I was unable to replicate Stephen�s Google citation results for Newton, Shakespeare, Darwin, Einstein, Marx and Freud:
>Newton: 7.83 [million] >Shakespeare: 5.82 >Darwin: 4.25 >Einstein: 3.79 >Marx: 3.21 >Freud: 2.04 My results were: Newton: 5.25 Shakespeare: 3.91 Darwin: 2.85 Einstein: 2.55 Marx: 2.16 Freud: 1.37 I noticed that although the figures are very different, the *order* of the above lists are identical, so I calculated the ratio of the numbers in List 1 compared to List 2 for each entry (i.e., Newton 1/Newton 2, etc). To an accuracy of three significant figures these ratios were identical: 1.49. So the *relative* number of hits in the two lists is almost the same for these particular names. Does anyone have any explanation for the difference in our �findings�? Marc wrote: > Google is a great search engine, but not very discriminative. Darwin, > for example, brings up many "Team Darwin", or "Darwin City" > (that's near Inyo County, California, near Death Valley). > The results are therefore not very valid. My �Googling� gave: Marx: 2.16 million �Karl Marx�: 625,000 �Groucho Marx�: 83,600 Freud: 1.37 million �Sigmund Freud�: 235,000 �Lucian Freud�: 9450 The problem is, of course, that searching for �Karl Marx� or �Sigmund Freud� gives too few hits (because famous names like these may simply be cited as Marx or Freud), while searching for Marx or Freud gives too many (for the reason Marc notes). Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
