TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis

Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis

Seth Breidbart (sethb@panix.com)
Tue, 20 Dec 2005 01:55:02 UTC

In article <telecom24.568.6@telecom-digest.org>, Robert Bonomi
<bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com> wrote:

> In article <telecom24.566.10@telecom-digest.org>, Thor Lancelot Simon
> <tls@rek.tjls.com> wrote:

>> In article <telecom24.565.7@telecom-digest.org>, Dave Garland
>> <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> wrote:

>>> The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but
>>> among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not
>>> particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained
>>> around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three ...

>> I'm astonished that a 25% difference is considered "not particularly
>> great".

> I'm astonished that something that can be explained by "jitter" of
> "plus/minus one count" in 'ordinal' numeric data, would be considered
> anything _other_ than "not particularly great". Well, unless they do
> not really understand statistical analysis, that is.

3 vs 4 is jitter. 126 vs. 168 is a bigger difference, though it's the
same 25%. (Unless you believe that there are a lot of off-by-one
errors, _all_ in the same direction.)

Seth

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