from a global point of view: imagine librarian ordering books in best-selling (for that specif library) order…