Monday, March 26, 2012

Quick comment: More to come on LANGUAGES below/above the equator

One of the great things about writing a blog like this is that there are so many smarter-than-you people out there!  


More than a few people wrote in to comment that either I'd done the analysis incorrectly (which is kinda true), and that I hadn't posted my spreadsheets in a public place (clearly true).  


A few wrote in to complain that this data point or that data point wasn't right.  And some of them have a point... but I don't think it will matter in the end.  


In any case, I'm travelling right now and wanted to let you know I haven't forgotten this analysis.  I'll try to get to it this evening, righting the wrongs in my spreadsheet and talking about why and how such analyses sometimes goes awry! 


Which leads to my best internet search source credibility heuristic ever: 


If a source (such as a newspaper or web site) never publishes and erratum, you know they don't care much about how right they are.  
Finding admissions and corrections of errors is a HUGE positive sign that the source is credible.  


Forever searching on! 



1 comment:

  1. M. Russell - thought you might be interested in this information presentation format, it might be relevant to responding to a question like above. This example is site specific, but I think Eileen Fry (IU Art Dept.) does a nice job explaining some search techniques that are common to your efforts and, in the larger scope, SlideShare offers a format that would allow you to illustrate your answer more thoroughly than the blogger format allows?? - you could just link to your SlideShare.
    Eileen Fry Search
    You would probably like discussing search with Eileen, especially since so much of her work is image/visual based.
    A side question: are you using a tool like Snagit for the screen grabs in the previous answer; e.g., the "infoplease" illustration? And do you use ScreenFlow? (a possible alternative to SlideShare)
    Acquisition & dissemination of information & misinformation is a complicated tango. Safe travels searching4search.

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