Erez Aiden > Quotes

“The thought of reading millions of books in a split second hadn’t entered our minds.”
― Erez Aiden, Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture

“If your height were proportional to your bank account, and the average American household were five-foot-seven, then Bill Gates would be taller than the moon.”
― Erez Aiden, Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture

“She is more phamous than she is famous.”
― Erez Aiden, Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture

“This sort of memory-by-association effect is a major problem: It’s impossible to account for and impossible to predict.”
― Erez Aiden, Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture

“If we want to understand fame, what we need is a wind tunnel.”
― Erez Aiden, Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture

“But as we’ve seen, the world of words is far from normal, with a distribution of sizes that obeys a very specific, and seemingly strange, mathematical pattern.”
― Erez Aiden, Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture

“But if you want to become famous, the worst possible thing to do is what we did: to pursue mathematics.”
― Erez Aiden, Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture

“We can instantly map the usage of the word 'raven' across the United States, in works of narrative poetry, written by men in their thirties. but only up to 1923. When it comes to the last century, save if new law affords entry, then the lawyer - dark-robed sentry - who is ever at our door, will yet whisper, "Nevermore!”
― Erez Aiden, Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture

“A rule is the tombstone of a thousand exceptions.”
― Erez Aiden, Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture

“You would think that by alphabetizing a romance novel, and thereby obliterating its meaning, Reimer would also eliminate everything that made the novel interesting.”
― Erez Aiden, Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture

“I may have never heard of flamboozing before, but I know that if you chose to flambooze yesterday, then yesterday you flamboozed.”
― Erez Aiden, Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture