esjewett.com - Latest Comments in Statistical misunderstandings and Google Book Search

Re: Statistical misunderstandings and Google Book Search

esjewett — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:15:25 -0000

Indeed, that would be a mistake. However I have never seen an actual example of such a mistake linked from a blog containing a complaint about mixing up translators and authors in Google Book Search. Much less an attempt at analysis of the pervasiveness of these mistakes as compared to similar mistakes in library metadata. Perhaps I've just been very unlucky in the blogs I've read.

Re: Statistical misunderstandings and Google Book Search

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 20:27:47 -0000

I don't think it's a problem when you can type "Roberts, W. Rhys" into an author field and get Longinus's On the Sublime. That's a feature, not a bug.

It's a problem, however, if the name Longinus appears nowhere on the record, because in that case a search on Longinus, the primary author, will never turn up that edition of On the Sublime. That's not a semantic disagreement; that's a mistake.

(That's a made-up example, by the way.)