Amazon's Statistically Improbable Phrases

March 21, 2005 7:46 PM

Do you know of a page or project that will show a list of Amazon's statistcally improbable phrases, live-linked to the Amazon content the are found in? Options for sorting by source date, title, author, subject, or other classes are what my inner librarian really wants.

A bit more about SIPs at EGR Weblog.

posted by Mo Nickels to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Unrelated, but this reminds me of George Carlin's 'Things You Never Hear' routine.
posted by airguitar at 4:05 AM on March 22, 2005

I've read both resources and I still don't have a clue what the relevance of a SIP is.
posted by rolypolyman at 8:23 AM on March 22, 2005

For me, SIPs are useful because they may be highly correlated to new words, which I track professionally. In order to find out if that's true, however, I need to have a large sample to work with, rather than visiting books at random.
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:43 AM on March 22, 2005

Hmmm... I hadn't seen that feature until just last week. So now I know I have one statistically improbable phrase in my book ("grubby living") that is also used in three other books: A Prayer for Owen Meany, New York Magazine Crosswords Volume 6, and Our Private Lives by D. Halpern. (Wouldn't the appearance of that phrase in other books make it somehow less improbable?)

Had I known the SIP thing was coming, I think I might have aimed higher. I mean, "grubby living"? Come on!
posted by mothershock at 9:39 AM on March 22, 2005

Heh, "statistically improbable phrase" is self-defining.

I also am very interested in this topic, Mo, so if this thread streams off the page before an answer is found, I will get back to you if I discover something.
posted by mischief at 9:45 AM on March 22, 2005