Re:Power laws as a thinking tool
by stdbrouw on Thursday January 28, 2016 @03:31AM
(#10987085)
It's an open secret in the news industry that while all of those longform articles, parallaxin' interactives and news apps do get great traffic, that traffic is nothing in comparison to that totally random and not even very good quick hit that went viral yesterday.
Personally, I also agree that you shouldn't worry too much about polishing content and instead just get it out there. That's what's so lovely about the blog of statistician Andrew Gelman for example [1], he just writes what comes to mind and his readers love it because they care more about his insights than about whether or not he's presenting an eloquently argued, watertight argument. It reminds me of the old days of blogging, and I think many of us miss those days.
That said, Kent Beck displays some really sloppy thinking here. "I have no clue about what the actual numbers are, and even though I could get them and run some analysis on them to determine the effects of quality vs. quantity, instead I'm just going to philosophize about how I think the world works, and justify my ramblings by saying that it's a POWER LAW, and power laws, that's like nature, dude, you can't fight it."
Personally, I also agree that you shouldn't worry too much about polishing content and instead just get it out there. That's what's so lovely about the blog of statistician Andrew Gelman for example [1], he just writes what comes to mind and his readers love it because they care more about his insights than about whether or not he's presenting an eloquently argued, watertight argument. It reminds me of the old days of blogging, and I think many of us miss those days.
That said, Kent Beck displays some really sloppy thinking here. "I have no clue about what the actual numbers are, and even though I could get them and run some analysis on them to determine the effects of quality vs. quantity, instead I'm just going to philosophize about how I think the world works, and justify my ramblings by saying that it's a POWER LAW, and power laws, that's like nature, dude, you can't fight it."
[1] http://andrewgelman.com/