October 19, 2006
rediscovering an author
I read Malcom Gladwell's Blink a year or two ago and was slightly disappointed, as it seemed to me the book offered more anecdotes than scientific argument, hypothesis or proof. I have been toying with the idea of reading his previous book, The Tipping Point, but a combination of less interest in the topic and the aforementioned slight disappointment the first time around has resulted in it remaining an idea.
I recently stumbled across an article he wrote for The New Yorker, and was intrigued by the title and subtitle: The Formula: What if you built a machine to predict hit movies?. Like Blink, this article touches on cognitive science, which always grabs my attention. In this article, Gladwell reviews a product developed using artificial neural networks, that predicts the box-office success of movies based on a number of key features such as locale, character, genre etc.
A lengthy read (i had to print it out to get through it), but once again my appetite for this author has been whetted. Perhaps reading the rest of his articles in The New Yorker will be an idea that i actually follow through on...
Posted by lara at October 19, 2006 12:17 PM
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