more bistromathics at Google

[Joel S. Berson]

At 3/12/2008 10:35 AM, Mark Mandel wrote:
>Search for pages containing "treebank"; then "treebank" but not "forestry";
>then "treebank" but not "forestry" or "forest". Successive removal of
>subsets should make smaller sets, right?
>
>Personalized Results 1 - 100 of about 138,000 for treebank. (0.44 seconds)
>Personalized Results 1 - 100 of about 117,000 for treebank -forestry.
>(0.39seconds)
>Personalized Results 1 - 100 of about 212,000 for treebank -forestry
>-forest. (0.37 seconds)
>
>Wrong??
>
>Bistromathics <http://hhgproject.org/entries/bistromathics.html>.

I've often been puzzled by my encounters with this phenomenon.  Now I
understand -- Google's search engine is implemented by googols of
maitre d's at typewriters, on short shifts.  (That accounts for the
contents as well as the numbers: immense quantities of misspellings
and incorrect grammar along with the Shakespeare.)

Joel

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