Don't you love Amazon's suggestions?

[Fortis]

Just received a "suggestion" e-mail from Amazon.


As someone who has purchased or rated Penn & Teller - Off the Deep End , you might like to know that Romance Double Feature: Emma and Jane Eyre will be released on April 28, 2009.

I'd love to know the link... ;) :)

[Gillianren]

When I am bored, I will often flip through their recommendations for me. My favourite so far is the time they told me I want a defibrillator. This is true. I want one desperately. On the other hand, I don't want to spend the I believe it was $1500, and I really shouldn't have one anyway.

[grant hutchison]

I received an e-mail from Amazon a couple of years ago advising me that, as someone who had purchased The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia, I might also be interested in buying The Hidden Code of Cryptic Crosswords.
And I was. So that worked out well.

Grant Hutchison

[TrAI]

Just received a "suggestion" e-mail from Amazon.



I'd love to know the link... ;) :)

perhaps they just log what people are buying and rating. If a certain number of people that was interested in one product also showed interest in another, that might be used as an indication that other people with similar interests might feel the same. Of course, they probably only have some software running that produces these things, so it will have limited intelligence.

[kleindoofy]

I sell books on the Amazon marketplace and there was one book of which I know with *absolute certainty* was only ever sold once on Amazon at all. All other sales were directly to bookshops and libraries.

Anyway, I know the person who bought the book. It was a professor from XXXX. I sent it to him.

When I put the book up again (an additional copy), I saw the message "people who bought this book also bought Facing problems with erectile disfunction."

So much for privacy on the web. :lol:

[Fortis]

Just received another one from Amazon. Whereas before they thought that Penn and Teller linked in with Jane Austin adaptations, I now have..

As someone who has purchased or rated Penn & Teller - Off the Deep End , you might like to know that Shadow Force: The Complete Season One will be released on April 28, 2009.
Where this show is described as

The worst crimes take place in the most dangerous areas of the world...war zones and unstable regions at the mercy of criminals. When extreme danger keeps governments and aid agencies away, only one industry will fill the gap the soldiers for hire of Shadow Force.....
It's like some insane game of word association... ;) :)

[Moose]

Here's what Amazon Doesn't Want You To Know[tm]. The link can be described by this handy little function:

suggested book = random(entire book library)

[gzhpcu]

Thanks to Amazon, I have discovered some authors I would never have gotten to know. I like their suggestions. Sure, now and then a mistake, but often interesting suggestions...:)

[aurora]

I don't know how Amazon deals with it, but in other fields one of the greatest difficulty of recommending something is that some things are very popular. If someone buys a best seller, that may tell you very little about what that person likes because in the database the best sellers get associated with all sorts of things.

Another problem in the database is there are just a few people who purchase hundreds or thousands of books. Again, their preferences may not be very useful in giving recommendations to other people because those people like just about everything. And for some of the items that are purchased rarely, it may be that pretty much the only people who got it are those few that buy everything.

[Gillianren]

I've read books based on Amazon referrals. I generally don't buy them, of course, but that's one of the reasons the library is one of the greatest developments in history. I don't have to. Sometimes, I've read the book and felt I wasted my time. Sometimes, I haven't even finished the book in the first place. However, I have more than once come across a truly excellent work and added it to my wish list. It took a very long time, on the other hand, to convince them that I'd rather eat my own face than watch another episode of Charmed.

[kleindoofy]

... suggested book = random (entire book library)
Not necessarily. You can test it.

1. Find two rather obscure and unrelated titles, e.g. an old dissertation in Art History dealing with some unknown sculptor in Verona and a report on tests in an electron accelerator from 1963.

2. Hit on both titles a few times a day for a week or so.

3. Make sure to clear your cookies and cache occasionally.

In short time, you'll see that the books appear together as "favorites." Then have a friend in a different city search for one of the books. He or she will get the same "favorite" suggestion.

It works.

