Complexity Explorer Santa Few Institute

Q1. Which of the following best describes the process by which the publishing industry seeks to model the individual reader, according to the lecture?

A. The publishing industry is a purely capitalist agent, seeking solely to understand reader preferences and cater to them.
B. The publishing industry is a purely ideological agent, seeking to shape reader interests to suit the industry's broader agenda.
C. The publishing industry is a largely capitalist agent that seeks to understand reader preferences and cater to them, but also has ideological limitations on the kinds of books it will consider publishing and the sorts of readers to whom it will cater.
D. None of the above

Correct answer: (C)   In the lecture, Simon is clear to note that while publishers are predominantly interested in generating a model of reader preferences which they can then use to market books effectively, publishers nevertheless also aim to achieve certain ideological goals shared by their shareholders and employees. Note that these ideological goals can differ significantly between publishers.

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Q2. What is a 'topic' in the context of the topic model of reader preferences presented in the lecture?

A. A set of particular users of bookcrossing.com.
B. A probability distribution over the approximately 48,000 books on bookcrossing.com.  
C. A probability distribution over the words found in the full corpus of blurbs for books found on bookcrossing.com.
D. None of the above.

Correct answer: (B)   In the context of the topic model of reader preferences, a topic is an assignment of probabilities to each book on bookcrossing.com. While topics are not themselves sets of users (thus ruling out option A as an answer), each user can be modeled as sampling their books according to the distribution assigned by each topic. Option C correctly describes the nature of a 'topic' in the context of the topic model of blurbs presented later in the lecture. 

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Q3. Which two topics are most strongly connected in "The Linkage Pattern of Needs"?

A. Oprah and DaVinci
B. Oprah and Wisdom Literature
C. DaVinci and Fantasy Worlds
D. None of the above

Correct answer: (A)  While each of these options represents a relatively strong connection between topics in the linkage pattern of needs, by far the strongest in the entire data set is between books recommended by Oprah's book club and popular thrillers like Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code. This linkage constitutes what Simon calls "the normie corridor": a large region of preference space populated by users who prefer mainstream, popular fiction.