[Noisebridge-discuss] [HAIRSPLITTING] Re: 5 geek fallacies

[Michael Shiloh]

And for extra credit, if we come up with a word, and use it enough times 
so that it shows up in google....

Kelly wrote:
> google-dowsing?
> 
> On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 19:45, Michael Shiloh
> <michaelshiloh1010 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is there a word for the practice of using Google to acquire a feeling
>> for relative popularity?
>>
>> Professor Feinschmeker
>>
>> Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson wrote:
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>>> On Feb 26, 2010, at 3:39 PM, Jesse Zbikowski wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 11:56 PM, Sai Emrys <noisebridge at saizai.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Unlike your search, Seth's is not attempting to use popularity to
>>>>> determine historical facts, but to determine the *popularity* of a
>>>>> collocation.
>>>> Well, the idea was to determine the *correctness* of the collocation,
>>>> not how many times it's been repeated on the Internet. Trial By Google
>>>> represents a familiar kind of confirmation bias: you form a
>>>> hypothesis, and test it in a way that can only turn up supporting
>>>> evidence. People may well employ this collocation, but that does not
>>>> preclude the possibility that there is a different and preferred
>>>> construction which doesn't reveal itself in such a search.
>>>>
>>>> All kidding aside, there are a number of forums (mainly geared toward
>>>> non-native English speakers) which can offer much more satisfying
>>>> analyses of grammatical questions, for the truly curious. However I
>>>> suppose meta-grammatical discussions along the lines of "does grammar
>>>> have a logical and prescriptive component, or does it merely describe
>>>> how people use language" are more or less par for this list.
>>> Grammatical analysis and descriptive linguistics are different though:
>>> certainly, one could seek out an appropriate language geeks forum, and
>>> sit down for erudite analysis of what the current models for
>>> describing English grammar or word usage make of a given phrase; but
>>> this ends up being a comparatively prescriptive approach relying on
>>> the preciseness of past analyses.
>>>
>>> What Seth was doing is something I've often seen linguistics
>>> researcher do (and even cite in research reports) - namely use Google
>>> to acquire a feeling for relative popularity of different
>>> collocations. It's a cheap and low labour approach to what otherwise
>>> means either digging through a couple of thousand newspapers (or other
>>> textual corpus source) by hand, or - preferred to that - using an
>>> already established corpus; which tend to come with licenses that make
>>> them less than accessible for casual research.
>>>
>>> Sure, it has confirmation bias. But on the other hand, is [Noisebridge-
>>> discuss] really a venue you expect peer-review grade research from?
>>>
>>>
>>> Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson, Dr.rer.nat
>>> Postdoctoral researcher
>>> mik at math.stanford.edu
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>> --
>> Sent from my ASR-33
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>