Martin metrics

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 18 Jun 2011, 10:46

"if you pick a random Wikipedia article, click on the first blue hyperlinked word not in brackets or italics, then recursively keep on clicking on the first such word in subsequent articles, you will always end up at 'Philosophy'."

The Martin metric is the number of clicks from a given entry to "philosophy".

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... -dead.html

The Martin metric for 'Peak Oil' is 19

Pepperman · Post by **Pepperman** » 18 Jun 2011, 11:46

Hmm I started at a random article and then got stuck in a feedback loop when I got to Human so I never made it to philosophy. Do I win a prize?

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 18 Jun 2011, 12:32

I found that recursive loop too:

Indo-European
Family
Languages
Human
Latin
Italic-langages

That both of us found that loop independently suggests that a lot starting points lead to it and that there are not many such loops.

JavaScriptDonkey · Post by **JavaScriptDonkey** » 18 Jun 2011, 12:51

biffvernon wrote:I found that recursive loop too:

Indo-European
Family
Languages
Human
Latin
Italic-langages

That both of us found that loop independently suggests that a lot starting points lead to it and that there are not many such loops.

Your grasp of probability lacks depth.

The Birthday Problem. Scroll down to the bottom of the page if the math is troublesome.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 18 Jun 2011, 13:04

JavaScriptDonkey wrote: Your grasp of probability lacks depth.

Probably not.

The Birthday problem is somewhat different.

There are only 366 possible birthdays.

There are a great many more Wikipedia pages.

It might take a while to quantify my assertion, hence my use of 'a lot' and 'not many', which I stand by. (I do have a life.)

madibe · Post by **madibe** » 18 Jun 2011, 15:46

Always seems to land on Greek / Greece for me...which is not a million miles away from Philosophy. Interesting

JavaScriptDonkey · Post by **JavaScriptDonkey** » 18 Jun 2011, 16:28

biffvernon wrote:
JavaScriptDonkey wrote: Your grasp of probability lacks depth.
Probably not.

The Birthday problem is somewhat different.

There are only 366 possible birthdays.

There are a great many more Wikipedia pages.

It might take a while to quantify my assertion, hence my use of 'a lot' and 'not many', which I stand by. (I do have a life.)

The birthday problem isn't confined to dates or birthdays or even just 1-dimensional search spaces. It can be extended to any search space.

Still, don't feel bad. I only came upon it via cryptographic mathematics and it's a very specialised field.

postie · Post by **postie** » 18 Jun 2011, 16:35

Yep, ended up on Modern Philosophy

Took a lot of clicks though, and that was ignoring already clicked links.

Here's how.

Starting from a random choice, using what was already in my google search box "keeping geese"

I added, "keeping geese wiki"

Goose >>> English-language>>West_Germanic_languages>>Language>>
Human>>Taxonomy>>Ancient Greek>>Greek languange>>
Indo-European Languages>>Language family>>Genetic_(linguistics)>>Linguistics>>Grammar>>Structural>>Intangible>>Sports>>Organized>>Spelling Differences>>
British National Corpus>>text corpus>>hypothesis testing>>Controlled_experiment>>Scientific_method>>
Scientific_technique>>Systematic>>Life>>objects>>Physics>>Natural_science>>Science>>Knowledge>>Information>>sequence>>
mathematics>>quantity>>Property_(philosophy)>>
Modern Philosophy!!!!>> and therefore to...Philosophy

Phew..

Can't be arsed to count how many steps that is, but that's the link structure... from Keeping Geese.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 18 Jun 2011, 17:16

cryptographic mathematics: Martin metric = 9

Postie, I dont think you are doing it quite right.

Goose takes you to:

Goose
English
West Germanic Languages
Indo-European

and thus to the same recursive loop

Indo-European
Family
Languages
Human
Latin
Italic-languages
Indo-European

that we encountered before, adding strength to my assertion and making JSD's comment look increasingly silly.

postie · Post by **postie** » 18 Jun 2011, 19:42

biffvernon wrote:cryptographic mathematics: Martin metric = 9

Postie, I dont think you are doing it quite right.

Goose takes you to:

Goose
English
West Germanic Languages
Indo-European

and thus to the same recursive loop

Indo-European
Family
Languages
Human
Latin
Italic-languages
Indo-European

that we encountered before, adding strength to my assertion and making JSD's comment look increasingly silly.

I'm not too sure if I am wrong, though I thought I was...

in your list you have Latin, which is contained in brackets.. and things in brackets should be ignored according to the rules.

Dunno, still working out ... but I seem to be able to get to philosophy in less moves now.. dunno why.

Mean Mr Mustard · Post by **Mean Mr Mustard** » 18 Jun 2011, 20:13

postie · Post by **postie** » 18 Jun 2011, 20:37

Mean Mr Mustard wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IPA_for_Greek

The above link is contained in a set of brackets, in the previous link. IMHO.

First post says you can't use links that are in brackets...

Mean Mr Mustard · Post by **Mean Mr Mustard** » 18 Jun 2011, 20:49

Which puts me in a language loop.

Have a Greek.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/inte ... 106173959/

Mean Mr Mustard · Post by **Mean Mr Mustard** » 18 Jun 2011, 21:01

The Rocker's perspective -

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 18 Jun 2011, 21:39

JavaScriptDonkey wrote: Your grasp of probability lacks depth.

You really do like to patronise people, don't you?

Maybe your very high opinion of your own intelligence lacks depth?