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3=5

         

lucy24

10:22 pm on Jan 13, 2020 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Over the weekend I was trying to dig up information on symphonies with one movement in 3/4 time, using Major Search Engine to do so.* This did not get me far, in part because Major Search Engine kept insisting I was asking about Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique”, which famously includes a movement in five-part time.

It worries me a bit that Major Search Engine apparently thinks 3 = 5. It's like that old gag about proving that all odd numbers are prime:
3--prime
5--prime
7--prime
9--experimental error
11--prime
et cetera.


* Mercifully it turned out to be a red herring. The music running through my head was neither a Strauss waltz nor a movement of some early-Romantic symphony but the overture to La Gazza Ladra. Whew.

NickMNS

2:35 pm on Jan 14, 2020 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Ah Rossini. He composed some of the most memorable overtures. I guess the goal was to hook to audience from the start, then all that was needed was a few notable arias here and there to keep them entertained. This is in contrast to the Wagnerian approach, bore them into submission. Where only the most ardent fans can survive the first 4 hours, and then, don't end the story there, make them come back for round 2, 3, 4. If it weren't for Apocalypse Now Wagner may already have been completely forgotten by all but the most die-hard opera fans.

As for odd numbers being prime, that statement is entirely true. Just look at the evidence.
primes == 3,5,7,11 not prime only 11. Clearly the evidence proves that odd numbers are prime. What's the big deal! Not enough evidence, here are more odd primes, 31,17,51 and the list goes. Don't forget that there is only a single prime that is even 2, so even numbers are not prime and therefore odd being the opposite of even and prime the opposite of not prime:

not(even numbers not prime) == odd numbers are prime

[sarcasm intended, see this thread [webmasterworld.com...] for more on this epistemological debate]

Now to the point, Google's treatment of 3=5 and similar search queries. I have experienced the same, actually I often experience this situation. Google seems very much to lean on the popular view of a given topic. I mostly see this when I search for answers regarding coding questions. When one has a question the goes against the typical convention Google will reformat the question such that it fits the convention. As an example, I was searching to determine whether it was possible to run a PHP script without using Apache, that is directly without any web server. Since this isn't the convention, Google assumed that my question should either be "run PHP with Apache" or "run PHP with a web-server other than Apache".

Given that million of searches are made for both these alternative interpretations and nearly none are made with my intent Google errs on the side of the popular, because the probability suggests that is what the user wants. Your search for 3=5 is a perfect example of this situation. All music is 4/4 time (like the odd primes) and the exceptions are five part time, thus the musical rebels such as Rossini and Brubeck (with Paul Desmond) are relegated to the bottom of the SERPs.

RhinoFish

9:24 pm on Jan 16, 2020 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Google errs on the side of the popular, because the probability suggests that is what the user wants.


I share your view here. I see it as the difference between "intelligence" and "artificial intelligence".
To me, it's very frustrating to see certain searches that give such clearly inferior results.
They should have a team that received these obviously flawed searches, then works on fixing them.

They'd say their machines have ways of detecting bad results... I'd say relying on machines to recognize problems made by similar machines, is a fallacy.

And hey, they way they treat shipping costs in Google Shopping (which is, in theory, a comparison shopping engine), haha, and they can't seem to figure out why Amazon is kicking their butz.
They probably have a machine researching the answer.
:-)