Somhairle Kelly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mirrorshard) wrote2009-05-30 02:10 am
mirrorshard) wrote2009-05-30 02:10 am
Entry tags:
LibraryThing data mining and author intersections
The methodology here is a bit dodgy (I'm using Google, with site:librarything.com "Author 1" "Author 2" - it's known to return a small number of duplicate results, and an unknown number of false negatives) but frankly it's the best I've got. The percentages for an intersection are the percent of the lower-ranked author who also had the higher-ranked one.
597 people list at least one book by Walter Wink.
5,530 list at least one book by Diane Duane.
44 (7%) list both authors.
I wanted to look at a couple of control groups, so I did this two ways. First, by picking two other authors who wrote Star Trek novelizations.
2,260 list at least one book by John M Ford. His intersection with Duane is 648 (29%).
782 list at least one book by Vonda McIntyre. Her intersection with Duane is 171 (22%). Ford & McIntyre intersect at 155 (20%).
58 (10%) list both Ford and Walter Wink; 1 (0%) lists both McIntyre and Wink.
A corresponding & connected religious philosopher seemed to me to be Rene Girard. His LibraryThing stats give him 298 fans, and his intersection with Wink is 54, or 18%.
Girard's intersection with Duane is 40 (13%); with Ford it's 33 (11%); and with McIntyre it's 2 (0%). (Neither of them the one who also has Wink.)
The second method I looked at was to find another religious philosopher who had similar stats to Wink, and another SF author with similar stats to Duane. It turned out to be John Polkinghorne (605) and Elizabeth Bear (5,780).
Polkinghorne's intersection with Wink is 49 (8%), and Bear's with Duane is 384 (7%) so they seem to be connected pairwise at about the same distance in L-space.
Polkinghorne's intersection with Duane is 32 (5%) while Bear's with Wink is 7 (1%). For completeness' sake, Polkinghorne's intersection with Bear is 17 (3%).
So overall, the Duane/Wink match does seem to be a bit more than random noise after all.
597 people list at least one book by Walter Wink.
5,530 list at least one book by Diane Duane.
44 (7%) list both authors.
I wanted to look at a couple of control groups, so I did this two ways. First, by picking two other authors who wrote Star Trek novelizations.
2,260 list at least one book by John M Ford. His intersection with Duane is 648 (29%).
782 list at least one book by Vonda McIntyre. Her intersection with Duane is 171 (22%). Ford & McIntyre intersect at 155 (20%).
58 (10%) list both Ford and Walter Wink; 1 (0%) lists both McIntyre and Wink.
A corresponding & connected religious philosopher seemed to me to be Rene Girard. His LibraryThing stats give him 298 fans, and his intersection with Wink is 54, or 18%.
Girard's intersection with Duane is 40 (13%); with Ford it's 33 (11%); and with McIntyre it's 2 (0%). (Neither of them the one who also has Wink.)
The second method I looked at was to find another religious philosopher who had similar stats to Wink, and another SF author with similar stats to Duane. It turned out to be John Polkinghorne (605) and Elizabeth Bear (5,780).
Polkinghorne's intersection with Wink is 49 (8%), and Bear's with Duane is 384 (7%) so they seem to be connected pairwise at about the same distance in L-space.
Polkinghorne's intersection with Duane is 32 (5%) while Bear's with Wink is 7 (1%). For completeness' sake, Polkinghorne's intersection with Bear is 17 (3%).
So overall, the Duane/Wink match does seem to be a bit more than random noise after all.