Cybermetrics and Groundhog Day
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2012
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Can you measure your popularity – or that of anyone or anything – by the number of results that an internet search generates? Tim Harford points the finger at lazy journalists. Plus, a professor of economics assesses the accuracy of a groundhog’s weather forecasts, made famous by the Hollywood film Groundhog Day. This programme was originally broadcast on the BBC World Service.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading from the BBC. |
| 0:04.0 | The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use go to |
| 0:08.0 | BBCWorldService.com slash podcasts. |
| 0:12.0 | You're listening to a download from the BBC. |
| 0:16.0 | This is more or less the mathematical icing on the cake of life. |
| 0:20.0 | We make an edition of the programme for BBC Radio 4, |
| 0:24.0 | but this is a download of a special edition broadcast on the World Service. |
| 0:28.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:32.0 | We're your weekly guide to the numbers in the news and in life, and I'm Tim Halford. |
| 0:36.0 | This week it's Groundhog Day. Again. |
| 0:40.0 | As I look at the crowd on Gobler's knob, |
| 0:44.0 | many shadows do I see. |
| 0:48.0 | Six more weeks of winner it must be. |
| 0:52.0 | We put the famed weather predicting prowess of a North American movie star |
| 0:56.0 | Groundhog to the statistical test. |
| 1:00.0 | But first, a listener writes. |
| 1:02.0 | I'm still seeing articles quoting Google search numbers as some kind of indicator |
| 1:06.0 | for the extent or popularity of a topic. |
| 1:08.0 | Is there any justification for using these numbers? |
| 1:12.0 | This is the kind of thing they're talking about. |
| 1:14.0 | A quick online search of essay writing services returns more than 31 million hits. |
| 1:20.0 | Clearly, these businesses are thriving. |
... |
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