[sarongsong]

...a defibrillator...I want one desperately...and I really shouldn't have one..."Huh?" :confused:

...and I'm constantly entertained by google's attempts to match their ads to BAUT's "keywords" on these pages! :)

[Frog march]

one of the drawbacks of the amazon suggestion software is that people don't always buy books for themselves, they buy books as presents, like the book about looking after horses, I bought on behalf of my mum, as a present for someone she knew, but I suppose that they wouldn't get very high hits. Oh well I suppose that isn't much of a drawback after all.

[Moose]

"Huh?" :confused:

Great for parties. Shock and amaze your friends. :D Best. Toy. Evar.

[davidlpf]

They will get a great charge out of it.

[Gillianren]

FM, you can tell them that you bought it as a gift, and they stop suggesting based on it.

Yeah, I would have been very irresponsible with a defibrillator. Or probably I wouldn't, but the temptation would always be there. They have one in the back at the Evergreen library, where some of the staff is theoretically trained to use it, but I'm not sure I'd trust them. I know those guys.

[Moose]

Never, but never turn your back on English Lit people. You know how they are. ;)

[ToSeek]

FM, you can tell them that you bought it as a gift, and they stop suggesting based on it.

Yeah, I would have been very irresponsible with a defirbillator. Or probably I wouldn't, but the temptation would always be there. They have one in the back at the Evergreen library, where some of the staff is theoretically trained to use it, but I'm not sure I'd trust them. I know those guys.

To someone with a defibrillator, everything looks like a heart attack.

[tdvance]

which, of course, means they will not use the defib, since it doesn't work on heart attacks but on fibrillation!

[Gillianren]

And it's not even just English Lit people. It's Evergreen English Lit people. They're even crazier!

[HenrikOlsen]

On the other hand, the defibrillators you get in such places are smart enough to not shock people with beating hearts, which just might make them more responsible that the E-lit people and make it a responsible choice to have them there (the defibrillators that is, I'm not saying anything about whether it's a responsible choice to have the E-lit folks).

I'm also theoretically trained in using one. That training essentially consists of knowing the three steps to using one: 1) Find one, 2) Get it to the victim, and the last and easiest 3) Open it and follow its instructions.

[Fortis]

On the other hand, the defibrillators you get in such places are smart enough to not shock people with beating hearts,...
Maybe there is a market for a pre-defibrillator, which is a device that shocks the heart until it stops beating... ;)

[slang]

Don't tase me, bro!

[Moose]

Maybe there is a market for a pre-defibrillator, which is a device that shocks the heart until it stops beating... ;)

Well, other than the taser (which is chancy), there's always the "fork in the wall socket" method.

But it should be mentioned (again) that you don't use a defibrillator to restart a stopped heart. That's not what it's for. Real doctors use chest compressions and adrenaline (apparently).

You use a defibrillator to prevent fibrillation, that is the unregulated contraction of individual heart cells. Unless the heart cells are contracting in unison, no blood gets pumped.

The defibrillator stuns the heart muscle into uncontracting, in the hope that the heart cells resume contracting, only at the same time.

[davidlpf]

If you do not have a defibrillator you might choose this but you might have to a dork to get a charge out of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KRja415Iwk

[NEOWatcher]

If you do not have a defibrillator you might choose this but you might have to a dork to get a charge out of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KRja415Iwk

That impressed me enough to update this thread (http://www.bautforum.com/1476943-post12.html).

[some dumb kid]

jeez mine are mundane after buying hellsing volumes 1 2 3 and 4 it said i might like hellsing volumes 5 6 7 and 8

[Gillianren]

Yeah, I have no idea what (heh) sparked the defibrillator suggestion. I should've taken note. (Mostly, these days, it suggests old movies. Since most of them start with letters past "h," I don't know if I like them or not.)

[Fazor]

I don't pay attention to the suggestions really, since among them have been Hoagland's books. Given the shared interestes of the others here, I'm sure I'm not the only one to have those end up on their suggested reading list.